Operators of diversified farms will see more affordable rates for crop insurance under the new Whole Farm Revenue Protection policy, said USDA's Risk Management Agency.

Republican Pat Roberts, a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, faces an uphill struggle to win his fourth Senate term from Kansas, say two polls over the weekend.

The Agriculture Department is drafting a $1 a head beef checkoff program of its own that would run alongside the current $1 checkoff that is a lightning rod for complaints of favoritism.

At least one soybean exporter in Brazil has agreed to collect royalties for Monsanto, the giant seed company, from growers who plant biotech seeds that contain Monsanto's traits, said Reuters, citing industry sources.

Politico writes about the internecine scuffles among the nation's land grant universities and their think tanks for federal money to carry out analytical work.

The World Bank says international food prices fell by 6 percent over a four-month stretch and are the lowest in four years. Lower wheat prices drove the decline, says the bank's Food Price Watch.

Broiler chickens, destined for the dinner table, are four times bigger than half a century ago, says Vox, which summarizes a paper in Poultry Science with the headline "Chickens have gotten ridiculously large since the 1950s."

Americans are paying noticeably more for the three main ingredients of a bacon cheeseburger - ground chuck, cheese and bacon - than a year ago, says the largest U.S. farm group in a semi-annual market basket survey.

Republican Joni Ernst's folksiness seems to be paying off in the retail politics of Iowa, says the weekly political tip sheet Sabato's Crystal Ball, in rating the Senate race in the Hawkeye State as "leans Republican," vs the previous "Toss-up."

The Agriculture Department announced $118 million in grants for research and market-building for specialty crops - fruits, vegetables, horticulture, nuts and nursery crops.

Brazil agreed to end a decade-old World Trade Organization case against U.S. cotton subsidies and to a peace clause for the life of the 2014 farm law in exchange for $300 million and technical assistance for its cotton sector.

Food Policy Action, a two-year-old advocacy group, says conservative Rep Steve Southerland, who proposed the largest food stamp cuts in a generation, is its No 1 target for defeat in the November 4 elections.

The decades-old snack popcorn is being retooled for the age of "craft" foods, says the New York Times, noting that overall sales of popcorn are climbing; there are no reliable figures on growth of sales for artisanal popcorn.

Gov Jerry Brown signed a law that bans commercial production of genetically engineered salmon in California waters, says the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The state already barred spawning, incubation, or cultivation of transgenic salmon in the Pacific Ocean.

The consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest re-filed a petition that calls for USDA to classify four strains of antibiotic-resistant salmonella bacteria as a food adulterant.

Parts of the 2014 farm law "send a message to trading partners that U.S. agriculture is becoming more protectionist," writes UC-Davis economics professor Colin Carter in Choices, the journal of agricultural economics.

Oregonians probably would pay a penny, or less, a day if they pass a referendum to require labels on food made with genetically modified organisms, says a study commissioned by two groups who support the initiative.

In Brentwood, a "para-urban" community in Contra Costa County on the eastern outskirts of San Francisco, an amalgam of groups combines to keep 20,000 acres of farmland in production and out of subdivisions, office parks and strip malls, says Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats.