The U.S. suicide rate has been on the rise since 1999, and "the gap in rates between less urban and more urban areas widened over time," says the Centers for Disease Control. In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the agency says a new study "provides added support to previous findings that a geographic disparity in suicide rates exists..."

Farmers, fishermen and forestry workers together had the highest suicide rate by far among occupational groups in a Centers for Disease Control analysis of data from 17 states in 2012. Overall, the prevalence of suicide increased from 2000 to 2012 and is now the 10th leading cause of death among all Americans aged 16 or older.

"For decades, farmers across the country have been dying by suicide at higher rates than the general population" -- nearly double the U.S. average, says Newsweek.

President Biden signed a stop-gap government funding bill over the weekend that calls for speedy payment of $10 billion to farmers to buffer lower commodity prices and high production costs. Congress voted to fund the government through March 14 after a fight that showed the limits of President-elect Trump's control over Republican lawmakers.

The new farm bill will not enacted until next year because of continuing disagreements over issues such SNAP benefits and higher crop subsidies, said Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow on Wednesday. “I am committed to passing a strong, bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible,” she said, but the process is taking longer than hoped.

Republican Joni Ernst led Democrat Bruce Braley by 7 points, 51-44, in the latest Iowa Poll of the Des Moines Register. It was Ernst's largest lead in any poll in a month.

Independent Greg Orman campaigned in typically Republican rural Kansas with the argument incumbent Pat Roberts doesn't keep the state's agricultural interests in mind, says the Associated Press.

House Agriculture subcommittee chairman Steve King leads by 12 points in a Loras College poll of 280 likely voters in the Fourth House District in northwestern Iowa.

"The race for the U.S. Senate seat from Kansas is about to get nastier," says the Kansas City Star in a story headlined, "With a week to go, U.S. Senate candidates in Kansas still haven't closed the sale."

Democrat Michael Bennet, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, won the Senate race in Colorado in 2010 with a plurality of 48 percent in a seven-way race. Handicappers say Colorado will be one of the most competitive states this year yet Bennet's prospects are brightening - and could improve markedly due to Republican infighting.

The Government Accountability Office says cost of the taxpayer-subsidized crop and flood insurance programs could rise substantially in coming decades due to climate change.

Eighteen US senators sign letter to USTR Michael Froman saying United States should press Japan to increase market access for US farm exports.

Crop farmers are seeing much lower incomes this year, down by an average 25 percent in the Plains, according to agricultural bankers in the Farm Belt.

Rapidly spreading palmer amaranth is the headliner among a list of 16 types of weeds that have developed resistance to glyphosate, one of the most widely used herbicides.

Top place in the 2017 Food Sustainability Index goes to a repeat winner, France, followed by Japan, Germany, Spain, and Sweden, says the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Nearly every article on food waste includes these stats: 40 percent of food in this country, worth $165 billion, is wasted each year. But a study from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics says that those numbers are only estimates and may actually be inaccurate.

Three UN agencies joined to launch a database on the Internet of proven methods to reduce food loss and waste, which now claim one-third of food production each year.

Seventy-five percent of honey samples taken from around the world contained traces of neonicotinoids — a class of insecticides harmful to honeybees, says a study published in the journal Science.

The head of Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, Myron Ebell, is not only a climate-change skeptic. He also has a history of discouraging pesticide regulations, writes Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, pointing to Ebell's role as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

An evaluation of bee hives found a dangerously high level of Varroa mites, a honeybee pest that is blamed in part for calamitous declines in the bee population, says Agri-Pulse, citing a blog by a Bayer scientist.

Australian researchers have attached tiny microsensors to about 10,000 healthy honeybees to try to learn the cause of the global decline in bee populations, says the Christian Science Monitor.

Following through on his confirmation-hearing pledge, EPA head Scott Pruitt has recused himself from several cases against the agency that he pursued while Oklahoma attorney general.

The EPA is changing language on its webpage to match the values of the new administration, and the fact that both President Trump and EPA head Scott Pruitt have publicly denied that climate change is manmade.

Officials in 24 states want president-elect Trump to cancel the Clean Power Plan put forth by the Obama administration, says Reuters. The plan calls for lowering power-plant emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, but the Supreme Court has delayed its implantation until a U.S. district court in the District of Columbia decides whether the order is legal.

The USDA assessment of the condition of the corn and soybean crops nationwide took a beating from derecho damage in Iowa and droughty weather in the Midwest during August, said the USDA on Monday. The Crop Progress report listed 62 percent of corn and 66 percent of soybeans in good or excellent condition, compared to 72 percent of corn and 73 percent of soybeans in those categories at the start of month.

After two weeks of moderate to heavy rain and snow, drought is on the wane across the United States. Only 16 percent of the nation is in drought, down 3 points since last week and a drop of 8 points since the start of the year, said the weekly Drought Monitor.

Nearly 40 percent of California, the northern part of the state, is free of drought, a startling change thanks to heavy rain and snow since the Oct. 1 start of the wet season, says the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. But moderate to exceptional drought covered the central and southern parts of the agriculturally important Central Valley of the nation's No. 1 farm state.

The U.S. Northeast, home to 175,000 farms, is under the worst drought in more than a decade, says the NPR blog The Salt. "Many fields are bone dry," says NPR, "and that has many farmers thinking about how to manage their land, their animals and the water that is there."