During the Plains Ginners Association’s annual meeting in Lubbock, Texas, on Monday, House Agriculture Committee chairman Mike Conaway said President Obama had developed an “unreasonable devotion to honeybees.”

In what amounts to a revolt against the data-gathering initiatives of companies like Monsanto and Dupont, farmers are increasingly using sensors and other technology to gather their own data from their fields--and either crunching it themselves, selling it to aggregators and other ag-industry players, or both.

Ricardo Salvador, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, discusses the recent commentary he co-authored, “The Food System Should Unite Us, Not Divide Us.”

Politico’s Bill Tomson writes today about farmers worried that surging Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inflammatory statements on immigration will have long-lasting implications for farm labor.

General Mills, one of the world’s largest food companies, announced plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent by 2025.

Plies and plows are part of Farm to Ballet, a series of performances in Vermont that celebrate life on the farm. Each performance takes place on a different farm or farming nonprofit, says Civil Eats, with the proceeds going to a different food-related nonprofit.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack kicks off his campaign for reauthorization of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which is set to expire on Sept. 30. It is one of the major agenda items when Congress returns from its August recess.

Economic sanctions against Russia are magnifying the problems of French livestock producers, who have higher production costs than other EU members and nowhere to sell their animals in Europe's glutted meat market, says Politico.

The New York Times reports on a potential solution for a highly adaptive pest that targets kale, broccoli and other cabbage-family vegetables. Damage from the diamondback moth costs farmers $5 billion worldwide.

Blistering heat and arid weather pushed the wheat crop to maturity two weeks earlier than usual in Washington State and undermined its value, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

A U.S. Court of Appeals has allowed a lawsuit to go forward over payments between two pork organizations for the use of the iconic tagline, “Pork: the Other White Meat,” Politico reports.

The government is spending more than $150 million a week battling wildfires in the drought-stricken West, and that number "will likely grow in the days and weeks ahead, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Fires in Washington State have ranchers worried about losing animals and resources, according to the Spokesman Review in Spokane.

Organic food accounts for 7 percent of all food units recalled this year, compared to 2 percent in 2014, according to Stericycle, a company that handles recalls, reports the New York Times.

Over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told 150 farmers at the Iowa Corn Growers annual conference that federal regulatory malfeasance is destroying agriculture in California, reports the Des Moines Register.

At a USDA lab in Salinas, California, scientist Renee Eriksen is trying to create a drought-tolerant lettuce, says the Salinas Californian.

Some 15.8 percent of U.S. households say there were times in the past year when they were unable to buy food that they or their families needed, according to the anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center.

Regulations for use of drone aircraft "are significantly lagging the pace of innovation," says a Brookings Institution blog post. The writers point to reports of misuse of drones, from smuggling drugs to interfering with firefighters, and say that "we are living in the proverbial wild West."

The EPA began enforcing its clean-water rule in all states except the 13 that had sued to block it, The Hill​ reported.​