In a report released in conjunction with its annual meeting, the Word Bank lists three related food challenges - hunger, obesity and deficiencies in vitamin and mineral intake. "Despite significant progress, 795 million people still are not getting the minimum dietary energy needs," said the report.

Assemblyman Richard Bloom pulled California’s latest soda tax bill before it could come up for a committee vote on Tuesday, reports The Sacramento Bee.

Second-term Nevada state Rep. Michele Fiore, who helped negotiate the surrender in February of anti-government activists occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, is running for the Republican nomination in the third congressional district of Nevada, says Roll Call.

The cost of the food stamp program, the premiere U.S. anti-hunger program, is falling in tandem with the enrollment, says the think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

A year after it closed most of its futures-trading pits in Chicago and New York, CME Group said it will close option pits in New York "as computerized trading claims another victim from the world's old-school financial system," said Reuters.

Drainage districts in three counties in northwestern Iowa have no way to control nitrate levels in water draining into waterways, so the Des Moines Water Works is misguided in suing them, says the lawyer defending the counties.

Although the turkey was first domesticated by indigenous people in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago, when Mexico now wants turkey meat, it looks north. More than 90 percent of the turkey eaten by Mexicans comes from the United States.

Infestations of the Desert locust have been found on the southern coast of Yemen, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, describing the insects as a force of nature when the adults gather in swarms that ride with the wind. "A very small swarm eats the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people," says FAO.

The House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA and FDA is writing its own guarantee of a gradual transition to calorie counts on menus a restaurants, carry-outs, stores and fast-food stands. It included a rider, Section 735, in its USDA-FDA funding bill saying enforcement cannot occur until a year after Dec. 1, 2016, or a year after the FDA issues the final rule on menu labels.

The world's largest manufacturer of lawn and garden care products, Scotts Miracle-Gro, said it will "immediately begin to transition away from the use of neonicotinoid-based pesticides for outdoor use" sold under the Ortho brand name.

The troubles for the villagers of Sianyanga, Zimbabwe, began in the late 1980s, when the Nalomwe River, which watered the village, went dry. Soon, the shade trees died and the villagers' cattle herds suffered for lack of water and forage, says a Pacific Standard story produced in partnership with FERN.

Thanks to a generally favorable growing season, wheat growers in the European Union reaped a record 160 million tonnes of the grain in 2015, part of a record-setting harvest worldwide.

If there’s one fruit to be wary of its conventional strawberries, says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which put the fruit at the top of its annual "Dirty Dozen" ranking.

Cuba bought $17.8 million of U.S. food and agricultural products during February, compared to $22.8 million during January, said the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which tracks trade between the nations.

Last November, the EPA cancelled the registration of the pesticide sulfoxaflor, a step required by a U.S. appeals court decision. However, the agency has now granted an emergency exemption sought by the Texas Department of Agriculture for use of sulfoxaflor this year against the sugarcane aphid on up to 3 million acres of sorghum, said Agri-Pulse.

The Washington Post says its county-by-county analysis of death records compiled by the federal government "shows a clear divide in the health of urban and rural Americans, with the gap widening most dramatically among whites.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson of Washington State "will seek damages running in the millions of dollars over [alleged] money laundering" in the 2013 referendum on labeling GMO foods, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.