The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, seemed likely to choose Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate, although Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also was a possibility, said published reports. Clinton could announce her choice as early as this afternoon while campaigning in Florida.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong, a cyclist specializing in the individual women's time trial, "will head to the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro with the apparent distinction of being the first athlete ever sponsored by a crop bred using biotechnology," says Capital Press.

With 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land and 10 percent of its renewable freshwater resources, “Africa’s immense agricultural potential has long been a keen point of discussion among agronomists and global decision-makers,” writes Quartz Africa. But the continent faces a host of issues in reaching its potential.

A Chinese government commission announced the merger of COFCO, the nation's largest food trader, with Chinatex Corp., one of the country's main textile and grain-trading groups, said China Daily. The new company will be "a bigger rival to compete with the so-called ABCD companies." The "ABCDs" are the long-time international farm export and processing companies — ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.

After dipping to 2.27 billion pounds in 2015, U.S. beef exports are forecast to climb 9 percent this year, and to climb again next year, said the monthly Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook. "The U.S. competitive advantage in beef production relative to other major beef producing nations has enabled it to increase its market in global beef trade," says the USDA report.

Wisconsin is "America's Dairyland" — it says so on the state license plates, although California became the largest milk-producing state years ago. And now, Idaho and New York State are vying for third place, says Ag Day TV.

There is an emerging concern among scientists that the gene-editing technique CRISPR "might inadvertently alter regions of the genome other than the intended one," says STAT, the health and medicine site. Dr. J. Keith Joung of Massachusetts General Hospital says that algorithms used to predict off-target effects of gene editing "miss a fair number" of them.

In a step that settled two WTO disputes brought by Vietnam, the United States rescinded anti-dumping duties against the Minh Phu Group for its shipments of frozen shrimp. The Commerce Department said anti-dumping duties will remain in place for all other exporters of warm-water shrimp from Vietnam.

President Obama signed the bipartisan Global Food Security Act of 2016 yesterday, steering $7 billion toward agricultural development and hunger-relief efforts around the world, and ensuring that both public and private operations would continue to work together to fund these efforts in Africa and other food-insecure regions.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has vaulted into the top tier of Democrats under consideration by the Hillary Clinton campaign for nomination as vice president, said Politico. The Hagstrom Report, meanwhile, cited a source close to the Clinton campaign as saying Vilsack was under serious consideration.

With the largest reverse-osmosis desalination plant in the world, Israel is now the only country in the Middle East to have a water surplus, says Ensia. But if other countries take Israel's cue, all that extra water could mean less fighting.

Since 2012, a Texas nonprofit has distributed more than 8 million pounds of rescued produce to more than 20,000 low-income families, and claims to be acclimating kids and entire families to prefer a healthier diet built around fresh fruits and vegetables, reports Civil Eats.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is likely to campaign with her choice for vice president in Florida on Saturday, said the New York Times, listing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack among the four men still under consideration for the job. Former president Bill Clinton "has privately expressed his support for Sen. Tim Kaine," said the newspaper.

U.S. growers will harvest a record 7.78 million tonnes (245 million hundredweight) of rice, says the USDA, a hefty 6-percent increase from the projection made a month ago, thanks to larger plantings and higher yields. The larger crop is likely to depress the season-average price 5 percent from the $12.30 per hundredweight (100 pounds) for this marketing year, which ends July 31.

U.S. corn plantings grew 10 percent in the past decade, driven by the commodity boom that began in 2006. Economist Gary Schnitkey says the expansion occurred mostly in the western Corn Belt, with North Dakota and South Dakota accounting for one-third of the increased U.S. acreage of 7.9 million acres.

Fifteen years after an agreement by Florida and federal officials to revive the Everglades, "billions of dollars have been spent but not much marsh has recovered," says the Miami Herald. "But a review of the key decision points by Florida policymakers over the last two decades shows that one key player in the fate of the Everglades has grown healthier and stronger: Big Sugar."

Community supported agriculture (CSA) began as a year-long direct-marketing commitment between farmers and consumers. With local food in high demand, "on-line hubs are using sophisticated distribution technology to snap into the food chain, often using CSA to describe what they deliver," says the New York Times, some of it is neither local nor direct from the farm, such as olive oil or tropical fruit.

Publix, the country’s fifth-largest supermarket chain, became the last of the top 25 grocery companies to pledge to sell only cage-free eggs within the decade, reports the Orlando Sentinel.