The world has added 398 million harvested acres of food grains, feed grains, and oilseeds since the start of the 21st century, mostly in tropical nations, said four analysts writing at the farmdoc daily blog. “Only with significant changes in its production technology” would U.S. agriculture, accustomed to being a world leader in row crops, benefit from this expansion, they said.

With new leaders in office, Brazil and Colombia dramatically reduced their loss of mature tropical forest in 2023, said Global Forest Watch in an annual report on Thursday. Nonetheless, the world’s tropics lost 3.7 million hectares (more than 14,000 square miles) of primary forest. Losses have run at 3 to 4 million hectares annually for the past two decades.

The only tropical rainforest in the United States is El Yunque National Forest, on the northeastern corner of Puerto Rico and one of the tourist attractions of the island. "Hurricane Maria was like a shock to the system...The whole forest is completely defoliated," Grizell Gonzalez of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry told the New York Times.

Six indigenous farmers were brutally killed in Peru by land traffickers trying to make way for a palm oil plantation, adding to the more than 120 environmental and land defenders who have been murdered around the world in 2017 alone.

There are 161 fewer U.S. aquaculture farms than earlier this decade but their sales are up more than 10 percent, to $1.5 billion, according to USDA's Census of Agriculture. The 2,932 farms had average sales of roughly $517,000 apiece. Those farms occupy a combined 484,000 acres, or 756 square miles, divided nearly equally between freshwater and saltwater production.

With salmon prices rising around the world, Japan and Norway are using state-of-the-art technology for two huge offshore aquaculture projects in a effort to boost salmon supply while avoiding the problems that plague coastal fish farms, reports Japan Times.  

A Commerce Department agency has authorized up to 20 permits for deep-water aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico that eventually could double the finfish output of the gulf. Fish farming in the ocean would help satisfy the growing world appetite for seafood, but it also is a formidable challenge, writes Virginia Gewin. The story, produced in partnership with FERN, was published in Ensia.

U.S. fish farms are producing only one-quarter as many catfish this year as they did when the industry peaked in 2002, according to USDA data. The decline has been blamed on higher feed costs, a change in consumer tastes, and imports from Asia.

Ukrainian scientists say soil samples from the Kharkiv region show that “high concentrations of toxins such as mercury and arsenic from munitions and fuel are polluting the ground,” according to a Reuters report.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine drove food prices to record levels during 2022 and the Food Price Index remains elevated after a nine-month decline, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

More than 300 companies, including Monsanto and Unilever, called on President-elect Donald Trump, President Obama and Congress to continue U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, reports NPR. The international treaty commits countries to lowering global climate emissions and keeping world temperature increases below two degrees beyond the pre-industrial standard.

Whole Foods and Starbucks are opening locations in Chicago’s crime-ridden Englewood neighborhood as part of a $20-million project to bring better services and products to the area. “The typically upscale Whole Foods will occupy an 18,000-square-foot store in the newly constructed Englewood Square shopping complex during a notably violent year in the neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest — it served as the setting for Spike Lee’s controversial “Chiraq” movie, and median household income is under $20,000, according to Census data,” says MarketWatch.

Five months after the New World screwworm was detected in the United States for the first time in more than 30 years, the pest, a maggot that kills animals by eating their flesh, has been eradicated, said USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. No new cases have been reported since Jan. 10 in Florida.

Federal and state officials are watching for further signs of New World screwworm, a maggot that kills animals by feeding on their flesh, after the pest was found in wounds on a stray dog near Homestead, in Miami-Dade County in southern Florida. "This is the first confirmed case on Florida's mainland," said USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

USDA's biotechnology regulators say that two genetically engineered potato varieties from J.R. Simplot, developer of the first GE potato to resist bruising, can be grown safely and do not need federal regulation.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are in the early stages of an experiment to farm seaweed for biofuel in the Pacific Ocean. Kelp can grow two to three feet a day without fertilizer, pesticides, fresh water, or arable land — making it an ideal product for the biofuel industry.

Applicants are asking Alaska's Department of Natural Resources for permission to begin hundreds of acres of kelp farming on the state's tidelands, reports Alaska Public Media. Last year, the state got requests to lease around 18 acres for various types of mariculture; this year, kelp farming would occupy two-thirds of the 1,000 acres of lease requests.

Two months after an advisory board voted to deny organic certification to aeroponic agriculture, the USDA said aeroponic crops remain eligible for the organic seal. "USDA will consider this [advisory] recommendation; aeroponics remains allowed during this review," said the Agricultural Marketing Service in a bulletin to organic growers.

At its three-day spring meeting in Denver, the National Organic Standards Board delayed, until fall at the earliest, a decision on whether hydroponic crops should be classified as organic production, said The Packer magazine. As a result, "hydroponics will be considered organic for a while longer," as they have for 15 years.

Two small startups "with a starkly different vision of how to grow produce year-around, under uniquely Alaskan conditions," hope to reap profits, along with vegetables, in a state where the food chain is long and prices are high, says the New York Times.

A team of engineers is testing the practicality of growing food crops in small, inflatable greenhouses in the ocean.

A controversial new study, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, found that, over an eight-year period, cars fueled by corn ethanol would have caused more carbon pollution than using gasoline, reports Climate Central.

A federal grand jury indicted four poultry industry executives on a charge of conspiring to fix prices and rig bids for broiler chickens, announced the Justice Department on Wednesday. The charges were the first in "an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price-fixing, bid rigging, and other anticompetitive conduct in the broiler chicken industry," it said.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf said Tuesday that he has taken a closer look at the FDA food program and concluded that "fundamental questions about the structure, function, funding and leadership need to be addressed." The statement comes as criticism of the agency, spurred by the recent shortage of infant formula, has mounted.

The Republican-controlled Senate put President Trump's stamp on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the futures markets, by approving his choice for CFTC chairman and two of his nominees for the five-member board. The nominations were approved by unanimous consent and give the CFTC board a majority for the first time in months.