Adaptation or aberration?: Environmentalists say wetlands will suffer and big farmers will benefit from a French program to construct huge reservoirs to capture rainwater to irrigate farmland. (New York Times)
Record land-fallowing: Drought forced California farmers to idle 10 percent of irrigated land this year, surpassing the peak set in the 2012-16 drought. (Los Angeles Times)
Sweet potatoes replace tobacco: Tobacco production in North Carolina declined steeply, and sweet potatoes may be the biggest of the replacement crops, with four times the acreage as in 1997. (Ag Data News)
Sugar blocked: The U.S. will block imports of sugar produced by Central Romana Corp. Ltd., in the Dominican Republic, because of “information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor in its operations.” (Treasury)
Japan finalizes trade mechanism: The upper house of the Diet finished revisions to Japan’s beef safeguard mechanism that will allow more U.S. beef to be shipped to Japan without triggering higher tariffs. (USTR)