children

"(P)ublic health experts say hundreds of children under 16...continue to work in America’s tobacco fields" through an exclusion in labor law that allows youth as young as 12 years old to work unlimited hours as farm workers, says the New York Times in a story about youth labor on tobacco farms. The story says field workers risk green tobacco sickness - nicotine poisoning - from dew or rain water dripping from the leaves of tobacco plants. Vomiting, dizziness and irregular heartbeats are among the symptoms.

A middle-income family will spend an average $37 a day to raise a child from birth to age 18, according to government figures on food, housing, health care, child care, education and other expenses.

"At the geographic level, poverty in the United States is overwhelmingly a rural phenomenon," says an introductory article in Choices, the journal of agricultural economics. "Compared to rural America, urban America has been experiencing lower poverty rates. This gap has existed since the 1960s, when the poverty rates were first officially calculated, and it has been widening in the last few years."

A Republican proposal to give hard-pressed schools a one-year waiver from school lunch reforms is headed for a floor vote in the House with predictions of more turmoil to come. "This is poison," warned Sam Farr, a senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "It will tie up the whole ag appropriations bill." Farr lost on a party-line vote, 29-22, when he tried to delete the waiver during a four-hour committee markup.

Supporters and opponents of immigration reform cranked up the pressure on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, says Roll Call, "with less than two weeks to go before a closely watched primary race and the clock steadily ticking down on the 113th Congress."

USAID announced a first-of-its-kind strategy to save 2 million children from chronic malnutrition or stunting over the next five years and to hold acute malnutrition below 15 percent in areas with humanitarian crises. USAID chief Rajiv Shah and National Security Advisory Susan Rice unveiled the initiative at an annual food conference sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Children's cereals contain so much sugar that "someone eating an average serving...would consume more than 10 pounds of sugar a year from that source alone," says the Environmental Working Group in a new report. Two-thirds of the cereals aimed at children contain enough the equivalent of one-third of the recommended daily amount of sugar.

Researchers say obesity rates for children ages 2-5 dropped to 8 pct from prev 14 pct in a decade's time, a welcome change from what has been called the U.S. obesity epidemic.

The administration may announce later this week the first update to the Nutrition Facts labels that appear on food packages, said Politico's Morning Ag newsletter.

The USDA has completed a months-long update of the foods available through the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC) to reflect the latest nutrition science, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday. The new list, which includes a significant expansion of fruit and vegetable benefits, would take effect in about 60 days.