Karen Budd-Fallen, a Wyoming-based lawyer with a history of representing ranchers against the Bureau of Land Management, has announced that she’s in the running to be the BLM’s next director. With a long career of protecting private-property rights, Budd-Fallen, “has challenged grazing regulations and endangered species protections, and in a landmark case attempted to sue individual BLM employees under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

On a 51-48 party-line vote, senators passed a resolution to revoke an Obama administration regulation intended to give the public more input into land management decisions by the Bureau of Land Management. The Republican majority said the rule, which covered 245 million acres of federal land under BLM control, gave outsiders too large a voice and diluted local input over decisions on how to use use land for grazing, recreation and energy and mineral development, said Reuters.

Wisconsin-based Organic Valley, the largest U.S. cooperative for organic farmers, launched a project to become the largest food company in the world to get all of its electricity from renewable sources. The co-op will be part of a "community solar partnership" that will install 12 megawatts of solar power in the state.

Federal prosecutors “willfully” failed to share evidence with lawyers defending Cliven Bundy and two sons, who are on trial for an April 2014 armed standoff, ruled U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Days after President Trump cut 2 million acres from a pair of national monuments in Utah, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended reductions of two additional monuments, Gold Butte and Cascade-Siskiyou, to allow “traditional use” of federal land.

A federal judge in Las Vegas said Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led a standoff with the government over cattle grazing, can be released on bond from jail during his trial on weapons and conspiracy charges.

School districts serving Philadelphia, Baltimore and Las Vegas joined the Urban School Food Alliance, which now serves 3.6 million students in 10 of the largest U.S. districts with a combined $735 million a year in purchases of food and supplies. The alliance launched a procurement initiative in 2014 for antibiotic-free chicken, and said this year that its members would not relax school lunch standards despite a USDA offer of flexibility on salt and whole grains.

New Jersey's Cory Booker, sponsor of bills to place a moratorium on large livestock farms and to expand Black ownership of farmland, is among five newcomers to the Senate Agriculture Committee, said panel leaders. The new members also include Republicans Roger Marshall and Tommy Tuberville, both of whom challenged President Biden's election on the same day a mob attacked the Capitol.

The invasion of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was an assault on U.S. democracy, said farm state lawmakers on Wednesday. Rioters interrupted the certification of Joe Biden's election as president over President Trump, who told protesters that he would never concede defeat. Biden and former president George W. Bush called the invasion an insurrection.

Michael Schläppi, a molecular biologist at Marquette University, "is experimenting with growing rice in the Midwest," says the NPR blog The Salt.

As sales of non-GMO foods zoom, competitors are watching, says the NPR blog The Salt. "The demand for these foods falls under what the industry calls the 'health halo,' the perception that a food is healthy," even if they might not be.

"Could the next big thing in alternative proteins be a something tiny and green?" asks NPR. "Several companies see a bright future for plant protein, and for microalgae in particular."

Astronauts on the International Space Station are the first people to eat food grown in space, says NASA.

The USDA will open a three-month enrollment period on Nov. 14 for the Conservation Stewardship Program, which pays farmers and ranchers for making soil, water and wildlife conservation a part of their daily operations. A small-farm group says producers should submit an initial application if they're interested in the program, but it says USDA has yet to fully describe its changes to CSP.

A former high-ranking USDA official, Bruce I. Knight, argues in an opinion piece on Agri-Pulse that the conservation reserve program should focus on "environmentally sensitive acreage" rather than placing high-quality croplands under CRP contracts. "When we use CRP in the conservation portfolio of tools we should use it surgically and strategically to trap and treat nutrient runoff or to provide specific habitat benefits rather than large-scale whole field enrollments," he writes.

A rainy December is putting water into California's depleted reservoirs and snowpack on the Sierra Nevada, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

Farmers in Ohio can get up to $2 million in cost-share money to reduce run-off into Lake Erie, said USDA, acting only weeks after algae blooms in the lake disrupted the water supply for Toledo.

Some leading university researchers "are being purged" from key EPA advisory panels under a rule announced by Administrator Scott Pruitt that bars membership by scientists at the same time they receive EPA grant money, says Science magazine. "It marks a major change in who can serve on the committees, which help steer EPA research and regulations by providing input on scientific questions."

The senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, said in a letter to supporters that she opposes the nomination of Sam Clovis to be the USDA's chief scientist, "and I call on President Trump to withdraw it immediately," reported Hill Heat, which covers global warming. Stabenow is the first member of the agriculture committee to formally oppose Clovis, a co-chair of Trump's presidential campaign and his chief political liaison at the USDA.

A series of emails obtained under a state freedom of information law suggest major food companies have a "roadmap for dealing with scientific challenges," says the leader of the nonprofit group U.S. Right to Know in a Bloomberg story. The emails by current and former Coca-Cola executives suggest actions such as enlisting outside organizations to question dietary advice that was contrary to their business interests.

After 44 years as president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Jacobson is stepping down. During his long tenure, Jacobson not only helped develop nutrition labels, he “has also had a hand in halting the marketing of many sugar-filled foods to children, reducing salt levels in packaged foods, and banning transfats,” says NPR.

Grain dust explosions are a recurring hazard for grain handlers and processors, said a Purdue report on Tuesday, with nine explosions during 2022, above the 10-year average of 7.8 explosions. But for the first time since 2015, there were no deaths.

The government's worker-safety agency "has been prevented from using its full range of tools to protect workers from Covid-19," said President-elect Biden on the 50th anniversary of creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. "The number of OSHA inspectors is at its lowest level since 1975, while millions of essential workers are working to keep the country functioning through the pandemic."

A government report says the injury rate for meat industry workers has improved greatly yet injuries are more common than in the rest of the manufacturing sector, reports Harvest Public Media. "But injuries in the meat industry are also likely to be under-reported," it says.

California's Prop 12, which prohibits the sale of eggs in the state from chickens housed in battery cages, along with the arrival of the first viable egg substitutes, amounts to a one-two punch that could mark the beginning of the end of the industrial egg, writes Rowan Jacobsen in FERN's latest story, published with New Food Economy. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Maple Leaf Foods, Canada's largest distributor of packaged meats, says it will buy Field Roast Grain Meat Co. in an expansion of its role in the North American market for alternative proteins. Based in Seattle, Field Roast produces grain-based "meat" and vegan cheese products, such as plant-based roasts, sausages, burgers and sliced cheese. It also makes a frozen vegan mac-and-cheese.

The maker of a vegan mayonnaise, Hampton Creek, accused three top employees of planning a coup and fired them. The company said the employees — two vice presidents and the chief technology officer — intended to change the governance structure of the Silicon Valley company so that new investors would have a greater voice in company operations.

The farmer-funded American Egg Board will face annual audits and a round of ethics training for its undercover attempt to derail a vegan version of mayonnaise, say USDA regulators. Their report could bolster long-shot legislation to end compulsory participation in the two-dozen "checkoff" programs that promote farm goods, from watermelons and limes to beef, cotton and milk.