"In a year the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to take a significant whack at President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, GOP lawmakers on Wednesday told top environmental officials they should scrap what was once a fairly obscure proposal to define what is and isn’t considered a body of water by federal law."

"The ailing Chesapeake Bay is slowly recovering from pollution and overfishing but still has problems that include a drop by half in a key segment of the blue crab population, a report on the largest U.S. estuary said on Tuesday."

"Major voluntary strategies used on Midwest farmland to curb fertilizers that feed the annual low oxygen "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico don't remove enough nutrients to succeed, according to a new, peer reviewed scientific study."

It's not just the application of nitrogen fertilizer to farmlands that causes nitrate pollution of water -- it's the timing of that application and the runoff that results. One solution seems to be winter cover crops.

"Amid growing concern about global weather patterns, a rocket roared into space Saturday carrying a NASA satellite that will give scientists new tools to forecast weather, track drought and monitor climate change."

"A federal judge ruled for U.S. EPA yesterday in a lawsuit filed by agribusinesses angry about the agency providing information on large livestock farms to environmentalists."

"Two new lawsuits are part of an effort to push EPA to regulate methane from agriculture, the country's biggest source of methane."

Near Bradshaw, Nebraska, the four Harrington sisters fight the Keystone XL pipeline, which they fear could threaten land their family has farmed for 150 years. Their unpainted, solar-powered barn, plastered with slogans, sits smack in the path of the pipeline.

"Specialty crop farmers were at the [Iowa] capitol today complaining of damage to their produce from pesticide drift."

"At a remote research center on the Nebraska plains, scientists are using surgery and breeding techniques to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry. The potential benefits are huge: animals that produce more offspring, yield more meat and cost less to raise."