Salmon aren’t supposed to be swimming here. The lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens also are out of place.A 3-acre greenhouse, nearly twice the length of a football field, glows purple from its more than 1,100 LED grow lights — a sight that turns the heads of passing motorists on Interstate 94 at night. The lights, with cloud-based software, help mimic California’s Salinas Valley.Next door, the North Atlantic Ocean is replicated in a one-acre fish house. [node:read-more:link]

Awareness about food insecurity among college students, and even homelessness in some cases, has been expanding in the past few years. And on Monday, The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) will do their part, opening a food pantry for students. Other colleges and universities have opened similar ones in the past few years. They all operate different, and TCNJ’s will also be open to the local community.Starting off, it'll be open Mondays and Wednesdays for a few hours each day, offering non-perishable food and drinks. [node:read-more:link]

2016 was the best year on record for solar energy in the United States. A report from the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

CVR Energy Inc., backed by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, saved $189 million under the U.S. biofuels mandate last year. That’s largely thanks to a campaign he helped ignite to lower costs for compliance. CVR Energy, an independent oil refiner majority owned by Icahn Enterprises LP, spent $60 million on biofuel credits necessary to fulfill the mandate in 2018 -- a 76 percent drop from the company’s $249 million tab in 2017, a Feb. 21 regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows. [node:read-more:link]

Enacted at the end of last year, the new law legalizes industrial hemp (it must have a THC concentration level of below 0.3 percent), allowing for market-scale  cultivation and the interstate sale of products. In another important change for producers, the new farm bill allows hemp to be included in federal crop insurance.What is the role for states?Some may choose to serve as the primary regulatory authority of hemp production, by establishing a licensing system that conforms with federal guidelines and that gets approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [node:read-more:link]

This week, Senate Bill 57, sponsored by Republican legislators Brian Hill and Stephen A. Huffman, was introduced in the Ohio Senate. The bill aims to legalize hemp cultivation and processing in Ohio as well as legalize the sale of hemp-derived products like CBD oil. The state-level legislation follows on the heels of December’s signing of the 2018 federal farm bill, or the U.S. Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, which removed hemp from its illegal classification under the Controlled Substances  [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. agricultural trade surplus will shrink to $13.5 billion this fiscal year, the smallest in at least six years, as exports stagnate at $141.5 billion and imports tick upward to $128 billion, said the USDA in a quarterly forecast. Farm exports are a consistent bright spot in the U.S. trade picture and generate at least 20 cents of every $1 in farm receipts. [node:read-more:link]

The Department of Agriculture is projecting a $1.9 billion drop in exports this year, led by a decline in trade with China. While talks remain ongoing between China and the United States, USDA during its 95th annual Agricultural Outlook Forum Thursday predicted 2019 fiscal year exports at $141.5 billion. USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson told attendees China is expected to fall from the top market for U.S. exports in 2017, to the fifth largest market in 2019, pending the outcome of trade talks. [node:read-more:link]

The nation’s biggest coal-burning power companies paid a top lobbying firm millions of dollars to fight a wide range of Obama-era environmental rules, documents obtained by POLITICO reveal — shortly before one of the firm’s partners became President Donald Trump’s top air pollution regulator. Now that ex-partner, Bill Wehrum, is aggressively working to undo many of those same regulations at the EPA, where he is an assistant administrator in charge of issues including climate change, smog and power plants’ mercury pollution. [node:read-more:link]

A foreclosure case brought against a cattle operation in Corsica, S.D., has left potentially thousands of head of cattle in limbo between the feedlot and the slaughterhouse. The case was brought earlier this month by the First Dakota National Bank against Robert and Becky Blom. [node:read-more:link]