Agriculture

"Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either."

"A French court canceled the license for one of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkillers on Tuesday over safety concerns, placing an immediate ban on Roundup Pro 360 in the latest legal blow to the Bayer-owned business."

"It’s the peak of the leafy greens growing season in Yuma, Ariz., where irrigated valleys are lush and verdant amid cactus-covered mountains. .... But these are anxious times for the leafy greens industry, and the partial federal government shutdown and furloughing of many Food and Drug Administration officials has deepened the distress."

"Researcher says the EPA has disregarded substantial evidence that the popular herbicide is linked to cancer".

"The FDA plans as soon as Tuesday to restart food safety inspections at facilities that handle riskier products like fresh-cut produce, as the partial government shutdown extends into its fourth week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Monday."

"As men leave animal agriculture for less gritty work, more ranches are being led by women — with new ideas about technology, ecology and the land."

"Hundreds of years before John Wayne and Gary Cooper gave us a Hollywood version of the American West, with men as the brute, weather-beaten stewards of the land, female ranchers roamed the frontier. They were the indigenous, Navajo, Cheyenne and other tribes, and Spanish-Mexican rancheras, who tended and tamed vast fields, traversed rugged landscapes with their dogs, hunted, and raised livestock.

"A federal judge on Wednesday struck down an Iowa law that made it illegal to get a job at a livestock farm to conduct an animal cruelty undercover investigation, finding the law violated the constitutional right to free speech."

"There's a big molecule, a protein, inside the leaves of most plants. It's called Rubisco, which is short for an actual chemical name that's very long and hard to remember."