Earthjustice

The U.S. appeals court based in Washington voided a Bush-era exemption for large livestock farms from reporting emission of air pollutants in a win for environmentalists, said Law360. The lawsuit was filed more than a year ago by eight environmental groups, who said the EPA ignored petitions in 2009 and 2011 for regulation of ammonia, methane and other emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

In response to a Justice Department lawsuit, Deere and Co., the world's largest farm equipment maker, says its purchase of a competitor, Precision Planting, will expand farmers' ability to update their planters and will not reduce competition for planter sales.

Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, has asked the EPA to revoke the Hawaii Department of Agriculture’s authority to enforce federal pesticide regulations, claiming the department’s pesticide program is understaffed and effectively failing to do its job, reports Honolulu Civil Beat. “The public is at risk and the Department of Agriculture is asleep at the wheel,” Paul Achitoff, managing attorney of Earthjustice, told Civil Beat.

Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit law firm, served Hawaii’s Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC) with a notice of intent to sue, claiming the agency has allowed pesticides to contaminate a drainage ditch on the island of Kauai, says The Civil Beat. ADC is a branch of the Hawaiian Department of Agriculture, leasing thousands of acres of land to farms that plant genetically engineered crops.

A large Chinese fishing company declared in a draft document "that it intended to circumvent international conservation limits on tuna – by simply ignoring them" with little fear of discipline for it, says the Guardian.