The rapidly moving Kincade fire destroyed the historic Soda Rock winery near Healdsburg in Northern California and "had Sonoma County wine country under siege," the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. "Structures in the famed wine country were burning, including some owned by wineries in the Alexander Valley." Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency as fires burned thousands of acres throughout the state.

Voters in the heart of California wine country, by a slim, 42-vote margin, would restrict the planting of new vineyards in order to protect oak trees and waterways, according to the unofficial results of a Napa County referendum.

The invasive European grapevine moth, detected in Napa County in 2009, has been eradicated in California, according to state, county and U.S. agricultural officials. The moth, native to southern Europe, spread to nine other counties before a multi-year campaign contained and then exterminated it.

“All is not well in wine country,” writes Stett Holbrook in FERN’s latest story, “Of Water and Wine,” published in Bohemian. As multi-million-dollar vineyards and $1,000-a-night resorts rise Napa Valley, California, residents are trying to stop the powerful wine industry from destroying the watershed.

Studies have repeatedly shown that federally subsidized crop insurance discourages farmers from updating their practices, tools, or strategies in ways that would help them adapt to climate change — but the federal government still subsidizes a whopping 62 percent of farmers’ insurance premiums.

With his wife and family seated behind him, Rep. Ryan Zinke faced the Senate Committee for Energy and Natural Resources yesterday during his confirmation hearing for secretary of the Interior. The Montana Republican told the committee that he was “absolutely against” the sale or transfer of public lands. But he reassured many of his fellow Republicans that under his watch states would have more say in the management of natural resources and wildlife within their borders.

South Africa to resume imports of U.S. bone-in chicken meat, "initially 65,000 tonnes a year, under an agreement reach by the two countries," said Reuters.

While the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership and U.S.-EU trade pacts get the headlines, the African Growth and Opportunity Act also is due for action this year.

Senators from two of the leading U.S. poultry-producing states are seeking leverage to force South Africa to drop its tariffs on imports of U.S. poultry meat, says the New York Times.

Honeybee keepers reported the loss of 105,240 colonies to colony collapse disorder during the early months of this year, a 76 percent increase from last year and the highest total since 2016, said the USDA on Monday.

There would be no almond industry without honeybees, and honeybees are struggling mightily to keep pace with the booming almond business, as FERN’s latest story, published with HuffPost, explains. The latest bit of bad news for bees came Wednesday, with the release of an annual survey of beekeepers that recorded winter losses of nearly 38 percent, the highest winter loss rate since the survey began 13 years ago.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Along with massive loss of honeybee colonies, the number of professional beekeepers is falling, says the Washington Post, although the number of managed bee colonies is on the rise.

Honeybee keepers will receive more than half of $40 million earmarked for the Emergency Assistance to Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-raised Fish Program (ELAP), said USDA.

Drought and high feed costs have driven ranchers to send cattle to slaughter instead of keeping them for breeding, Reuters reports, shrinking the U.S. beef herd to its smallest size since 1962. As a result, meatpackers are paying considerably more for the cows they turn into meat, which cuts into their profits.

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.

A study by a University of Guelph researcher, published in Global Change Biology, says wetlands are the likely source of a recent and surprising increase in emissions of methane.

Health Canada announced a three-year phase-out of subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, a step that parallels U.S. action.

As a result of the Supreme Court decision on the upstream reach of antipollution laws, half of the water in U.S. rivers comes from so-called ephemeral streams that are now without federal protection, said researchers from the University of Massachusetts and Yale on Thursday.

Researchers conducting the first broadscale test for so-called PFAS in private and public water supplies found the so-called forever chemicals in 45 percent of the nation’s tap water, said the U.S. Geological Survey on Wednesday. The agency said PFAS were far more likely to be detected in tap water in urban areas than in rural America.

Iowa is best known as the top corn-producing state in the nation, but a small and determined group of farmers is trying to chip away at that reputation by bringing back small grains like rye, oats, and triticale, Twilight Greenaway reports in FERN’s latest story, published in collaboration with Yale Environment 360.

The amount of U.S. acres in organic farmland increased 11 percent in 2016 from 2014 numbers to reach 4.1 million acres, says a report by the data-service company Mercaris. The individual number of organic farms also jumped in that period by 1,000, to 14,979. The increase is largely due to consumer demand and economics, Scott Shander, an economist at Mercaris, told Civil Eats.

With corn and soybean prices plummeting, and pressure to reduce runoff from fields mounting, some Iowa farmers are turning to oats as a possible solution to both problems, says Harvest Public Media.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a giant among trade groups, is beginning to bleed members, with Nestlé the latest foodmaker to pull out, says Politico. "Complacency and a lack of leadership" at GMA are a factor, along with the hurly-burly of competing for sales in an evolving marketplace, it says.

The FDA is assessing whether 26 ingredients count as fiber on nutrition facts labels. “If you're a nutrition-label reader, the list includes some familiar-ish sounding ingredients — such as inulin, which is often sourced from chicory root,” says NPR. “Other ingredients on the 'do-these-count-as-fiber?' list include gum acacia, bamboo fiber, retrograded corn starch, and — get ready for the tongue-twister — xylooligosaccharides. Some of these fibers are extracted from plant sources, while others are synthetic.”

The anti-GMO group Center for Food Safety filed suit against the USDA to force release of a study on the impact of using digital disclosures such as QR codes to identify foods made with GMO ingredients. "In the United States, there has never been a food labeling requirement met by QR codes," says the center, which prefers a written label on food packages.

President Trump's nominee for FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, says he might delay the debut of the updated Nutrition Facts label, now set for July 2018. For the first time, the label would list how many grams of sugar are added to foods during processing, said Food Navigator. Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts asked Gottlieb to consider a delay on grounds FDA has not finalized its "guidance" documents on dietary fiber and added sugar.

The USDA is prevented by statute from creating a subsidy program, potentially costing $1 billion a year, for cottonseed, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an essay in Farm Journal. Congress, he says, needs to change the law.

Low market prices will reduce cotton planting by 6 percent worldwide and result in the smallest harvest in six years, says the International Cotton Advisory Committee.