Researchers at the University of Buffalo say babies given foods high in sugar, fat and protein in their early months of life are more likely to eat less nutritious foods later in life.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is to make a keynote speech during a two-day visit to Purdue next week, said the university. Its president, Mitch Daniels, is to moderate the question-and-answer session that follows Vilsack's speech, which will be open to the public, on Monday.

Three states in the Great Plains - Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma - account for nearly half of crop insurance indemnities paid so far this year, say USDA data.

Rampant hunger is appearing in Liberia, one of the west African nations hit by ebola, says Mother Jones magazine. It cites a spot check by Mercy Corps, a charity, of three parts of the country heavily affected by the disease.

Serious drought cut yields sharply on as much as 15 percent of corn land in China, second to the United States as the world's top producer, says USDA. It estimates the harvest at 214 million tonnes, down 8 million tonnes from estimates made before the brunt of the dry weather was felt.

The Agriculture Department unveiled revisions in the Conservation Stewardship Program to reflect the directions of the 2014 farm law and invited public comments on its proposals.

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who expects to chair the Agriculture Committee beginning in January, told National Journal, "It is not productive at all to open up the farm bill."

The landslide passage of a 1 cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, such as sodas, energy drinks and sweetened teas, by votes in Berkeley, Calif, "was a big defeat for Big Soda and a big victory for...

Seed and chemical company Monsanto announced an agreement with soft white wheat growers to settle three class-action lawsuits that arose from the discovery that some of its experimental genetically engineered wheat was growing wild in eastern Oregon.

U.S. farm exports set back-to-back records, climbing to $152.5 billion in just-ended fiscal 2014, said the Agriculture Department, up 8 percent from the mark set one year earlier.

Rural Americans, often socially and fiscally conservative, tend to vote at higher rates for Republicans than the nation overall. This year, when the country leaned Republican, the rate went up in rural areas too, says the Daily Yonder.

The government will raise its estimates of the U.S. corn and soybean crops modestly when it issues its new forecasts for the record-setting fall harvest, say traders in two surveys.

The harvest-time prices for corn and soybeans are significantly below the prices projected last spring, so there is a possibility of payments under crop insurance policies that assure growers of a portion of average crop revenue, said economist Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois.

More than 40 percent of China's arable land suffers from degradation, such as the impact of erosion, fertility losses, climate change and pollution, according to the official news agency Xinhua, said Reuters.

Adding calcium oxide at a 1 percent blend rate to distillers dried grains (DDGs) makes it easier for cattle to digest the ethanol co-product, say Purdue researchers.

The Agriculture Department could ask for suggestions as early as this week on how to structure a new beef checkoff program, said an official at the largest U.S. farm group.

Growers in California harvested a record crop of tomatoes for processing, the thick-skinned varieties used in making soup and pasta sauces, says Bloomberg.