The Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is beginning to use a new tool this week to help staff implement conservation programs more smoothly.

Newsom campaigns in Iowa * NIH puts focus on rural suicide

U.S. dairy farmers are finally experiencing some price relief after four years of an economic downturn in which many farmers struggled to break even. But ongoing economic pressures will require farmers to leave no stone unturned as they seek to become more resilient.

Agriculture can play a key role in mitigating climate change, but more work is needed on methods of measuring the impact of changing farming practices.

Comments are due Nov. 21 on conservation practice standards.

The American Farm Bureau Federation is calling on USDA to reform its appeals process for wetland determinations, using a recent federal appeals court decision to show farmers are being treated unfairly.

A September 2006 outbreak of E.coli in 26 states that sickened more than 200 people and led to the deaths of three may have been caused by feral swine roaming on a central California spinach farm, according to a study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.