After reaching its highest level since 2013, U.S. net farm income would tumble by one-fifth next year, despite continued high crop and livestock revenue, said the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute on Tuesday. "Under current policies, farm income could drop again in 2022, as government payments decline and production expenses continue to rise," the think tank said.

Nearly 28,000 farmers received crop subsidy or agricultural disaster payments every year for 32 years, said the Environmental Working Group in a report released today. The payments, from 1985-2016, averaged $687,204 per person annually and totaled at least $19.2 billion, according to EWG's analysis of USDA data.

Nearly twice as many meat-processing plants employ short-term foreign workers than in 2015, "a small but growing trend" in the industry, said an Investigate Midwest report. Seaboard Foods, one of the companies using H-2B guestworkers, said it pays the workers the same wage and provides the same benefits that it gives domestic employees, although the comparatively small number of guestworkers wear a hard hat with an identifying color.

To aid farmers worried about an imminent labor shortage, two federal departments said on Thursday that they will help farms find foreign and domestic workers who may be eligible to transfer from one agricultural employer to another. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

As a result of a Trump administration immigration policy, crab houses on the Eastern Shore of Maryland have been short on labor this summer. Midway through the crabbing season, some in the industry are losing customers and profits in what might be the new reality for an industry dependent on immigrant labor.

It won’t be official for months, but FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb outlined on Thursday a solution to a food-labeling issue that had honey producers buzzing and had tapped the ire of the maple syrup industry.

Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree said the FDA will take a second look at how it will identify pure honey and maple syrup on the updated Nutrition Facts label.

The FDA would be forced to modify its updated Nutrition Facts label, and give a break to producers of honey and pure maple syrup, under a 10-line rider in a House Appropriations subcommittee bill unveiled on Tuesday. Section 764 says the FDA cannot implement the new label if it continues to say honey and maple will be listed as added sugars.

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 fish-killing “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico this summer covers 6,952 square miles, midway in size between Connecticut and New Jersey, said researchers on Thursday. It is the eighth-largest dead zone in 33 years of keeping records.

A month after Hurricane Florence swamped southern North Carolina with up to 40 inches of rain, state officials offered on Thursday to buy out hog farms that have a high risk of flooding in severe storms.

The government should replace outdated sugar import rules that guarantee higher revenue to domestic growers and drive up food costs, said the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday. “The program creates higher sugar prices, which cost consumers more than producers benefit, at an annual cost to the economy of around $1 billion,” it said.

Freezing wet weather in the northern Plains has pummeled the sugarbeet crop and cut deeply into domestic sugar production. The USDA said it "fully intends to take appropriate actions to ensure an adequate supply of sugar," language likely to mean it will allow larger than usual imports of foreign-grown sugar.

A trade group for U.S. sugar growers and processors, after objecting a week ago to a tentative U.S.–Mexico agreement on sweetener trade, said the pact was strengthened in follow-up negotiations and that it now supports the deal.

In a preview of the message they’ll give to lawmakers later this week, U.S. farm groups and a delegation of grain and industry officials from Mexico used a news conference in Nebraska to emphasize the value of the U.S.-Mexico ag trade partnership, reported AgDaily.

Poultry farmers could register $1 billion a year in sales to China now that Beijing has removed its “unwarranted ban on U.S. poultry and poultry products,” said U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer on Thursday. Industry groups see the potential to double that total.

The United States and South Korea, the sixth-largest customer for U.S. farm exports, agreed to limit the trade impact of any outbreaks of deadly avian influenza in the future, announced the USDA.

At the top of the Trump administration's list of agricultural goals for the new NAFTA is elimination of Canadian tariffs on imports of U.S. dairy, poultry, and egg products — meaning a dismantling of the nation's supply-management system. Canada balked at that demand in the previous round of negotiation, and the current round of talks in Mexico City made little progress over the weekend.

Canadian officials say prospects of agreement on a new NAFTA by the end of the year are fading in the face of unacceptable U.S. demands, reports Canadian Press, with some analysts questioning if the true U.S. goal is a breakdown in negotiations. The chief U.S. negotiator told Bloomberg, "We made a request of Canada for improved access for dairy, poultry and eggs" over the weekend, the first time agricultural trade was discussed at the talks.

Climate change is likely to reduce yields of major crops such as corn, wheat and rice on a large fraction of the world's cropland by mid-century, says a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham in Britain. "Large shifts in land-use patterns and crop choice will likely be necessary to sustain production growth rates and keep pace with demand," say the researchers in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

Wild seaweed is becoming an increasingly popular food source and moneymaker across South America, says Take Part. Most of the region’s seaweed is gathered from the wild, rather than cultivated as it is other parts of the world, like Asia. Of Chile’s 30,000 wild harvesters, most are women.

The worldwide spike in food prices nearly a decade ago set off a land-buying surge by wealthy investors and nations wanting to shore up their food supply by acquiring cropland in developing nations. The surge was decried by critics as land grabs that would displace small farmers and herders. "The emerging new trend we wrote about in 2008 has continued and become worse," says the nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN).

Due to hotter weather and more days without rain, the length of forest fire season has grown by 19 percent over the past 35 years, says a team of researchers.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a giant among trade groups, is beginning to bleed members, with Nestlé the latest foodmaker to pull out, says Politico. "Complacency and a lack of leadership" at GMA are a factor, along with the hurly-burly of competing for sales in an evolving marketplace, it says.

Some activist groups are abandoning the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil—a panel of palm producers, consumer companies, and activist groups that provides sustainability certificates for the industry—over complaints that it has not done enough to correct industry abuses.

With few national guidelines, pet food is a Wild West of food safety, says Modern Farmer. Pet food is technically overseen by the FDA, but due to limited resources the agency has handed over that responsibility to the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), which has no regulatory control and can only ask companies to adhere to voluntary guidelines.

In his new book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, FERN contributor Ben Goldfarb makes the case that this widely vilified rodent, which was trapped nearly out of existence in the U.S., is not only making a comeback but could play a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change and other problems afflicting farmers. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Nutrient runoff is a growing problem in many parts of the United States but researchers from the University of Rhode Island say beavers could be an ally in reducing nitrogen runoff that can lead to low-oxygen "dead zones,” says the American Society of Agronomy.

Once hunted as nuisances, beavers "are being welcomed into the landscape as a defense against the withering effects of a warmer and drier climate" in the U.S. West, says the New York Times.

California’s coastal ecosystem is in the midst of a massive “disruption” because of climate change, says the San Francisco Chronicle. For example, warmer waters have stalled the growth of kelp forests, causing sea urchins, which depend on kelp as their main food source, to mature abnormally. Their spiky shells are nearly hollow, and North Coast divers have brought in only one-tenth of their normally lucrative catch.

A new federal rule bans fishermen from catching eight kinds of forage fish in a 200-mile zone off the coasts of Oregon, Washington State and California, reports The Seattle Times.

The West coast summer sardine population is expected to fall 93 percent from to its 2007 peak, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.