Reducing the reach of clean-water law (New York Times): The Trump administration is expected to release on Tuesday its rewrite of the Obama-era “waters of the United States” rule, which will exempt from oversight streams and tributaries that don’t run year-round and wetlands that are not directly linked to larger bodies of water.
‘Hard deadline’ for trade deal (CBS News): U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer said March 1 is “a hard deadline” for the U.S. and China to resolve their ongoing trade war.
Former ag secretary Bergland dies (AP): Former agriculture secretary Bob Bergland, who defended President Carter’s embargo of grain sales to the Soviet Union, died at age 90 in his hometown of Roseau in northern Minnesota, near the border with Canada.
Indoor farming at home (Medium): The future of indoor farming could be very small-scale, perhaps lots of people growing a small but steady amount of food plants at home, rather than warehouse-sized operations that use lots of electricity to grow vegetables without soil, says a plant physiologist.
Thin, log and burn (Washington Post): The U.S. Forest Service plans a 15-year make-over of 850,000 acres , or 1,328 square miles, of the Medicine Bow National Forest though logging, thinning of trees and prescribed burns to recover from “epidemic levels” of beetle infestations that killed millions of trees.
Eighty victims of E. coli linked to romaine (Food Safety News): With reports of nearly 80 people in the United States and Canada ill in an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce, the FDA said at least 10 distributors, 11 farms and 12 growers are implicated, based on shipping records.
Bacon, it’s for finals week (AP): Timed for finals week, a vending machine that sells cooked strips of bacon and bacon bits for $1 has been installed at Ohio State University’s ag school, with proceeds to support OSU’s meat sciences program.