Even during four years of the worst drought in state history, California has seen total farm earnings increase 16 percent and farm employment rise 5 percent. “Both wages and employment in agriculture increased annually from 2012 to 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, reaching $12.7 billion and 421,213 jobs in 2015 …”

A report written by a non-profit research center aligned with the organic industry said, “The best choice that consumers can make to combat antibiotic resistance and protect themselves from antibiotic-resistant bacteria is to choose organic.”

Food industry giant Cargill “has created a sugarlike product that seems perfect,” said the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But while it tastes like sugar and has no calories, it comes from the lab, so “Cargill faces an enormous marketing challenge with its breakthrough ingredient.”

If the EU fails to approve a free-trade agreement with Canada, its trade policy will be "close to death," in the view of the bloc's director-general for trade, reported Politico.

Brazil will remove barriers to U.S. beef and beef products that were imposed in 2003 in the name of preventing mad cow disease, said the Agriculture Department, pointing to “excellent long-term potential for U.S. beef exporters.”

China has sold around 1.6 million tonnes of cotton from its state-owned reserve since daily auctions began in May, sharply reducing the burdensome stockpile, said the International Cotton Advisory Committee.

FNSEA, the French national farming union, estimates the wheat crop in Europe’s largest agricultural producer will total 30 million tonnes this year, down 26 percent from 2016 due to a rainy and cloudy weather that kept grains from filling.

According to the United Farm Workers, three female grape pickers died in California this week, most likely because of the heat, said ABC News–Kero/Bakersfield.

Fast-food giant McDonald’s Corp. “will replace high-fructose corn syrup in its sandwich buns with sugar as part of an effort to simplify its ingredients and satisfy increasingly conscientious customers," said the Wall Street Journal.

More than half of California’s reservoirs are contaminated with high levels of mercury, says the Los Angeles Times. Nine local water boards and state authorities have called for a statewide plan to lower mercury levels in 180 of the state’s 300 reservoirs and warn fishermen that their catch may be poisonous.

An EPA appeals board that oversees pesticide regulation upheld cancellation of U.S. use of the insecticide flubendiamide, made by Bayer and sold under the brand name Belt, said Agri-Pulse.

Three farmers in western Kansas are partnering with a state agency in a test of thrifty irrigation systems that require less water to grow crops in the Plains

One of the top-ranking Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, called on the FDA to overhaul its food recall process, saying dangerous food now may remain on sale for months before the agency acts.

A public-private partnership known as CARB-X plans to devote more than $350 million over five years "to one of the trickiest aspects of the problem of drug resistance: Encouraging pharmaceutical companies to make new antibiotics," says National Geographic. Antibiotics are expensive to develop but often a low-revenue product, so there is little research at a time bacterial resistance is an increasing threat to medicine.

In the first U.S. communities to experience climate change firsthand, warmer weather and shifting weather patterns have hampered the ability of Alaska Native families to harvest the caribou, walrus and other subsistence foods they have relied on for more than a millennium, reports NPR’s The Salt. “The debate here isn't over whether climate change is happening. For these rural communities, the question is whether they can continue to survive there,” the story says.