With the Trump era dawning, "the most pressing work is to join forces with other progressive groups" to fight for social justice, say four leaders of the loosely aligned food movement in a commentary published by Civil Eats. "This means that important but parochial food issues, such as labeling of GMOs or the formulation of national nutrititional standards, are bound to be overshadowed as the larger fight for social justice becomes more urgent."

In the State of the Union address in January, President Barack Obama "should announce an executive order establishing a national policy for food, health and well-being," write Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Richardo Salvador and Olivier De Schutter in an essay in the Washington Post.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, recounts the shortcomings of the food system in a commentary in Business Day, a South African newspaper: "(T)he ability of millions to...

Voters in California will decide on Nov. 8 whether to raise the state income tax on millionaires to pay for electric cars, charging stations and wildfire prevention programs. So-called Proposition 30 in California has strong support but the double-digit margin was eroding, according to a poll released early this month.

Mexican drug cartels, operating illegal marijuana farms on public lands, are polluting forests and saddling the federal government with millions of dollars in clean-up costs. Trespass marijuana farms are thought to number in the hundreds of thousands in California alone. The sites “wreak havoc on the land, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of pounds of garbage, leaching caustic chemicals, polluting watersheds, and damaging the habitat of endangered and at-risk species,” reports High Country News.

Driven by "diablo" winds, massive wildfires burned hundreds of buildings, including three wineries, and tens of thousands of acres in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties, reports the Wine Spectator. Dairy farms and produce growers with crops ripe for fall harvest also were in peril, "but moving farm animals is another story," said the San Francisco Chronicle.

For more than 40 years, the Emerald Triangle — "a densely forested region of labyrinthine back roads, secret valleys, and perennial creeks in Northern California" — has been a great place to grow a prohibited but highly desired product: marijuana. But this area is now coming under massive pressure with the state's legalization of recreational weed, reports Stett Holbrook in FERN’s latest story, published with GRIST, “The high price of cheap weed.”

Kansas farmers sharply scaled back winter wheat sowings because of low market prices, assuring a smaller crop this year than last. Now disease, snowfall, and freeze damage this spring are dragging prospects down even further.

Seven dozen crop scouts are to begin a hectic three-day motorized sprint across Kansas today, with the goal to sample roughly 500 fields and produce an estimate of the crop in the nation's No. 1 winter wheat state. Their estimate, expected at midday Thursday, will be the first in a shower of crop forecasts that will run through the fall harvest.

The annual inspection tour of the spring wheat crop in North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota and northern South Dakota concluded on Thursday with forecasts of a record yield in the region. Sponsored by the Wheat Quality Council, the four-day tour forecast a record yield of 49.9 bushels an acre, topping last year's 48.6 bushels, says Agweek.

Crop scouts set off today for the annual inspection tour of the winter wheat crop in Kansas, the No 1 grower. The tour provides a timely look at a crop that will be ready for harvest in a few weeks.

A bill to require USDA reports on the number of cattle being delivered under contract for slaughter by meatpackers will be called for a House vote on Tuesday. It will be debated under provisions that prohibit amendments and require a two-thirds majority for passage, an approach usually reserved for bills that are noncontroversial.

Payments totaling $270 million are being made to so-called contract producers to offset revenue lost to the pandemic in 2020, said the Agriculture Department on Thursday. Previous aid programs were directed at the owners of livestock but not the farmers who produced hogs, poultry, and eggs under contract to them.

The Democratic-controlled House passed a $2.2-trillion-coronavirus-relief bill without the support of House Agriculture chairman Collin Peterson and four other Democrats serving on the Agriculture Committee. They were among 18 Democrats who voted against the bill, which passed, 218-207; no Republicans voted for it.

On an 82-13 roll call, the Senate confirmed Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as the U.S. ambassador to China. The longest-serving governor in U.S. history has said he will push China, the No. 1 customer for U.S. ag exports, to admit American beef and to remove barriers to other U.S. farm exports.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, the Trump administration's nominee for U.S. ambassador to China, says he is assured that a change in the Renewable Fuels Standard sought by oil refiners "is not going to happen," reported Radio Iowa. But a White House official told Reuters the proposal was under review, although the administration took no position "either way on this issue at this time."

After meeting President-elect Donald Trump, Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a leading farm state, was noncommittal about taking a role in the incoming Republican administration. Branstad has been mentioned as potential U.S. ambassador to China and Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Des Moines on Thursday as part of his "thank you" to voters tour.

Eleven environmental, labor, and medical groups filed suit in a U.S. appeals court in California on Wednesday to ban use of the insecticide chlorpyrifos. It was the second time the groups have sought to force the EPA to ban the widely used organophosphate pesticide.

Experts from the 28 nations of the European Union "appear set to endorse a European Commission proposal to extend authorization of glyphosate for 15 years, until 2031," said Reuters.

The outlook for U.S. poultry producers for 2015 is strong, says Rabobank in a report on the industry around the world. Producers in the United States and Brazil "could benefit from ongoing bullish market conditions such as...

Farmers in the top corn, wheat, soybean, and hog states are twice as likely as farmers in smaller-volume states to use precision agriculture practices, such as GPS guidance, said the USDA’s farm computer report on Thursday. Usage often topped 50 percent in the top row-crop states, while the U.S. average was just 27 percent.

A California judge has extended his ban on enforcement of voter-approved Proposition 12 until July 1, to allow time for the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the animal welfare law. Justices heard arguments on the farm-group challenge of Prop 12 in October and a decision is expected by the end of June.

Some hog farmers plan to expand their operations with Proposition 12 in effect, said California agriculture officials in the "Planting Seeds" blog as the voter-approved law took effect over the weekend. "Additionally, we believe there is sufficient product already in the supply chain to carry through for a number of months."

The most popular way to eradicate wild hogs is to shoot them, whether on gaming ranches, in the wild or from the door of a helicopter. But hunting has done little to stem the estimated 6-9 million hogs running wild across at least 42 states and three territories, as Stephen R. Miller writes in FERN's latest story, produced in collaboration with National Geographic.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Utah wildlife officials reported a mallard duck was the third waterfowl in the state with avian influenza since December, said the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled that an Idaho law that bans secret filming of animal abuse on farms is unconstitutional, said the Associated Press.

With plantings on the decline and fewer farmworkers available, two mechanical harvesters are being tested on the chile pepper crop in New Mexico, says the Associated Press.

U.S. Judge Stephanie Rose dismissed charges against a Chinese woman, Mo Yun, accused of conspiring to steal trade secrets from U.S. seed companies, said the Associated Press.

The commonly used estimates of global wheat stocks are imperfect — some countries don’t publish data at all — but they indicate supplies, disrupted by the war in Ukraine, are the tightest since the food price crisis of 2007/08, said a blog by the IFPRI think tank.

With their 2022 crop fetching the highest season-average price on record, wheat farmers sowed 36.95 million acres of winter wheat for harvest this spring and summer — the largest total in seven years, said the Agriculture Department on Thursday.