The allium leafminer, a tiny but destructive insect, was identified in leeks and onions in Lancaster County in south-central Pennsylvania, say Penn State entomologists. "This is the first confirmed infestation in the Western Hemisphere."

Nine of 10 New England farmers likely to retire in the coming two decades "are farming without a young farmer alongside them," raising questions about the future of many of the farms, says a study from American Farmland Trust and Land for Good.

Some 17.4 percent of American children are obese today, compared to 14.6 percent at the start of the century, says the Los Angeles Times, citing a study published in the journal Obesity. "Among children from infancy through age 18, rates of obesity have increased steadily from 1999 to 2014, and the numbers of children with the severest forms of obesity have risen most dramatically."

Americans will see a fourth year of smaller-than-usual increases in food prices, thanks to weaker beef and pork prices, says the monthly Food Price Outlook report.

Two researchers at Cornell say the factors behind the decline in monarch butterfly populations are wider spread than the loss of milkweed, their summertime food source. They say the list includes sparse nectar sources in the fall, adverse weather and fragmentation of habitat.

“Snowpack levels in the West are melting faster than climate hydrologists have seen in nearly four decades, bringing the snowpack far below normal in most states in the West,” says High Country News.

In parts of California, the historic drought is creating a new breed of wildfire that burns so hot that the scorched soil left behind erodes instead of reseeds, says Lisa Morehouse, who reported on one farming community’s efforts to revive its land after last year’s 70,000-acre Butte Fire. The story was co-produced by FERN and KQED’s The California Report.

"Persistently weak profit margins in the farm sector continued to intensify the challenge of maintaining adequate cash flow" in the first three months of this year, says the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, farm-state senators say Europe must take large steps toward opening its market to U.S. farm exports or prospects for approval of a U.S.-EU free-trade agreement will fade.

In their first meeting since 2009, agriculture ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations said they would "set up an international framework to smoothly share information on livestock epidemics, such as bird flu or foot-and-mouth disease, reports the Kyodo news service.

The egg industry has nearly recovered from last year's devastating bird flu epidemic that killed nearly 50 million turkeys and egg-laying hens.

Two gene-edited crops -- white button mushrooms and "waxy" hybrid corn -- are years from the market yet they already are creating turmoil in Britain over the use of gene-editing technology and the propriety of importing foods created with it, says The Guardian.

In conjunction with the meeting of G-7 farm ministers, Japan's agriculture minister Hiroshi Moriyama discussed his idea "of replacing retiring growers with Japanese-developed autonomous tractors and backpack-carried robots," said Bloomberg.

Consumers are turning to foods they shunned a few years ago, says the New York Times: "Under the new thinking, not all fat is bad and neither are all salty foods. A stigma among the public remains for sugar substitutes but less so for cane sugar, at least in moderation. And all of those things are weighed against qualities like simplicity and taste."