House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson acknowledged on Monday that time is tight for enactment of the new farm bill by Sept. 30, when current law expires. But he stuck to his frequent forecast of a bipartisan and bicameral bill "on time," which might mean a floor vote in the House.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources on Thursday killed a proposal by a Norwegian-backed company to build two massive salmon farms in the middle of pristine Frenchman Bay, next to Acadia National Park. The decision ended a long-running saga that had generated considerable opposition in the community over fears that the farms would foul the water and ruin the local fishing and shellfish industries.

Voters in Maine approved a constitutional amendment establishing a right to food in a landslide on Tuesday, despite disagreement over what it would mean, according to unofficial results. The amendment, the first such constitutional guarantee in the nation, was ahead by a 3-to-2 margin with votes counted in 507 of 571 precincts statewide.

Global food company Danone has given a year's notice to 79 organic dairy farms in the Northeast that it will stop buying their milk on Aug. 31, 2022. The decision is just the latest squeeze on organic dairy producers, who face rising costs and pressures to consolidate.

With five major U.S. food companies saying they will label their products for GMO ingredients, Gary Ruskin, the co-director of U.S. Right to Know, says the food-industry coalition against labeling "is fracturing."

Lawmakers from the Plains and Midwest filed companion bills in the House and Senate to discourage farmers from converting native sod into cropland nationwide by closing a crop insurance loophole. The legislation would require a reduction of crop-insurance subsidies for four years before producers could qualify for them.

For the fifth week in a row, drought has expanded in the winter wheat-growing central and southern U.S. Plains, says USDA's Ag in Drought website. Some 26 percent of winter wheat land is moderate to severe drought, up 2 percentage points in a week.

Months after removing the lesser prairie chicken from its list of threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will "reconsider the status of a grouse found in pockets across the Great Plains," said the Associated Press. The agency agreed to conduct the review after environmentalists filed a petition that argued that emergency protection is needed for the lesser prairie chicken.

The average value of farmland including all land and buildings dipped $10 to $3,010 per acre acre in 2016 from a year earlier, the first such decline in the U.S. since the recession of 2009, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service reported in its annual Land Values Summary. Land values have been pressured by booming harvests and falling crop prices.

"In fewer than 100 years, seed-saving, a practice that had always been essential to human survival, went from mainstream to something most of us are barely aware of, something happening at the fringes of our food culture — small farms, Native communities, survivalists," write Kea Krause, in FERN's latest story, published with Orion Magazine. <strong>No paywall</strong>

The global seed bank built into an Arctic mountainside has approved the first withdrawal from its vaults, to help a research agency displaced by civil war in Syria, says Reuters.

There are about 1,750 seed banks around the world "that collect, store, regenerate and distribute crop varieties and their ancestors in perpetuity," says Ensia. There are literally millions of accessions.

As predicted, the low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than average this year, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday. At 6,705 square miles — or roughly the size of New Jersey — this year’s dead zone is more than three times the size of the target set for 2035.

The fish-killing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico this summer is the third-smallest in 34 years of surveys, reported scientists. At 2,116 square miles, the hypoxic region is about one-third the size of the forecast of 6,700 square miles.

The fish-killing “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico this summer covers 6,952 square miles, midway in size between Connecticut and New Jersey, said researchers on Thursday. It is the eighth-largest dead zone in 33 years of keeping records.

As sea levels rise and the land subsides, America's first colonial farms—350-year-old tracts along Maryland's eastern shore—are being inundated with saltwater, threatening the corn and soybean crops while salt-tolerant plants grow six feet tall, reports FERN's latest story, published with The Atlantic.

Corn and soybean growers in the Midwest face nearly $480 an acre in fixed costs and land rent going into the planting season, and hundreds of dollars more in per-acre expenses for the so-called variable costs of producing a crop, says economist Brent Gloy.

Around the world, people are drinking less orange juice, with consumption down one-fifth in the past decade to roughly 1.9 million tonnes this year. Production, dominated by Brazil and the United States, peaked five years ago and has generally declined since.

Undocumented immigrants have become cautious of seeking food aid in the Trump era because of fears they could be targeted for deportation, said a panel of food security experts last week in San Francisco.

Alex Jones, the right-wing host of the radio show InfoWars, says he was wrong to link the Greek yogurt company Chobani LLC and its owner, Hamdi Ulukaya, to a 2016 child-sex-abuse scandal and a rise in tuberculosis cases in Twin Falls, Idaho, where the company is located.

In the last several weeks, health workers in Immokalee, Florida, the nation’s tomato-growing capital, have detected an alarming spike in Covid-19 cases: an average of 24 new positives a day, reports Elizabeth Royte in FERN's latest story. (No paywall)

Like firefighters and police officers, farmworkers have been deemed “critical infrastructure workers,” meaning they will stay on the job even as the pandemic grows. But despite their essential status and a persistent outcry from their advocates, many of their employers, as well as state and federal agencies, have so far failed to address their heightened risk, reports Esther Honig in FERN's latest story.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

In a first for the dairy industry, the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has signed an agreement to eventually buy all of its milk from Vermont dairies that uphold rigorous standards for treatment and pay of employees. The standards, known as Milk with Dignity, were devised by the workers themselves and based on the Fair Food Program established by tomato workers in Florida under the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).

The nation’s largest produce industry groups have pledged to work together to improve farm labor conditions, in what could be the most significant step in the movement yet, says the Los Angeles Times. The Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association, which together represent thousands of retailers, growers and distributors, say they are considering an audit-based approach to improving working conditions, similar to that used by the apparel and electronics industries.

More than a third of migrant fishermen working in Thailand over the past five years have been victims of trafficking, and three-quarters of them have been in “debt bondage, working to pay off an obligation,” said Reuters, citing a new study by the anti-trafficking group International Justice Mission.

Fish species could shrink in size by as much as 30 percent thanks to climate change, says a study in the journal Global Change Biology. “Fish, as cold-blooded animals, cannot regulate their own body temperatures. When ocean waters become warmer, a fish’s metabolism accelerates, and it needs more oxygen to sustain its body functions,” says Nexus Media.

As two-thirds of marine species off the Northeast coast adjust their range due to rising ocean temperatures, fishermen are frustrated by outdated catch regulations, says The New York Times. “Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring and monkfish, to name just a few species, have all moved to accommodate changing temperatures,” says the Times.

California is cracking down on illegal fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs) with a new ticketing system, says the LA Times. Previously, fishing in an MPA was considered a misdemeanor and subject to a large fine, which made authorities hesitant to approach someone who may not have even realized they were fishing in an off-limits zone. Now, game wardens hand out tickets worth a few hundred dollars that are payable in local traffic court, says the Times.

During the Obama administration, Tom Vilsack presided over a USDA that promised to tackle concentration in the agribusiness industry. But after eight years, critics say, there was little evidence of reform. And that has led many to wonder whether there will be any meaningful changes during Vilsack's current tenure as secretary of agriculture, according to FERN's latest story, written by Clint Rainey. <strong> (No paywall) </strong>

The field of lab-grown meat is "dynamic," "complex" and "evolving," said FDA leaders in declaring the agency, which regulates most of the food supply, has the technical expertise and the statutory authority to regulate so-called clean meat. The cattle industry protested that the USDA is in charge of meat safety.