Agriculture

"You'll soon know whether many of the packaged foods you buy contain ingredients derived from genetically modified plants, such as soybeans and corn."

"In the end, Maryland lawmakers couldn’t ignore the same haunting story from beekeepers. “I go into winter with a really strong population, managed them to be fat and healthy, treated for mites, with plenty of food,” said Bonnie Raindrop, a keeper in Baltimore County. “But at the end of winter, you open your hives and they’re all dead.”

"In the first test of a landmark environmental law, Minnesota has compensated two beekeepers whose hives were severely damaged last spring by toxic dust that drifted off the fields of a neighbor planting corn."

"More than 36 million people face hunger across southern and eastern Africa, the United Nations has warned, as swaths of the continent grapple with the worst drought in decades at a time of record high temperatures."

"Federal regulators are looking into whether Florida failed to properly investigate if farmworkers sickened in a crop-dusting accident were told not to report it to authorities."

"The U.S. Senate on Wednesday blocked a bill that would nullify state and local efforts to require food makers to label products made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, as the industry races to stop Vermont's law from taking effect on July 1."

"The Senate will grapple this week with perhaps the most contentious issue in the food industry: whether the government should require mandatory labeling on foods containing genetically engineered ingredients."

"Nearly one in five acres of Maryland farmland has enough phosphorus in its soil to potentially threaten local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay, according to new state data released Monday."