The worst drought in 35 years in southern Africa will imperil the food supply of 40 million people until next March, when crops planted in coming months are ripe for harvest, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. "Widespread crop failure has exacerbated chronic malnutrition in the region," said FAO, which appealed for $109 million to equip farmers and grazers ahead of the growing season.

Corn production will surge by a hefty 5 percent worldwide, pushing global grain production to within shouting distance of the record set two years ago, said the International Grains Council. Bigger-than-expected wheat and corn crops in the United States will be a factor in the near-record harvest and an expansion in the season-ending "carry over" stocks for the fourth year in a row.

A USDA task force set out to determine in September 2015 whether fruit and vegetables are ‘organic’ if they’re grown in a medium other than soil. More than 10 months later, they issued a report that is “anything but conclusive,” writes Civil Eats.

The U.S. hard red spring wheat crop, a variety used in flour for bread, will yield 45.7 bushels an acre, said crop scouts after a three-day tour of the northern Plains. At that rate, the yield would be on track with the five-year average forecast produced by the crop tour and well below the forecast of 49.9 bushels an acre that scouts calculated at the end of last year's pre-harvest tour, said Reuters.

The Clinton campaign loads up on Domino’s and Walmart groceries, while Trump staffers hit up Trump Grill and McDonald's, says Eater. The site searched spending records from the Federal Elections Commission to find out how each presidential hopeful was feeding their staff.

U.S. farmers are headed for a record-large corn crop at the same time that market prices may be the lowest in a decade — a combination that could trigger crop-insurance indemnities for farmers who bought high levels of revenue insurance, says DTN. "In fact, many corn growers could trigger 2016 crop insurance pay-outs with no yield loss."

In two generations, Brazil, like many of its neighbors, has gotten fat, says The Nation, and experts such as Carlos Monteiro, a nutrition professor, sees it in a diet teeming with processed and consumer-ready food. "Instant noodles, soda and processed meats are edging out staples like beans and rice, cassava, and fresh produce," writes Bridget Huber in "Slow Food Nation," produced in partnership with FERN.

One result of the USDA's proposed livestock-welfare rule for organic farmers would be the eventual end of confinement-style egg production, because it says poultry must be given access to outdoor yards. A powerhouse group of 13 senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the leaders of the Agriculture Committee says the rule could affect egg prices at the grocery store and drive up costs for producers.

Biomaterial engineers at a lab in Canada successfully fused human tissue with an apple segment that, when implanted beneath the skin, will develop blood vessels and be “compatible with the body,” writes The Atlantic.

New research suggests that neonicotinoids, a leading culprit in the ongoing decimation of honeybee populations, may also be snuffing out the next generation of bees by cutting the quantity and viability of sperm in male bees by nearly 40 percent, writes The Guardian.

Property taxes and access to biotechnology are bigger issues for Nebraska farmers and ranchers than a right-to-farm amendment to the state Constitution, said leaders of six ag groups. The unified position by cattle, hog, dairy, corn and soybean growers and the Nebraska Farm Bureau could mean the end of efforts in the state legislature for an amendment which would prohibit regulation of agriculture without a compelling state interest.

Half the seats in Midwest ag schools are filled by female students, but it’s the men in the classes who are likely to return home to run the farm. One communications teacher at Iowa State observed the difference first-hand when she assigned a film project and found that none of her female students planned on returning to manage their family’s farm, writes Harvest Public Media.

The fate of a fish as old as the dinosaurs is being decided in Montana, says The New York Times. The Missouri River used to team with pallid sturgeon, but today only 125 of the fish, which can grow up to 6-feet and live as long as the average human, remain. Most environmentalists blame dams built to irrigate farmland for the species’ demise, since they block sturgeon eggs from moving downstream. “The eggs end up trapped in reservoirs like Lake Sakakawea, with a lot of sediment, a lot of bacteria and very little oxygen. There they suffocate and die,” says the Times.

In 2002, when Dolly the sheep, the first truly cloned mammal, died at the age of six, scientists studied her telomeres — the structure at the end of DNA strands that shorten with age — and found that Dolly’s were much shorter than they should be. Initially, scientists thought this meant clones would age prematurely, following the biological clock of the original cells. If so, it would be a terrible prospect for cloned human organs.

As part of General Mills' recall of wheat flour, the government says 13 of the 46 people infected with strains of E coli bacteria, tied to eating or handling raw dough, have been hospitalized, one with hemolytic-uremic syndrome, which can lead to kidney failure. "Epidemiology, laboratory and traceback evidence available at this time indicate that General Mills flour manufactured at this facility (a mill in Kansas City) is the likely source of the outbreak," said the FDA.

Third-term Rep. Todd Rokita, sponsor of the Republican-backed school lunch bill in the House, abandoned his re-election campaign two weeks ago to vie for the suddenly available GOP nomination in Indiana. Party leaders chose Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb instead, so Rokita will try to get back on the November ballot, said Morning Consult.

Paris-based Sodexo, one of the world's largest food-service suppliers, pledged to sell only cage-free eggs worldwide by 2025, reports the Washington Post, signaling that the movement “long championed by animal rights activists, is going more global.”