Congress has voted repeatedly to constrain spending under the Conservation Stewardship Program, created to pay farmers to make soil and water conservation a part of their daily operations. University of Illinois associate professor Jonathan Coppess, writing at the farmdoc daily blog, said the "incredible shrinking of CSP ... may also serve as a warning" about stewardship funding in the 2023 farm bill.

If Congress follows the farm bill recommendations of the Conservation Coalition, it would revive a $5-an-acre discount on crop insurance premiums for farmers who plant cover crops. The coalition, an alliance of farm, land stewardship, and environmental groups, also said on Wednesday that the 2023 farm bill should raise the enrollment cap for the land-idling Conservation Reserve.

The Biden administration appointed Gloria Montano Greene and Zach Ducheneaux as top officials overseeing the USDA's farm subsidy and land stewardship programs, effective Monday.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley feigned shock on Thursday that House and Senate negotiators did not want his farm subsidy reform in the final version of the five-year farm bill. “Surprise, surprise, surprise,” he said scornfully.

Photographer Glenn Charles made 40 stops on a 16-day bicycle trip from Bridgeport, Conn, to Portland, Me, to follow fresh food from the field to the table.

Vermont state senators passed, 28-2, a bill to require labels on foods made with genetically modified organisms and sold at retail - one of the final steps toward the first such state law.

The Vermont state Senate voted 26-2 for a bill that requires labels on food made with genetically modified ingredients from July 2016.

The governors of Connecticut and New York state say they will put more money into a program that helps poor people pay utility bills so they won't see a reduction in food stamp benefits.

Half a century after the 1965 grape strike, Cesar Chavez is the most familiar face of the farmworker movement, says KQED in a story by Lisa Morehouse that calls attention to the pivotal role of Filipino-Americans, led by Larry Itliong, who actually started the strike in Delano, in the Central Valley.

Jutta Thoerner is an outspoken advocate of the age-old practice of dry-farming - relying only on rain water, California's four-year drought notwithstanding, says public broadcaster KQED.

Two co-founders of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC-Davis "calculate that the chances of another winter with below-average precipitation to be nearly three in four" for California, says the science blog at KQED in San Francisco.

Since the Great Depression, there have been fewer and fewer U.S. farms, thanks to mechanization, hybrid crops and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that have boosted productivity and allowed each farmer to cover more acres. A side effect, says Harvest Public Media, is the draining of the rural population and the drop in demand for services of all sorts - schools, health care, food or equipment - in the small towns across the countryside.

For wheat farmers in western Kansas, the heavy snow and freezing temperatures that recently swept through their region were a one-two punch that flattened a promising crop.

This spring the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza epidemic tore through poultry farms across 15 U.S. states, leading to the death of 48 million birds. The bulk of those were egg-laying hens, though turkey production was affected, too.

The giant Brazilian meatpacker JBS, a relative newcomer to North America, will buy the pork operations of agribusiness rival Cargill for $1.45 billion, the companies announced.

When it comes to transparency on the source of fruits and vegetables, "Only country of origin need be shared," writes Elizabeth Grossman in Mother Jones in an article prompted by her attempt to trace-back the Mexican-grown mango that she bought in a Portland, Ore, grocery store. Retailers are required under a 2009 law to display the country of origin of its produce. As Grossman learned, produce distributors regard the names of their growers and packers as confidential business information and there is no legal obligation to share them with the public.

Many poor neighborhoods are close to a supermarket - 86 pct are within a mile, says Tufts associate professor Parke Wilde in his U.S. Food Policy blog. That's a shorter distance than commonly thought and a shorter trip than faces higher-income people, according to research by Wilde and colleagues.

Mexico might review, and potentially remove, its ban on imports of genetically modified white corn following its presidential election on June 2, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Sunday. "That would be my hope," said Vilsack. The new president, likely to be a woman for the first time, would take office on Oct. 1.

Mexico has failed to satisfy the "grave concerns" of the United States over a potential ban on imports of U.S.-grown GMO corn said trade officials after negotiations in Mexico City on Monday. "We made it clear today that if this issue is not resolved, we will consider all options, including taking formal steps to enforce our rights under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.”

For years, complaints about hog pollution in North Carolina disappeared after they were filed with state authorities, FERN's latest story with The Guardian and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting says. But as a result of a settlement with environmental justice groups, the state this year began posting complaints online – exceeding in six months the number of complaints in the prior decade.

A spike in the number of large-scale animal farms and resulting manure production in the Maumee watershed is contributing to algae blooms in Lake Erie, a new report finds. The authors write that over half of the manure contributing to water pollution comes from farms that don't require permits or regulatory oversight.