A videotape released by an anti-cruelty group raised serious concerns about operations at a large hog slaughter plant and prompted a USDA investigation, says the Washington Post. The footage was filmed by an employee of the nonprofit Compassion over Killing at Quality Pork Processors in Austin, Minn., which is a supplier of Hormel, the maker of SPAM.

Only a quarter of the contiguous United States is in drought after heavy rains soaked many regions, particularly in the southern Great Plains and the Mississippi Delta, says the weekly Drought Monitor, down from 35 percent in mid-October. The worst conditions are west of the Rockies.

Beginning today, FDA will accept suggestions through Feb 10 on whether the government should define the word "natural" on food labels and if it does, what it should mean. FDA said it requested comment because of three petitions asking for it to define "natural" and a citizen petition saying it should ban the word from food labels.

Farmers with land in more than one county "are getting a chance to re-assess whether they could collect larger payments" under the new Agricultural Risk Coverage subsidy for their 2014 grain and soybean crops, says DTN. USDA made the change in a letter to county offices last week.

Neal Carter, "the world's most infamous apple farmer," tells Buzzfeed that his genetically engineered Arctic apple is a response to Americans' demand for convenience in food and will reduce food waste. The apple flesh resists browning and bruising when it is sliced. "An apple's not convenient enough," Carter tells Stephanie Lee. "That's the truth. The whole apple is too much of a commitment in today's world."

For growers and consumers, community supported agriculture is an attractive model, says Civil Eats — subscribers get a weekly allotment of fresh produce and farmers have an assured source of income. "But the boxes can be inconsistent" because they depend on what's in season at the farm, writes Chris Hardman.

Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center say diets high in meat may lead to an increased risk of the most common kind of kidney cancer through consumption of carcinogenic compounds created by cooking techniques such as barbecuing and pan frying.

Groups representing Canada’s hog and cattle producers say the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement "will not prevent Canada from introducing retaliatory tariffs on American goods over the country-of-origin labelling dispute," reports Western Producer.

The USDA announced $8 million in funds for the Ogallala Aquifer Initiative to conserve water in the eight states, from South Dakota to Texas, served by the aquifer. Nearly one-fifth of U.S. wheat, corn, cotton and cattle are produced in the 174,000-square-mile region.

Ecology professor Art Shapiro of the University of California, who has monitored butterfly populations in Central America for decades, says monarch butterflies are having the best year in California in at least a decade, reports the U-C blog Bug Squad.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is due to arrive in Havana on Wednesday, leading the first official USDA visit to Cuba in half a century as part of the administration's decision to normalize relations with the nation.

Some 49 veterinarians will receive $4.5 million from the USDA toward their school loans in exchange for their working for three years in parts of rural America that are short of veterinary coverage.

"As California’s water crisis looms over the agricultural industry, conversations have focused on the threat to big growers while often overlooking the devastating potential impact to the laborers and small migrant communities," writes Carolina Wilson at Peninsula Press, a Stanford Journalism project.

The Agriculture Department has spent more than $430 million on a project to modernize the computer technology behind its farm-subsidy programs, yet the system "is $140 million over budget, two years overdue and just 20 percent operational," says Harvest Public Media.

Higher agricultural productivity is a key to meeting growing global demand for food, writes Yangxuan Liu, a doctoral candidate in agricultural economics at Purdue, in a blog on how improved technology could help small-scale farmers and the high-value crops they often grow.