U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson issued a preliminary injunction against the EPA's so-called Waters of the United States rule one day before it was due to take effect, reports Agri-Pulse.

Researchers say global climate change added 8 to 27 percent of the severity of the ongoing drought in California, said the Los Angeles Times, citing a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The veterinary pharmaceutical industry strongly opposes an FDA proposal to collect more details about antibiotic use in livestock, said Agri-Pulse.

The massive algae bloom plaguing Lake Erie again this summer is now turning away anglers, says the Detroit Free Press.

The Agriculture Department announced a four-year plan to nearly double, to 8 million acres, conservation projects in 11 states in the West to improve habitat for the greater sage-grouse.

The USDA announced on Friday that it had approved a second genetically engineered (GE) potato variety developed by the J.R. Simplot Company, an important step in bringing the potato to market.

As sales of non-GMO foods zoom, competitors are watching, says the NPR blog The Salt. "The demand for these foods falls under what the industry calls the 'health halo,' the perception that a food is healthy," even if they might not be.

Economic turmoil in China, the world's largest importer of rice and soybeans, could dampen world trade in feedstuffs and soybeans, said the International Grains Council.

One-third of U.S. consumers tried a new cuisine in the past year and two-thirds eat a wider variety of ethnic foods than they did five years ago, says a survey by the National Restaurant Association.

As the USDA prepares to announce another near-record harvest, farmers in the upper Midwest can breathe a sigh of relief that plenty of train cars will be available to ship their grains to market, says the Associated Press.

In a column in the New England Journal of Medicine, two scientists called for a new U.S. safety assessment of glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, said Reuters.

Some farmers in central Illinois turned to hand hoeing of soybean fields to get rid of weeds that herbicides don't kill, says DTN's Pam Smith.

The World Bank has reduced by $20 million its annual funding for a global agricultural research network that it helped found 35 years ago, says the Hagstrom Report.

Subsidy payments under the new Agricultural Risk Coverage program will vary by as much as $90 an acre among counties in the same state for 2014 crops, said economists Carl Zulauf of Ohio State and Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois.

A study by an Iowa consulting company estimates the state economy lost $1.2 billion due to the avian influenza epidemic, reports the Des Moines Register.

An early review of the penny-per-ounce soda tax in Berkeley, California, approved by voters last year, says that it has not raised soda prices as much as expected, says Civil Eats. In fact, prices rose by less than half of the expected amount and for some drinks, less than a quarter.

Texas lost nearly two livestock auction markets a year over the past four decades, according to a study by Texas A&M economists.

A new law in France requires supermarkets to donate unsold food to charity rather than destroy it, says the BBC.