Volkswagen ends animal testing (New York Times): The German car company pledged to end its practice of testing the effects of diesel exhaust on animals, the latest in ongoing fallout from the company’s emissions-cheating scandal.
USDA and FDA harmonize on food safety (USDA): Two major guardians of food safety, the FDA and USDA, aligned regulations that set produce safety requirements from farmers.
Tyson makes moves in organic (Food Business News): Tyson Foods bought an organic chicken producer, Tecumseh Poultry LLC. The company said organic chicken sales have recently risen four times as much as conventional sales.
Farm income stabilizes (Farm Journal): A Farmer Mac economist says net cash farm income is likely to hold steady this year, rather than decline as forecast by USDA, due to stronger than expected commodity prices.
A two-in-one fertilizer and weedkiller (Texas AgriLife): Research at Texas A&M indicates cotton can be genetically engineered to use phosphite as a fertilizer while the compound suppresses weeds, which cannot process it.
Harvesting crops at solar farms (Ensia): So-called dual-use farming allows landowners to grow crops below the canopies formed by solar panels. Options include vegetables, pollinator habitat, and field crops such as wheat and clover.
Who’s allowed to make whiskey? (New York Times): An 1834 law bans distilling on reservations, functionally excluding Native Americans from the growing craft spirits industry and its accompanying economic benefits.
Food delivery by robot (UC Berkeley): The robot food-delivery company Kiwi recently delivered its 10,000 meal on the University of California campus at Berkeley. Its founder plans to bring the cooler-sized self-driving machines, which now charge $3.80 per delivery, to Los Angeles, Palo Alto and San Jose by the end of this year.