"California pesticide regulators plan to approve a new agricultural chemical called methyl iodide for the state's coastal strawberry fields, allowing levels of exposure that the state's own experts say will put farmworkers and bystanders at risk."
"Earth-friendly perennial grain crops, which grow with less fertilizer, herbicide, fuel, and erosion than grains planted annually, could be available in two decades, according to researchers writing in the current issue of the journal Science."
"Scientists say methyl bromide threatens the ozone layer, and its alternative, methyl iodide, is a threat to workers and their families."
As drought blankets much of the western U.S. and Canada, so do grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, and other associated bugs. The cyclical insect infestations, which are occurring in pockets in every state west of the Mississippi and in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, range from light to very severe.
"The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a federal judge had erred in prohibiting the planting of Monsanto’s genetically modified alfalfa seed until a federal government agency completed a detailed environmental review."
Small-scale farmers who want to grow and sell meat locally have been hampered by federal regulation of slaughterhouses. Now mobile slaughterhouses are helping those farmers get back in the game.
"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."
"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."
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.
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