Row-crop cultivators are being put to work because of the emergence of herbicide-resistant "super weeds," says DTN, "something of a renaissance" for mechanical weed control. Cultivators went into decline with adoption of limited-tillage and herbicides.

Fish farmers will need to double production of finfish and shellfish by 2050 to meet projected demand for fish, says a report by the World Resources Institute.

For many people, burning sunlight is the symbol of drought. In a Progressive Farmer story, it is powder-dry soil and wind that are ever-present for farmers and ranchers in southeastern Colorado.

Hog farmers are obliged to report outbreaks of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus and work with offiicials to combat the disease and prevent its spread, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at the World Pork Expo.

Thanks to forecasts of large harvests, global grain supplies will rise again this year, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Farm and baking industry groups in Canada, Australia and the United States, who account for 45 percent of world wheat exports, called for commercialization of genetically engineered wheat.

Signup will open on Monday for the "continuous" enrollment option for the Conservation Reserve but there will be no general enrollment this year, said an Agriculture Department statement.

At a "Made in Rural America" forum, the administration unveiled a Web portal for rural businesses interested in the export market.

A lot of wheat in western Kansas has has been "zeroed out for insurance purposes, and a lot more will be," says the chief of the Kansas State University ag experiment station south of Hays in northwest Kansas.

The agriculture sector should broaden its coalitions so it can land more research money, said Dan Glickman, former agriculture secretary, in a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The main cause of declines in the monarch butterfly population is loss of habitat in breeding grounds in North America, particularly the U.S. Corn Belt, says research by the University of Guelph.

The government "has no clear idea" how Porcine Epidemic Virus entered the United States a year ago, Reuters says. The virus, with a high mortality rate for newborn pigs, has killed 10 percent of the U.S. hog herd and helped push pork prices to high levels.

Half of the forest species - trees, shrubs, palms and bamboo - routinely used by countries around the world are threatened by climate change, over-exploitation and encroachment by pastures and farmland, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Two senators unveiled a bill that would remove two long-standing rules for U.S. food aid - that almost all the food be U.S.-grown and U.S.-flag vessels carry half of the donated food.

The owners of Quality Egg, based in northwest Iowa, pleaded guilty to charges related to a massive salmonella outbreak in 2010 in which thousands of people fell ill and 550 million eggs were recalled, says USA Today.

A soil microbe that inhibits the rice blast fungus, which destroys an estimated 30 percent of the world's rice crop, was identified by researchers from the University of Delaware and University of California-Davis, according to an announcement.

"Brazil is likely to receive $400 million from the United States as part of an agreement to compensate the South American country" in the decade-old cotton subsidy dispute, says Agro-South.

That's the headline on a feature story about prize-winning Modern Farmer, the "rurban" digital magazine, in Capital New York.

The two largest U.S. farm groups hold widely divergent views on the EPA proposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent in coming years.

In a nationwide survey, farm lenders "are not as optimistic as they were in the fall of 2013," say Kansas State University economist.