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A bill proposing a California version of the USDA's Rural Development agency would devote an economist to studying the impacts of SGMA.

From California to Georgia, farmers can’t find enough workers to harvest their crops or milk their cows. Combined with Congress’s decades-long failure to act on long-promised comprehensive immigration reform, the result is that U.S. consumers are paying more for a less-secure food supply as more production moves south of the Mexican border in search of farm labor.

The United Nations report concluding that 1 million species are at risk of extinction included some familiar advice for agriculture: Adopt more sustainable practices, preserve genetic diversity in seeds and animals, and involve more sectors, including the public, in the food system.

Brian Leahy spoke about activist scientists ruling on chlorpyrifos, the disconnect when pesticides are seen as evil and removing products without funding research to replace them.

Following an article linking a deadly fungal outbreak to a fungicide resistance in agriculture, one of the nation’s largest winemakers pulled fungicides from its vineyards, despite a lack of scientific evidence.

Dairy farmers considering whether to sign up for the new farm bill benefits should consider this: Milk prices are likely to remain relatively stagnant for several years due in part to consolidation that has made many farms less responsive to market signals.

Agricultural groups seeking to limit EPA’s jurisdiction over groundwater under the Clean Water Act are looking to a Supreme Court case for relief, but new developments in Hawaii could nix that opportunity.