A new Interior Department rule allowing conservation leases on public land "is flatly inconsistent" with federal land management laws, said a dozen farming, petroleum, mining, electric power, and timber groups in a lawsuit filed in U.S. district court in Wyoming. The lawsuit is one of the first to be filed against a federal regulation since the Supreme Court decision in late June that reduced the leeway given to agencies to interpret the law.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Truthdig, reporter Christopher Ketcham unpacks the extensive human and environmental costs of hydroelectricity, even as government regulators, environmental journalists, climate academics, and green-grid design wizards celebrate it as a key piece of our sustainable energy strategy.

The Biden administration removed federal protection from an estimated half of U.S. wetlands in a regulation unveiled a week ago to comply with the Supreme Court decision shrinking the upstream reach of water pollution laws. But agricultural and construction groups said the regulation was "legally vulnerable" because the administration, in their view, did not fully carry out the ruling.

The EPA failed to take environmental and public health risks into account when it reapproved two brand-name weedkillers produced by Corteva that contain the herbicide 2,4-D, according to a federal lawsuit that challenges the 2022 decision. The plaintiffs asked the U.S. district court in Washington, D.C., to vacate the registrations of Enlist One and Enlist Duo and to halt sales of the products while the EPA reconsiders their risks.

Brazil, one of the world's most populous nations, has joined neighboring Argentina in approval of the cultivation and sale of wheat that is genetically modified to resist drought — another milestone in the campaign to apply biotechnology to food directly consumed as part of the human diet.

A simulation by Texas A&M scientists indicates that winter wheat is a feasible cover crop for cotton growers in the arid Plains, says one of the researchers.

Researchers at Purdue say genetically engineering plants to produce high levels of the protein PYL9 can dramatically improve drought tolerance in rice.

"Around the world, researchers are working to create genetically modified crop varieties that can withstand severe drought, expected more often with climate change, or thrive on arid lands now considered unsuitable for farming," writes Matt Weiser for Ensia.

Emergency food providers, such as food banks and school meal programs, will receive an additional $1.9 billion for the purchase of U.S.-grown foods, said the Agriculture Department on Wednesday.

More than 53 million Americans turned to food banks, pantries, and meal programs last year, one-third more than before the pandemic, said Feeding America, a network of food banks and hunger relief groups, on Wednesday.

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.

A U.S. agricultural coalition said it hoped for an end to the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba now that the nations agreed to re-open embassies in each other's capital.

In eastern Oregon, an experiment is underway to determine whether conservationists and ranchers, two groups often at odds, can work together to stave off development, support ranch economies and preserve biodiversity on the Zumwalt Prairie, America's largest remaining native bunchgrass prairie.<strong>(No paywall)</strong

Lawmakers from the Plains and Midwest filed companion bills in the House and Senate to discourage farmers from converting native sod into cropland nationwide by closing a crop insurance loophole. The legislation would require a reduction of crop-insurance subsidies for four years before producers could qualify for them.

Iowa owes its incredibly productive soil to the prairie—the same prairie that farmers have spent decades ripping out, says The Washington Post. Midwestern growers were long instructed to destroy native grasslands in order to make room for row crops. But a new program called STRIPS (Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips) hopes to convince the state’s farmers that they can decrease soil erosion and fertilizer runoff by planting native grasslands in between their regular crops.

The U.S. Forest Service proposed a change in regulations on Monday that would allow it to consider requests to inject carbon dioxide beneath the 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. Carbon sequestration is a key element in President Biden's goal of net-zero U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

The White House announced the creation Wednesday of the American Climate Corps to train 20,000 young adults for work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience. At the same time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the Forest Corps, operating through the U.S. Forest Service, would be the first major interagency partnership with the Climate Corps.

Trump appointee William Perry Pendley served unlawfully as acting head of the Bureau of Land Management for 424 days, a U.S. district judge ruled in ordering Pendley's immediate removal from office. Chief District Judge Brian Morris, based in Great Falls, Montana, said he would hear arguments in the near future on which of Pendley's orders must be vacated, reported Drovers.

The Trump administration's new and smaller boundaries for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments may not generate many immediate requests from energy companies to mine or drill on the 2 million acres of land, said the Associated Press. The Interior Department declined to say how many claims have been filed but a trade group said low uranium prices would "discourage any investment in new claims'" in the Bears Ears territory of Utah.

The Interior Department would auction off millions of acres of public land for oil and gas development, according to a draft obtained by The Nation of the department's strategic plan for the next five years. "It states that the DOI is committed to achieving 'American energy dominance' through the exploitation of 'vast amounts' of untapped energy reserves on public lands."

The Inspector General has launched an investigation into Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s air travel, after complaints that Zinke was using a private plane owned by an oil executive. That particular flight, from Las Vegas to Zinke’s home state of Montana, cost taxpayers $12,000, according to the Washington Post.  But other taxpayer-funded flights, including one to speak at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, are also being questioned.

Sundrop Farm, a 20-hectare site near Port Augusta in the South Australian desert, is "the first agricultural system of its kind in the world and uses no soil, pesticides, fossil fuels or groundwater," says New Scientist. The farm runs on solar-generated electricity and desalinates seawater that is piped 5.5 km to the farm, which the news site says "might be the face of farming in the future."

With the largest reverse-osmosis desalination plant in the world, Israel is now the only country in the Middle East to have a water surplus, says Ensia. But if other countries take Israel's cue, all that extra water could mean less fighting.

Engineers from Murdoch University in Australia hope to build a prototype "bubble greenhouse" that could be used in arid areas as a low-tech way to turn saltwater into fresh water and grow food, says SciDevNet, a website devoted to international development.

In FERN's latest story, published with The New York Times, reporter Ted Genoways explains how Donald Trump's vow to deport millions of immigrants if he is re-elected would decimate the meatpacking industry's workforce.

Chiewelthap Mariar was about three years old when his family, Christians from South Sudan, fled the aggression of the Muslim-led government in the north. As Ted Genoways writes in FERN’s latest story, published with The New Republic, Chiewelthap was shot and killed at the plant on Jan. 9 by a Guymon police officer, apparently during a dispute with his managers over his work assignment.

A FERN analysis of investigation data released by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD)—which is tasked with enforcing federal child labor laws—found that more than 75 percent of recent violations were committed by employers in the food industry.

Fourteen nonprofit organizations and the Cherokee Nation will distribute $671 million in pandemic payments of $600 per person to farmworkers, meatpacking employees and frontline grocery workers, said the Agriculture Department on Tuesday.