In FERN’s latest story, in partnership with The New York Times, reporter Ted Genoways explains how Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, is taking the fight to Republicans in rural America.

Anne Schwagerl would love to purchase an interseeder, a machine that plants cover crop seeds directly into a field where another crop like soybeans is already growing. But she and her husband, who grow a variety of grains on 400 acres in western Minnesota, can't afford the $80,000 price tag. So she was happy when the state legislature recently approved a cost-share program to help farmers to purchase such equipment.

The Food and Drug Administration moved to ban the use of brominated vegetable oil in food on Thursday, saying new tests proved conclusively that it was not safe. The agency acted a month after California outlawed BVO, along with three other food additives: potassium bromate, propylparaben, and red dye No. 3.

In the more than two years since Subway was called out by a blogger for using azodicarbonamide, a chemical found in yoga mats and other non-food items, to make its bread dough lighter and stronger, a slew of fast-food chains have followed Subway’s lead and removed the chemical—but unlike Subway they’ve done it quietly, with little or no publicity, says Bloomberg.

Some brands of Parmesan cheese sold in U.S. grocery stores contain unexpectedly large amounts of cellulose, reports Bloomberg, which hired an independent laboratory to test samples of the popular grated cheese.

In response to a petition by environmental and consumer groups, the FDA said it will consider whether to ban seven food additives, including styrene, because they could cause cancer.

Thieves are stealing fryer oil from restaurants, as the price per pound climbs to 25 cents, up from 7.6 cents per pound in 2000. “[T]hanks to a 2007 energy law, oil companies must use 2 billion gallons of biodiesel this year, 100 million gallons more than last year, and the most ever in U.S. history. Most of that biodiesel is made from soybean oil, but old fryer grease is the second largest (and fastest growing) source,” says Eater.

The first edition of the revived Fats and Oils: Oilseed Crushings, Production, Consumption and Stocks report was delayed for two months, until Oct. 1, because of inadequate response by processors, said the USDA.

The FDA order to foodmakers to phase out artificial trans fats "will create opportunities for Canada's canola sector, especially high oleic varieties," says Commodity News Service Canada.

Farmworkers earned less than 60 percent of what comparable workers did off the farm last year, says an Economic Policy Institute blog. The wage gap in 2020 was virtually unchanged from 2019.

As restaurants around the country close or shift to delivery only, "millions of laid-off ... workers, many who made just $2.13 an hour plus tips — the federal minimum wage for tipped workers — are scrambling to pay their bills and feed their families," as Liza Gross reports in FERN's latest story. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

The USDA has approved the first open-air trial of a genetically modified non-sterile insect, male diamondback moths that pass along a gene during mating that prevents female offspring from reaching adulthood. The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York said it "believes in the strongest terms that this action should trigger a full environmental review" by state officials, rather than a rubber-stamp approval.

A USDA agronomist in Minnesota has invented an air-powered device that shoots out farm residues — "from seed meals to nut shells, fruit pits, and corn cob grits" — at weeds and pulverizes them while leaving corn shoots standing tall, reports Modern Farmer. Dried chicken manure is a current favorite to target the pesky plants. “We can weed and feed at the same time,” Frank Forcella told the magazine.

Even as China’s coal-fueled factories belch toxic smoke, the biggest abuse on China’s environment comes from agriculture, says Time. The country is trying to solve the problem with some of the most radical changes to its agricultural policy since Mao Zedong forced the People’s Republic onto collective farms in the late 1950s—and 30 million people died of starvation as a result.

Researchers at UC-Riverside conducted genomic sequencing of five nematode families in work that could improve their performance as a biocontrol against insect damage to crops.

With Americans spending more of their food dollars at the supermarket, the specialty crop sector will continue to adapt to the pandemic and the loss of food-service sales in the new year, said agricultural lender CoBank. "Steep financial losses from the loss of food service contracts will ultimately result in the rationalization of some processing assets and production acreage."

