Kentucky

“High path” avian influenza was confirmed in a backyard flock in Nebraska, the 16th state with the viral disease in a domestic flock this year, said the Agriculture Department on Wednesday. Meanwhile, officials in Indiana and Kentucky rolled back quarantine areas in their states after a string of disease-free days.

In Mount St. Joseph, in western Kentucky, "there is trouble in the air and it comes along with the smell of a large hog farm," says Ohio Valley ReSource, a public broadcasting project in the Ohio River Valley. A community group says Piggy Express, a recently constructed washing facility for trucks that haul hogs, might produce polluted runoff, but they have little recourse because of the Kentucky's right-to-farm law.

The proposed 24-acre West Louisville Food Hub, with an expected cost of $45 million, would combine urban renewal in a distressed neighborhood of Louisville, KY, with local food marketing, says Civil Eats.

Rural Americans, often socially and fiscally conservative, tend to vote at higher rates for Republicans than the nation overall. This year, when the country leaned Republican, the rate went up in rural areas too, says the Daily Yonder.

A dozen elections today may influence food and agriculture policy nationally, They range from the Kansas race that could determine the next chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee to referendums on soda taxes and GMO labeling.

"Rural voters are crucial" for Democrats if they are to win Senate races in Kentucky and Georgia, blogs political consultant Matt Barron in The Hill newspaper. The incumbent in Kentucky is Republican Mitch McConnell, the majority leader. Democrat Alison Grimes has criticized McConnell for missing dozens of Agriculture Committee meetings.

Democrat Alison Grimes faulted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for missing many Agriculture Committee hearings and for not being one of the negotiators who wrote the 2014 farm law, says the Associated Press.