Capital Press

This year's drought in Washington State "is by far the worst since 1977" and covers nearly all of the state, says Capital Press.

Harvest of fresh-market and processing tomatoes is under way in northern California with summer conditions favoring a good crop for growers who have access to enough water, says Capital Press, citing interviews with farmers.

A cattle rancher in central Washington State says he still believes his herd can co-exist with wolves despite losing a yearling Angus on state-owned grazing land, reports Capital Press.

On a largely party-line vote of 245-176, the U.S. House passed a Republican-backed bill “that is unlikely to break the long-standing partisan stalemate over how to fix the drought” in California, said the Los Angeles Times. “Even if the bill makes it through the Senate, where it would need …

Researchers at Washington State University hope to test a robotic apple picker this fall that is able to work fast enough and gently enough to make it economically viable, says Capital Press.

Five western states - Idaho, Utah, Washington, Oregon and California - saw the hottest June this year in 121 years of record-keeping, says the weekly Drought Monitor.

Rudy Mussi, who farms in the Sacramento Delta, "is not the California farmer you've been hearing about," says the NPR blog The Salt. "He is not fallowing all his fields or ripping up his orchards due to a lack of irrigation water."

Egg farms in California produced 323 million eggs in May, a drop of 16 percent from the same month in 2014, says the Chicken and Eggs report.

A bill in the Oregon Senate, introduced at the request of Gov John Kitzhaber, would allow the state to establish control areas to separate genetically engineered crops from organic and conventional crops if necessary to prevent cross-pollination, says Capital Press.

All the birds in a non-commercial flock in Port Angeles, Wash, were killed to prevent the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza, said Capital Press, which said bird flu also was reported in a backyard flock in Idaho.

Led by sugar growers and processors, farm groups in Idaho are considering whether to push for a state law against labeling food made with genetically modified organisms, says Capital Press.

The Commerce Department announced it will open an investigation into charges that Mexico is dumping subsidized sugar in the United States