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Legislative leaders are pouring more than $40 million into new or expanded programs aimed specifically at helping the economy of small-town Georgia. Fixing some of the economic ills that plague rural Georgia was always going to be a major theme of the 2018 General Assembly session after both chambers committed to dozens of hearings across the state last year to find out what they could do. The efforts are focused on counties losing population and jobs to cities, leaving behind areas with few prospects for economic growth. [node:read-more:link]

Newtrient would like to commend the Pennsylvania Senate for its passage of Senate Bill 799, which will open the door for dynamic, new technologies to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay, address Pennsylvania’s growing drinking water crisis and support Growing Greener initiatives. Many factors contribute to Pennsylvania’s water quality problem, including agricultural runoff from Pennsylvania’s long-standing livestock population. Livestock, however, provides viable solutions for the state’s complex water challenges. [node:read-more:link]

NOAA issued its three-month U.S. Spring Flood Outlook today, highlighting a moderate risk of flooding in the Ohio River Valley basin and lower Mississippi River where streamflows and soil moisture are well above normal after major flooding from recent heavy rainfall. Drought is forecast to persist or worsen in the southern and central Plains, Southwest and California, according to the NOAA forecast as warmer and drier-than-normal weather is likely to engulf the region this spring. [node:read-more:link]

Republican state lawmakers wrapped up three weeks of annual budget hearings by tearing into Governor Tom Wolf’s administration for several hours straight. The crime, as they see it? Making what the GOP alleges is an unconstitutional deal to close this fiscal year’s budget deficit. When they ended a long, bitter budget standoff in October, lawmakers left a $300 million hole in their revenue plan for Wolf to fill with money from the state’s special funds. GOP lawmakers had pushed hard to tap the funds in lieu of new spending, and expected Wolf to reroute existing money. [node:read-more:link]

New Mexico’s governor vetoed a bill that would have increased the registration fee pet food manufacturers pay to the state. The vetoed House Bill 64 would have raised the fee from US$2 to US$100 for each pet food product sold in New Mexico. The revenues from the higher fees would be used to fund dog and cat sterilization programs for low-income residents of the state. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed Mike Naig, who had served as Northey’s deputy at IDALS since 2013, to lead the department. The new Iowa secretary of agriculture brings a lifetime of relevant experience to the department’s top job. Naig grew up on a family farm near Cylinder. He helped his father and uncle run their crop and livestock farm and still has involvement in that enterprise. [node:read-more:link]

The move has drawn opposition from both Democratic and Republican leaders in nearly every affected state and mobilized the environmental community. From California to New York, lawmakers are considering ways to block the proposal, which would open vast new stretches of federal waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as in the Arctic and eastern Gulf of Mexico, to oil and gas exploration and extraction. They are considering laws to block the construction of pipelines or infrastructure in state-controlled waters that are needed to support drilling projects. [node:read-more:link]

State lawmakers introduced several bills this year aiming to improve access to health care in rural Georgia. Six rural Georgia hospitals closed since 2013 and the state’s high rate of uninsured means many people in rural communities lack health coverage. The House Rural Development Council, created in 2017 to study the problem, traveled across the state last year find out how rural communities are coping with insufficient broadband connectivity, economic development, health care and other deficiencies. [node:read-more:link]

German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval for its $62.5 billion buy of U.S. peer Monsanto, the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry. [node:read-more:link]

The $1.3 trillion government spending bill expected to be released Wednesday includes a remedy for the so-called grain glitch in the Republican tax law that gives farmers lucrative incentives to sell their products to agricultural cooperatives over other types of businesses, two House GOP aides familiar with the negotiations said. [node:read-more:link]