More Covid-19 if there’s a packing plant: Researchers say that within 60 days of the emergence of Covid-19 in a county, the per-capita infection rate is 110-percent higher in counties with a meatpacking plant compared to counties without a plant, suggesting 334,000 Covid-19 cases in the nation are attributable to large meatpacking operations, say researchers in a journal. (Food Policy)
Rural Covid-19 vaccinations: Four out of every 10 rural adults say they already have gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, ahead of the three in 10 urban and suburban adults who say the same. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Midnight Roma, the purple tomato: Ten years after Indigo Rose, the first antioxidant-rich purple tomato, Oregon State University plant breeder Jim Myers has created Midnight Roma, a purple “processing” tomato for canning and making sauces. (Oregon State University)
‘Two-dog battle’ over soy seed: Corteva, a spinoff of the Dow-DuPont merger, is battling Bayer, the successor to long-dominant Monsanto, for billions of dollars in sales of GE soybean seed and leadership in the U.S. market. (Reuters)
Record soy exports by Brazil: The No. 1 soybean grower and exporter in the world, Brazil, exported a record 13.5 million tonnes of the oilseed in March, 25-percent more than its previous one-month mark, and a sign of strong competition with U.S. soybean exports. (USDA)