"Federal officials are launching efforts today in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to enlist farmers in targeted watersheds in a concerted effort to curb pollution running off their land."

"Organic food from China, like tea and frozen broccoli, has increasingly found its way onto American store shelves, typically emblazoned with the green 'U.S.D.A. organic' seal also found on food grown in this country. ... Now serious questions about certification in China have been raised by the United States Agriculture Department."

An armada of crop-dusters is poised to attack billions of hungry high plains and Rocky Mountain grasshoppers in what is seen as the biggest plague in a generation.

"The EPA, declaring that endosulfan is unsafe for farm workers, moves to ban one of the last organochlorine pesticides left in the United States. Like DDT, endosulfan accumulates in the environment and in the bodies of people and wildlife, and is transported around the world to remote places."

Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, whose plain living goes with a faith-based stewardship of the environment, are facing growing scrutiny for some practices the government says pollute streams.

"The Agriculture Department will approve for broad use [Tuesday] a genetically modified soybean engineered to contain healthier oils, the opening salvo in a biotech oil fight between DuPont Co. and its rival, Monsanto Co."

"In a legal settlement that could affect the entire U.S. meat industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to identify and investigate thousands of factory farms that have been avoiding government regulation for water pollution with animal waste."

"If you're eating non-organic celery today, you may be ingesting 67 pesticides with it, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group."

A new viral disease that destroys cassava crops is spreading explosively in East Africa. Cassava, the world's third largest source of calories, is eaten by some 800 million people in Africa, South America, and Asia.

"US researchers claim to have identified a new potential cause for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in honeybees." They think a synergistic effect of two pathogens -- a fungus and a family of viruses -- may be the culprit.

Recent outbreaks of foodborned diseases like E. coli have pressured USDA to tighten food safety rules. The sources of outbreaks are often large industrial operation -- but small farmers who can't afford to comply may be forced out of business.

The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency pledged to do a better job of protecting the 300,000 to 400,000 child farmworkers from threats including pesticide exposure, after a stinging new report from Human Rights Watch.

"For 100 years, Mexico City has flushed its wastewater north to irrigate the farmland of Hidalgo State. This foul cascade, which the farmers call 'the black waters,' flows through a latticework of canals and then trickles over the fields. So when word got out that the government was finally going to build a giant wastewater treatment plant, one might have expected the farmers around here to be excited. Instead, they were suspicious."

After years of heavy application of glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide, farmers are struggling with superweeds that have developed resistance.

"Urban farming is a growth industry in New York city's concrete jungle, and with little open land free agriculturalists and beekeepers have taken to the rooftops to pursue their passion."