Under terms of a settlement, the Interior Department will rule by June 30, 2019, whether the monarch butterfly, which has suffered a huge drop in population, deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, said two environmental groups. The groups say without help, the well-known orange-and-black insect is at risk of extinction.

Honeybees and other insect pollinators rely on scent to find plants from thousands of feet away while foraging for food, but air pollutants break down the scent molecules, says a team of researchers led by Penn State. As a result, bees spend more time searching for food and less time pollinating.

Insects have long been a source of protein in China, Japan, Mexico and tropical regions, but in the U.S. eating bugs has been easy to dismiss as little more than a fad. Not anymore. Over the last five years the edible-insect business has surged, and is now big enough that it has it’s own lobbying firm, reports Quartz.

Saudi Arabia lifted its four-year-old ban on U.S. beef, reopening a promising export market that was closed to the American livestock industry following discovery of the fourth U.S. case of mad cow disease. “Re-opening Saudi Arabia’s market will create additional export opportunities for American ranchers,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

Global soybean production is down by a sharp 3 percent, with the latest reductions due to weather damage to the crop in Brazil, said the International Grains Council. The Brazil drop helped pull down inventories as the world heads into a new growing season. "Underpinned by demand for soybean products, consumption is seen expanding further, resulting in another season of tightening stocks," says the council's monthly Grain Market Report.

The global cotton crop will rise 5 percent, to 23 million tonnes, this year although plantings are declining for the second year in a row, according to the forecast by the International Cotton Advisory Council. The intergovernmental body said market prices, depressed for years, will improve as the worldwide cotton glut shrinks during 2016/17.

Vermont's first-in-the-nation GMO food-labeling law takes effect today and some grocers worry that some products will suddenly be unavailable. Store owner Ray Bouffard told the Burlington Free Press that a soda vendor plans to stop shipments today and, with Fourth of July cookouts approaching, a supplier says it won't provide marshmallows, a staple for campfire snacks.

In a call to public officials and candidates from the local office to the White House, the National Farmers Union urged "an increase in price supports or (an) economic disaster declaration" to boost federal support for ranchers and growers facing the third year of an income slump. It was the strongest statement yet by a farm organization about the collapse in commodity prices that began in 2014.

The slump in crop and livestock prices was "the most negative factor for the second year in a row," with Nebraska farmland values down by an average 4 percent this year, said the University of Nebraska. The decline, to $3,115 an acre, lowered the value of land and buildings by $5.8 billion, to $132 billion, said the annual report.

Dozens of people across the country have become ill by eating raw dough contaminated with a strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, the FDA said. The doughs had been made with General Mills flour produced in a Kansas City, Missouri, facility.

Rising incomes and lower food prices will lift tens of millions of people out of food insecurity in the coming decade, said a government forecast. The insecurity rate, now one-in-six people globally, would shrink to one-in-17, with Asia seeing the greatest improvement.

In an about-face, federal officials will not be cutting farm water supplies from Shasta Dam, California's largest, after all, reports The Sacramento Bee. Federal fisheries officials have been in tense conversation over the last month with state and federal water regulators over how much of Shasta’s water to hold back in order to protect the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had seemed set to seriously limit water deliveries to Central Valley farmers.

Last week’s triple digit temperatures and 30-mile winds wreaked havoc on California avocado orchards, right before the Industry’s biggest day of the year — the Fourth of July, says the Los Angeles Times. Growers aren’t sure yet how the heat will affect their harvest or guacamole-ingredient sales. The worst impact may come in 2017, since many of the plants lost flowers — the source of next year’s fruit.

The fractious organic food industry is deeply divided over the GMO disclosure bill nearing a vote in the Senate, says a blog post by Carey Gillam in Huffington Post, with the influential Organic Trade Association supporting it while opponents include the Rodale and Cornucopia institutes. "The bitterness runs so deep that some players are now pulling out of a two-day summit scheduled for July that is supposed to build consensus around GMO issues, sources said."