Agriculture

"A ProPublica-New Yorker story about black land loss was cited by the legislation’s sponsor before the near-unanimous vote."

"A new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule proposal would shrink enforcement responsibilities for farmers by narrowing the areas they must restrict human contact during pesticide applications, a move the agency is labelling easier management."

"The National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, and nine other groups sued Oct. 23 in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, accusing the federal government of breaking the law in its rollback of the 2015 Clean Water Rule."

"$300 billion. That’s the money needed to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming, according to United Nations climate scientists. ... The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moonshot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into an overlooked and over-exploited resource: the soil."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) inspector general is launching a probe into whether the agency withheld reports on climate change."

"The Trump administration on Tuesday moved to weaken protections for a threatened California fish, a change that would allow large amounts of water to be diverted from the San Francisco Bay Delta to irrigate arid farmland and could harm the region’s fragile ecosystem."

"A class of toxic chemicals known to have contaminated drinking water in many areas across the country is also presenting human health risks via another exposure method — our food supply."

"A federal court won’t allow the Trump administration to enforce its plans for managing sage grouse in Western states while litigation is still pending."

"In Iowa, researchers and farmers are discovering that planting strips of native prairie amidst farmland benefits soil, water, biodiversity, and more."