Landowners should be required to keep a 50-foot-wide buffer strip of permanent vegetation between cropland and waterways, said the Environmental Working Group, which proposed four "basic standards of care" to control agricultural runoff.

An examination of weather and yield data does not provide a definitive indication of whether corn yields will be above or below average this year, but the risk of below-normal yields has to be considered, write two U-Illinois economists.

Crop yields on small farms across Africa, Asia and Latin America are higher on plots that attract more bees during the main flowering season.

Monsanto Co. has threatened to pull out of India if the government goes forward with a plan to cut royalty fees on Bt cotton seeds by 70 percent, says Reuters.

The former administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, Anne Alonzo, will become the chief executive of the American Egg Board, reports Agri-Pulse, pointing to clues in a trade publication.

Six months after the largest algae bloom on record in Lake Erie, Canada and the United States set a target of a 40-percent reduction in phosphorus runoff into the lake. The next step is for the nations to develop plans by February 2018 to meet their targets, which are based on 2008 levels.

While organic agriculture yields less than conventional farming systems, it surpasses on a wide spectrum of sustainability benefits, a review study published in Nature Plants found.

Democrat Patty Judge, a former lieutenant governor and state agriculture secretary, will launch a campaign as early as today for the Senate seat held by Charles Grassley, the Judiciary Committee chairman, reports the Des Moines Register.

USDA data show that 32 percent of households receiving food stamps "still have to visit a food pantry to keep themselves fed," says the NPR blog The Salt.

U.S. dairy farmers are breeding cows that are prodigious milk producers, says Harvest Public Media, and the exemplar is Gigi, a Holstein that produced a record 75,000 pounds of milk, or 8,700 gallons, in 2010.

A proposal for a "right to farm" constitutional amendment appears headed for debate in Nebraska's unicameral legislature, says the Lincoln Journal-Star.

Much of central and southern Texas is abnormally dry following unusually warm weather and two months of scanty rainfall, reports the Drought Monitor.

Alaska’s crabbing industry will be hit by ocean acidification, but it isn’t clear exactly how, says Alaska Dispatch News.

After lengthy discussions and an hour-long interview with Hillary Clinton, the United Farm Workers board endorsed the former secretary of state for president.

Three environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against 20 private dairy and beef farms in Northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, claiming they are destroying wildflowers, "eroding coastal bluffs and polluting creeks while the park stands littered with muddy feedlots, waste pits and trailers for ranch hands,” reports The San Francisco Chronicle.

Farmland Partners Inc. says it has closed on a previously announced purchase of 22,100 acres of farmland near Paris in east-central Illinois in a deal valued at $197 million.

Businessman Jim Peters has turned dogs' highly sensitive sense of smell to the problem of invasive weeds, says Farm Journal. "Dogs can find the much smaller weeds before they pollinate and spread," Peters told the magazine.