The European Commission, with one member for each of the EU nations, could meet as early as today to decide on a short-term extension of EU approval of use of glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, said Farmers Weekly, based in Britain. An EU appeals committee failed to reach as qualified majority — meaning support by 55 percent of EU members with 65 percent of the population — at the end of last week, with approval for the chemical to expire on Thursday.

California lawmakers and vintners are pushing federal regulators to make sure that out-of-state vintners aren’t falsely advertising their bottles as Californian, says The Sacramento Bee.

The vote by Britain to leave the European Union had an immediate impact that can be felt by U.S farmers — lower futures prices for corn, soybeans and wheat during overnight trading, along with a stronger dollar that would make U.S. exports less competitive. The decision could affect U.S.-EU trade negotiations and the future of neonicotinoids, the pesticides blamed by activists for the plunge in honeybee populations.

The "No Organic Checkoff" coalition has amassed a petition of 755 signatories, representing 6,000 farmers, to oppose the proposed organic checkoff tax, reports New America's Food & Power. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) pitched the checkoff in May 2015 to the USDA, saying a commission would use the funds to promote organic products. But petitioners fear that the checkoff will go the way of others before it, funneling money toward industry giants and away from small producers.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy told lawmakers that the agency played no major role in the decision by the WHO's cancer agency to list glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, as probably carcinogenic to humans, said DTN. The House Science Committee has questioned the classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and whether the IARC is skewing EPA's current review of the herbicide.

Three of every five acres in the long-term Conservation Reserve provides "healthy habitat and forage" for honeybees and other pollinators, said USDA, as part of National Pollinator Week. Some 269,000 acres are enrolled in a program that focuses on pollinator health but a review found 15 million of the 23.4 million acres in the reserve have wildflowers, shrubs and safe nesting places conducive to pollinators, which include birds.

An unseasonably dry spring induced a moderate drought in Iowa, the country’s leader in corn and soy production, the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor reports. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory yesterday after heat index values reached between 101-105 F, a chief concern for farm operators working on Iowa’s 87,000-plus farms.

Agriculture Minister Ricardo Buryaile said the Argentine government will oversee testing of soybean crops in an agreement to assure Monsanto that its genetically engineered seeds are not being pirated, said Reuters. Monsanto, the largest seed company in the world, had threatened to stop selling its seed in Argentina, the No. 3 soy producer, because of the dispute.

The population of snow geese is booming and creating an environmental disaster in Canada, where they breed on the tundra, says Harvest Public Media. A reason behind the boom, it says, is the "Midwest farmland buffet" that eases the twice-a-year, 5,000-mile migration to and from the southern United States.

As Britain votes today on whether to leave the EU or remain a member, "it is no coincidence that food and drink is at the heart of so much of the debate," says the Guardian. On one hand, food and drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the nation and on the other, the EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) "swallows up nearly 40 percent of the total EU budget."

Two of the largest seed and agricultural chemical companies in the world, DuPont and Bayer, are among five partners in a $15 million accelerator fund to back early-stage agricultural technology companies, says Reuters. The new fund, called Radicle, joins a crowd of investors "hoping to profit from ever more sophisticated tools in the food supply chain, from plant genomics and seed traits, to drones and weather sensors for crops," it said.

Some 26 million trees in the southern Sierra Nevada region of California have died since last October due to drought, insect damage and hotter-than-normal weather, according to an aerial survey by the Forest Service, bringing the state total to 66 million dead trees. "Tree die-offs of this magnitude are unprecedented and increase the risk of catastrophic wildfires," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

In California, 47,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union have voted to approve a strike if supermarket companies Albertsons and Ralphs don’t agree to their demands, says the Los Angeles Times. The two companies also include Vons, Pavilions and all Safeway stores.

It’s no secret that good compost improves soil, but many urban juice joints don’t bother getting licenses to cart their leftover peels and pulp to local composters, either because it’s too expensive or because the scraps are too “wet and heavy” to be useful, says FERN contributing editor Elizabeth Royte in Modern Farmer.

Lightweight drones "can monitor crop health in real time for farmers who are trying to manage farms that are hundreds or even thousands of acres," says the White House in hailing the release of U.S. ground rules for commercial use of the aircraft.

The worldwide spike in food prices nearly a decade ago set off a land-buying surge by wealthy investors and nations wanting to shore up their food supply by acquiring cropland in developing nations. The surge was decried by critics as land grabs that would displace small farmers and herders. "The emerging new trend we wrote about in 2008 has continued and become worse," says the nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN).