"The United Farm Workers union sued California’s occupational health and safety agency on Thursday, accusing it of doing too little to prevent farm laborers’ deaths from heat illness."

"A growing interest in sustainable food is luring children back to their parents' farms."

"The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has quietly approved a new genetically engineered corn with eight different insect- and weed-fighting traits, but farmer and environmental groups in Canada say the approval was rushed and environmental risks ignored."

A massive sweep by drug enforcement agents in Fresno County offered new evidence of how illegal marijuana plantations on public lands are scarring the Sierra landscape.

"Imported insects have been deployed as foot soldiers in the fight against invasive bugs and plants that cause billions of dollars in damage each year. But some of those imports are proving to be pests themselves that upset the balance of nature and threaten native species."

"Fruit and nut orchards in the Central Valley rely on winter chilling hours, but those are in decline, according to a UC Davis study."

"Tops and tails are becoming much more than garbage at Gills Onions, an onion processor in Oxnard, Calif. Today marks the unveiling of the company's onion-powered electrical system, a first-of-its-kind initiative to turn onion waste into energy."

"A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined."

The agricultural giant, Syngenta, has petitioned the USDA to grant its new genetically modified corn a non-regulated status. Some experts fear that the strain, meant solely for producing ethanol, could end up in the food supply.

Florida has become the first state in the country to set regulations for the purity of honey -- prohibiting chemicals or additives, including corn syrup sweeteners, in products marked as honey.

"Honeybees may not be the first thing that come to mind when you think of Brooklyn. Yet ... a growing number of urbanites who keep bees in cities across the country. Their motivations vary."

"The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans."

"In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national."

"California's San Joaquin Valley has lost 60 million acre-feet of groundwater since 1961, according to a new federal study. ... The Central Valley is America's largest farming region; it's also the single-largest zone of groundwater pumping."

"Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines."