The two largest public-lands agencies in the United States, the Interior and Agriculture departments, “signed a memorandum emphasizing cooperation among federal, state, tribal and local agencies in battling wildfires as the main part of the wildfire season arrives,” said The Associated Press. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue signed the memorandum following a briefing at the interagency fire command center in Boise, Idaho.

The Agriculture Department said it will award $8 million "to help school nutrition professionals better prepare healthy meals for their students."

The Agriculture and Interior departments unveiled an eco-system-wide program to enhance habitat for threatened and endangered species in the U.S. Southwest.

U.S. sugarcane growers will be unable to provide enough sugar to meet demand from food and beverage makers, so the USDA raised the import quota for cane sugar 15 percent for the year ending on Sept. 30.

At the same time sugar cane production ends in Hawaii, the USDA forecasts a record harvest next year of sugar beets, grown in the upper Midwest and the West and the dominant U.S. source of sugar, reported Reuters. "The estimate indicates that beet farmers are remaining resolute even as food manufacturers shun GMO crops like their beet sugar."

In Boulder County, Colorado, county commissioners are slated to decide whether to ban GMO crops on publically-owned land, reports Harvest Public Media.

America's thousands of confinement livestock operations pollute the air every day with chemicals like ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. Yet no one tracks exactly how much air pollution these farms produce, according to FERN's latest story, published with The Nation.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

North Carolina has been grappling for years with the enormous quantity of waste produced by its hog farms. But the state has more than twice as many poultry farms, and the state must consider the impact of poultry waste when thinking about how to regulate the agriculture industry, says a new report from the Environmental Working Group.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will head the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration, said President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” said Trump in announcing the nomination.

The FDA lacked or had inadequate policies in place to identify risks to the infant formula supply chain when it received complaints about production at a plant in Sturgis, Michigan, said an inspector general’s report on Thursday. Months passed before the FDA warned consumers in February 2022 not to use some of the products made at the Abbott Laboratories plant, leading to a formula shortage.

President Biden signed a stop-gap government funding bill over the weekend that calls for speedy payment of $10 billion to farmers to buffer lower commodity prices and high production costs. Congress voted to fund the government through March 14 after a fight that showed the limits of President-elect Trump's control over Republican lawmakers.

Pointing to war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East, the Biden administration announced an emergency waiver allowing summertime sale nationwide of E15, a higher blend of ethanol into gasoline than the traditional 10 percent.

Soybean plantings would have to increase nearly 50 percent if soybean oil became the only feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), said two analysts from UC-Davis. With its higher yields per acre, corn ethanol as the sole feedstock would result in an increase in area of around 9 percent.

The board of the largely agricutlural Westlands Water District voted 7-1 against taking part in Gov. Jerry Brown's twin-tunnel project "to remake the fragile estuary that serves as the hub of California's water delivery network," reports the Sacramento Bee. The decision, by the first water agency to vote on the project, is "a potentially fatal blow" to the $17-billion project.

An audit by the Interior Department's inspector general says the government improperly spent $84 million to help plan the mammoth twin-tunnel project to ship water to Southern California from northern parts of the state, reported The Associated Press. The audit said the expenditures meant the Bureau of Reclamation paid for one-third of the cost of project planning through 2016, when California water districts were supposed to bear the costs.

At least 57 groups, ranging from local governments to crab boat owners, filed suit against the mammoth twin-tunnel project in the Sacramento River delta, using "one of the most powerful legal weapons found in any courtroom — the California Environmental Quality Act," reports the Sacramento Bee. "History suggests that suing under the California environmental law won't be enough to kill the tunnels."

Colorado native David Bernhardt won Senate confirmation as deputy Interior secretary, the No. 2 job at the department, on a mostly party-line vote, reported the Denver Post. A high-ranking Interior official in the past and most recently part of a law-and-lobbying firm in Denver, Bernhardt was described by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a walking conflict of interest.

The USDA needs to step in to help sheep ranchers in the West following the bankruptcy of the second-largest U.S. sheep processor, said leaders of the House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.

Last year, the USDA’s Wildlife Services killed 76,859 coyotes, in large part to protect livestock, especially sheep and calves. But killing coyotes may actually make the problem worse, says New Food Economy.

The Forest Service is wading through public comments on its proposal to continue to allow ranchers to graze up to 5,600 sheep in the largest wilderness area in Colorado, which is three-quarters of the size of Rhode Island, says The Associated Press. Despite hopes that a decision on the year-old proposal would be announced this winter, it could be months before that happens, according to a Forest Service spokeswoman.

As the gray wolf population rises in the West, "states are trying to walk the line between the ranchers, who view the animals as an economic and physical menace, and environmentalists, who see their reintroduction as a success story," says a Stateline story reprinted by Route Fifty. The issue is drawn most starkly in Washington State, which allotted $3.3 million and invested thousands of hours of staff time in wolf management.

Blood samples from five healthcare workers in Missouri will be tested for exposure to the avian flu virus, said the Centers for Disease Control in a weekly update on bird flu. The workers developed mild respiratory symptoms while involved in treatment of a patient infected with the H5N1 virus but who had no known contact with animals.

California and Wisconsin still dominate U.S. milk production, accounting for one-third of total output, but the dairy industry went through a substantial restructuring in the past 20 years, said USDA analysts.

A new partnership between the USDA and 31 states will “help lower food costs for American families while also giving farmers and ranchers more and better options,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the White House on Wednesday.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has vaulted into the top tier of Democrats under consideration by the Hillary Clinton campaign for nomination as vice president, said Politico. The Hagstrom Report, meanwhile, cited a source close to the Clinton campaign as saying Vilsack was under serious consideration.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is likely to campaign with her choice for vice president in Florida on Saturday, said the New York Times, listing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack among the four men still under consideration for the job. Former president Bill Clinton "has privately expressed his support for Sen. Tim Kaine," said the newspaper.

It's the political murmur with legs — the idea of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack as running mate for Hillary Clinton, the presumption Democratic nominee for president. In the latest whisper, Vilsack is among 21 vice-presidential "possibilities," including two other members of the Obama cabinet, listed by the political website Sabato's Crystal Ball.