From February 2015 to February 2016, unemployment remained higher in nonmetropolitan areas. The rural heartland did better than the South or the eastern coalfields. [node:read-more:link]

Data from the 2007 and 2012 Agricultural Censuses show that farmers who market food directly to consumers have a greater chance of remaining in business than similarly sized farms who market through traditional channels.

While farmers who directly market to consumers are more likely to continue farming than those who do not, their businesses expand at a slower rate. [node:read-more:link]

This proposed rule would create greater consistency in organic livestock and poultry practices. AMS has determined that the current USDA organic regulations (7 CFR Part 205) covering livestock health care practices and living conditions need additional specificity and clarity to better ensure consistent compliance by certified organic operations and to provide for more effective administration of the National Organic Program (NOP) by AMS. [node:read-more:link]

As the reality of human-caused climate change has become harder to deny, opponents of climate action have adopted a new talking point. Replacing fossil fuels with clean energy, they say, would devastate the American economy, sending electricity prices through the roof, forcing people to abandon their cars and putting millions of people out of work. [node:read-more:link]

This study presents roadmaps for each of the 50 United States to convert their all-purpose energy systems (for electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) to ones powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). The plans contemplate 80–85% of existing energy replaced by 2030 and 100% replaced by 2050. C [node:read-more:link]

This is a story we are all being fed. A story about overalls, rich soil and John Deere tractors scattering broods of busy chickens. A story about healthy animals living happy lives, heirloom tomatoes hanging heavy and earnest artisans rolling wheels of cheese into aging caves nearby.  More often than not, those things are fairy tales. A long list of Tampa Bay restaurants are willing to capitalize on our hunger for the story. “Well, we serve local within reason.”  What makes buying food different from other forms of commerce is this: It’s a trust-based system. [node:read-more:link]

The green tractor trundling across a Manitoba field with an empty cab looks like it’s on a collision course with Matt Reimer’s combine—until it neatly turns to pull alongside so he can pour freshly harvested wheat into its trailer. The robot tractor isn’t a prototype or top-of-the-line showpiece. It’s an eight-year-old John Deere that the 30-year-old Mr. Reimer modified with drone parts, open-source software and a Microsoft Corp. tablet. All told, those items cost him around $8,000. [node:read-more:link]

Hope is fading that the Iowa Legislature can agree on funding statewide water quality programs in the final days before the 2016 session adjourns.   An Iowa Senate subcommittee approved a bill raising the state sales tax by three-eighths of 1 cent, which would generate about $180 million starting next year. About 60 percent of that revenue would be directed to cleaning up Iowa's polluted waters.  But Democratic and Republican Senate leaders soon after said that a tax hike has virtually no chance of winning approval this year. [node:read-more:link]

S. Kidman and Co has named a new Chinese-Australian consortium as the preferred buyer for most of its iconic cattle station holdings.  The sale cannot proceed without the approval of the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) and the Treasurer Scott Morrison, who has extended the time available for his consideration of the sale beyond the expected July election. South Australia's Anna Creek Station, which is adjacent to the rocket testing range at Woomera, is not included in the sale. The value of the deal is $370.7 million. [node:read-more:link]

I had plenty of material to mull on during my two-hour drive home. The intersection between domestic and wild lives isn’t always harmonious. In the years that I’ve been ranching, I’ve seen depredations by wolves, bears and coyotes. Raising domestic livestock has given me a picture of what happens in the wild. I don’t want to see the picked-clean, nose-less skull of a calf still wedged in a cow’s birth canal, her vulva eaten away as she struggled to give birth. Yet I can image a cow elk or moose in the same situation. [node:read-more:link]