The U.S.'s current trade war expands beyond China—India, Mexico and Turkey also have placed tariffs on U.S. fruits and nuts. The cumulative effect of the tariffs could cost the U.S. fruit and nut industries $2.64 billion per year directly and an additional $700 million by reducing prices in alternative markets, says a study by the Agricultural Issues Center at the University of California.

To help organic dairy farms survive in the Northeast, a first-of-its-kind partnership is asking consumers to pledge to buy dairy products from 35 brands that agreed to expand their purchases of milk from the farms. The Northeast Organic Family Farm Partnership was a response to decisions by processors to pull out of the region, said Gary Hirshberg, a co-founder of Stonyfield, on Wednesday.

Groups representing organic dairy farmers in the Northeast said Danone North America, owner of Horizon Organic, needs to do more to cushion farmers against its decision to pull out of the region. Danone said it would extend contracts with 89 dairy farmers for an additional six months, provide a transition payment to the producers, and explore "co-investment solutions" with state and federal officials.

Global food company Danone has given a year's notice to 79 organic dairy farms in the Northeast that it will stop buying their milk on Aug. 31, 2022. The decision is just the latest squeeze on organic dairy producers, who face rising costs and pressures to consolidate.

A new report from the Cornucopia Institute updates the group’s earlier research on the continuing industrialization of the organic dairy industry. The report includes a consumer scorecard that ranks commercially available dairy products on such metrics as whether the cows have access to pasture, what they’re fed, and whether they’re raised on industrial farms.

Only half of adult Americans and 61 percent of children consume a sugar-sweetened beverage on any given day, down sharply from consumption rates a decade earlier, reports the New York Times, citing a study in the journal Obesity. Fewer people are drinking sugary beverages and when they do, they consume fewer calories.

The Cook County Board, overseeing the 41 percent of Illinoisans who live in Chicago and nearby suburbs, is expected to repeal its 1-cent-per-ounce soda tax during a meeting today, only weeks after it took effect. The change of mind in Cook County, the largest jurisdiction in the nation to tax sugary beverages, is a dramatic defeat for public-health advocates.

Cook County, the most populous county in Illinois, will begin collecting a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages beginning on Wednesday, making it the largest jurisdiction with a soda tax, following a state court decision that the tax is constitutional, said the Chicago Tribune. Som

The lower rental rates set in the 2018 farm law for the Conservation Reserve may be discouraging enrollment in the program to idle fragile farmland. The USDA said on Thursday that it had accepted for entry 9 of every 10 acres offered in the recently completed "general" signup, for a total of 3.4 million acres — 2 million fewer acres than will leave the reserve this fall.

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>

The USDA says there is now enough room in the Conservation Reserve that, for the first time in months, it will accept applications for high-priority stewardship projects, such as filter strips, that prevent erosion and maintain water quality on fragile land. Enrollment runs from today through Aug. 17 for the practices, which require comparatively small amounts of land.

An investigation by activist groups Mighty Earth and ActionAid USA challenges the notion of biodiesel as the environmentally responsible fuel of the future. Burned: Deception, Deforestation and America’s Biodiesel Policy claims that growing demand for biodiesel in the U.S. contributes to a host of problems, from deforestation in Argentina and Indonesia to algae blooms in Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone.

In the face of industry complaints, the Food and Drug Administration said it would extend the date, now set for January 2018, to comply with agricultural water standards for produce. In an announcement, the agency said "the length of the extension is under consideration" and will be determined "using appropriate procedures at a later time." The extension does not apply to sprouts.

A new FDA regulation, issued as part of implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, says farms and farm-operated businesses that sell directly to customers are exempt from regulation as food facilities, a category aimed at processing plants. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said the regulation would prevent undue regulation of small farms.

The top FDA official involved in stricter controls on antibiotics in livestock and implementation of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization law, Michael Taylor, will leave the agency on June 1 after more than five years as deputy commissioner.