The first self-driving vehicle is a farmhand (Wired): Robo-farmhands are the first autonomous vehicles to hit the market. The Dot Power Platform is “the Transformer of ag-bots, capable of performing 100-plus jobs, from hay baler and seeder to rock picker and manure spreader, via an arsenal of tool modules.”
Bunge joins the ‘certified transitional’ parade (Farm Journal): One of the world’s largest grain companies, Bunge, says it will connect corn farmers going through the three-year transition to organic agriculture with food makers who will pay a premium for their grain.
U.S. is world’s top food-aid donor (Bloomberg): Despite repeated proposals by President Trump to slash food-aid programs, the United States is still the world’s largest donor, giving twice as much as the EU in 2017.
When the organic seal is not enough (Civil Eats): A coalition of activists is launching the Regenerative Organic Certification initiative to keep the industry “strong to the original intention” of the organic movement.
Hotter, drier, hungrier in the Horn of Africa (New York Times): The region “dried faster in the 20th century than at any time over the last 2,000 years,” including four droughts in the past two decades that “pushed millions of poor people to the edge of survival.”