Wild bees "are disappearing in many of the country's most important farmlands," including the Central Valley of California, the No. 1 state for fresh fruits and vegetables, says the University of Vermont.

The Federal Reserve Board decision to increase interest rates for the first time in seven years is likely to ripple into commodity prices, economists told Harvest Public Media.

The largest U.S. farm organization announced an online survey open to all farmers and ranchers to rate their experiences with 10 USDA programs on soil and water conservation, rural energy, farmers markets, and farm operating and land ownership loans.

The "floating gardens" of Bangladesh and mountain farming in Japan are among four traditional farming systems declared "globally important agricultural heritage systems" by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Caught in a multi-year drought, California voters approved $7.1 billion in bonds last year to improve the state's water infrastructure, and now faces the choice of where and how to spend the money, says the New York Times.

Almonds faced the agricultural version of the water-shaming that was directed at wastrel urbanites in California, called out as one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. Yet almond acreage has gone up every year during the drought and the harvest consistently is larger than before the drought, says Gizmodo.

The United States should work outside of the "failed construct" of the Doha Round negotiations if it wants to see freer trade in agriculture, said House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway.

The operators of a Vermont dairy farm agreed in federal court to suspend operations until they can show they use livestock drugs properly and do not sell cattle containing illegal drug residues, said the FDA.

When it launches on April 1, Landus Cooperative will be the seventh-largest grain company in the United States, says DTN. Members of the Farmers Cooperative and the West Central Cooperative voted to merge under the name of Landus.

PARIS - Jean Marc Touzard, an economist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, watched the climate change conference with interest and anticipation last week. He leads an interdisciplinary team in a wide-ranging venture to prepare France’s wine industry for the hotter, drier climate of the future. A study in 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicted that up to 85 percent of the vineyards in the European Mediterranean would become too warm and dry to grow grapes using current practices if global warming continued unabated.

Meat processors and retailers who produce ground beef are required under a new rule to keep records of the sources of the meat, a step intended to speed up recalls of contaminated food, said the USDA.

Eating a vegetarian diet could contribute to climate change, says research by Carnegie Mellon University. It says "following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per calorie."

Beginning next Monday, operators of small drones "need to go online and register their names and addresses with the Federal Aviation Administration," says NPR, reporting on new federal regulations for the increasingly popular devices.

In a legal opinion, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, said the EPA violated publicity and anti-lobbying restrictions in its use of the social media platform Thunderclap to urge support for its Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.

"Pervasive human trafficking" helped propel Thailand to the top tier of shrimp exporters, says an Associated Press investigation. The AP says that despite promises by government and business to clean up the seafood export industry, "shrimp peeled by modern-day slaves is reaching the United States, Europe and Asia."

The newly inaugurated president of Argentina, Maurico Macri, carried out a campaign promise by eliminating export taxes on corn, wheat and beef and cutting the soybean tax 5 percentage points.

Lead contamination, often acute, is common in New York City’s urban garden soil, according to a new study from the City University of New York. Published in the journal Soil Science earlier this month, the study evaluated 1,652 soil samples, volunteered from 904 home and community gardens, for contamination by a number of trace metals. It says the city’s soil contains higher average concentrations of lead than a number of other metropolitan areas, including Hong Kong, Beijing, London, Bangkok, Berlin and Baltimore.

Farmland values fell 3.9 percent in Iowa this year, to an average $7,633 an acre, according to an annual survey by Iowa State University. It was the second year in a row of decline in the No. 1 corn state.