Today’s quick hits, July 31, 2018

Tyson looks at big chicken buy (Bloomberg): Tyson Foods may soon buy Keystone Foods, a meat company and supplier of chicken nuggets to McDonald’s, from Brazilian beef company Marfrig Global Foods. Marfrig is seeking $3 billion for the company.

‘Seaweed lab’ in Maine (AP): The College of the Atlantic will partner with Springtime Seaweed, the largest organic seaweed farm in the country, to launch a 600-square-foot saltwater lab to culture seed stock for North Atlantic seaweed farms.

Soybeans loom in House elections (USA Today): One-third of the most hotly contested House races in the nation are in soybean-growing regions, where the impact of the trade war may be greatest. Farmers voted heavily for Donald Trump in 2016.

Adding texture to lab meat (The New Food Economy): The decellularized leaves of plants may provide the “scaffolds” that give texture and form to lab-grown meat and make it resemble meat from livestock.

‘Heat wave,’ not ‘climate change’ (Public Citizen): While newspaper stories about the early summer U.S. heat wave have reported the extreme temperatures, they have scarcely mentioned climate change as a likely factor, says an environmental group, slamming what it calls “climate silence.”

Who will pick the fruit? (Washington Post): British farmers, already short on harvest help, are wondering where they will find farm laborers if Brexit cuts off the free flow of manual workers from the continent.

Americans support farm bailout (CBS News): A majority of Americans, including three-fourths of Republicans and one-third of Democrats, approve of the Trump administration’s aid framework for farmers, according to a nationwide survey.