Agriculture

"With the EPA struggling to collect data on these huge farms, understanding their pollution levels is almost impossible."

"The Environmental Protection Agency was slated to hold four days of public meetings focused on essentially one question: Is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide and the lynchpin to Monsanto’s fortunes, as safe as Monsanto has spent 40 years telling us it is? But oddly, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings, called to look at potential glyphosate ties to cancer, were 'postponed' just four days before they were to begin Oct. 18, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry."

"If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may have seen ads urging you to vote 'no' on a grocery tax. 'Don't Tax Our Groceries' is the tagline of the $9.5 million campaign, which is funded by the American Beverage Association. ... But here's the thing. There's no grocery tax on the ballot."

"Lawmakers have proposed pesticide-free zones around schools and daycare centers. Environmental and community activists say they fall short, given pesticides’ reach and persistence; pesticide manufacturers say they're unwarranted."

"California should leave more water in the state's most vital river delta to save crashing populations of native fish, state regulators said Wednesday in findings that could cut the amounts that cities and farms can take from the Sacramento and San Joaquin waterways."

"U.S. government agencies plan to push ahead with a $57 million dam and fish bypass on Montana's Yellowstone River despite concerns among scientists that it won't meet its goal of helping an ancient fish species, officials said Monday."

"Chicken farms, once tucked into fields and in mostly rural areas, have come to roost near schools, daycare centers and subdivisions on the Delmarva Peninsula. The change — in both location and density — is prompting local politicians to enact some of their first zoning restrictions on poultry growers."

"A filthy brown sea, a slurry of mud, debris, chemicals and waste, has overtaken miles of rural counties in North Carolina. Against the drab water, the shiny metal roofs of hog houses are impossible to miss, visible from the air, as are the rectangular and diamond-shaped outlines of massive lagoons constructed just feet away."

A little-noticed court settlement in Nevada requires the federal government to re-evaluate its program for killing predatory animals at the request of farmers and ranchers. Two years from now, when the re-evaluation is done, the program could be drastically changed.

"Urban farming received a legitimizing nod last month when Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) introduced the Urban Agriculture Act of 2016 in hopes of getting it included in the next Farm Bill."