More than 60 percent of Iowas live in the city, yet the state is commonly pictured as a land of farms, dotted with small, industrial cities.

Unemployment rates in the Plains state are lower than the U.S. average during the continued slow recovery from recession, says the Daily Yonder, which summarizes a USDA report on the matter.

Mobile phones - and other types of communication technology - can be a powerful way to improve the welfare of the rural poor, writes Maximo Torero of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The corn and soybean harvest is running far behind normal, says the weekly Crop Progress report. Some 31 percent of the corn crop and 53 percent of the soybean crop was in the bin at the start of this week.

Research into mice infected with salmonella, a bacteria often the cause of food-borne illness, poses "ominous questions about the widespread, routine use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics in livestock," says the Stanford Medical School.

The Spanish energy company Abengoa opened the world's largest cellulosic refinery in Hugoton, about 90 miles southwest of Dodge City, Kansas, said Biofuels Digest.

Cornell, Purdue, North Carolina and Colorado State universities will establish research centers on nutrition education and obesity prevention with $3.4 million in funding from the Agriculture Department.

A combined $9.1 is being spent to defeat referendums in Berkeley and San Francisco on taxing sugar-sweetened beverages, 18 times more than the $489,000 proponents have gathered, according to published reports.

As many as 2 million rural Californians rely on household wells for their water, says NPR. "Some of those people are among the hardest hit by the state's severe drought, as wells across the state's Central Valley farm belt start to go dry."

The Japanese government tries an experiment in mountainous rural Japan to re-populate a farming town, says the Washington Post.

Kansas Sen Pat Roberts, during a campaign stop at a livestock auction barn, told listeners, “When we get a Republican majority, I’ll be chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and we are gonna put the livestock producer first."

The World Trade Organization ruling on U.S. meat-origin labels could be public in "weeks, if not days" in the words of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, says Feedstuffs.

The practice of coating soybean seed with neonicotinoid pesticides as a safeguard against insect damage provides "negligible overall benefits to soybean production in most situations," says an EPA analysis.

By a small margin, Oregon voters favor a state law requiring labels on food containing genetically modified organisms, based on a survey of 516 likely voters, says the Blue Mountain Eagle in John Day, Oregon.

Soybeans will sell for less than $10 a bushel, on average, at the farm gate for three years in a row, projected a University of Missouri think tank, because another large crop is likely to follow this year's record-setting harvest.

Farmers modernized their tractors and combines during the agricultural boom that started in 2006, says analyst David Widmar at the blog Agricultural Economic Insights.

If there are artisanal butchers, there ought to be tasty, locally made meat alternatives, writes Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats, pointing to surveys that show sizable interest in the products.

The two biggest agricultural cooperatives in the country are based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but there's no question who is No 1. It's CHS, a grain handler, farm supplier and energy producer, best known in the Plains and upper Midwest.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 70 other members of Congress, mostly Democrats, got perfect grades from advocacy group Food Policy Action for their votes on food and agriculture issues over the past two years.

"Sen Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas may be making a comeback after having been left for dead on the battlefield," says the political newsletter Sabato's Crystal Ball, which now lists the Senate race as a toss-up vs the previous "Leans Independent."