On the east side of Detroit, 42-year-old Roquesha O’Neal is one potential target of cuts to SNAP. She relies on the program to take care of herself and her disabled, teenage son. She receives a monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) check worth $750 for her son and makes an additional $150 a month babysitting and doing odd jobs for neighbors. After rent and utilities, her family is left with about $500 a month to live on. Even with SNAP, putting food on the table can still feel like a full-time job: SNAP recipients only receive on average $1.40 a meal. [node:read-more:link]

There are few places better to see the effects of an intensifying drought than a hulking, 200-plus-acre complex just off of Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. This is the Joplin Regional Stockyards, one of the biggest in the country, selling more than 430,000 head of cattle in 2017 alone. Usually, they’ll have 800 to 900 cows on the block at weekly Wednesday sales. On July 11, they had double that. “Everybody's a little short on hay, everyone's a little nervous,” co-owner Skyler Moore said. “We're getting into some water issues in certain areas. [node:read-more:link]

A national farmers market advocacy group has stepped in to fund the processor’s operations for another month. The emergency funds will give markets across the country a few more weeks to figure out how to process SNAP once the Novo Dia Group ceases operations. The National Association of Farmers Market Nutrition Programs (NAFMNP) will provide 30 additional days of funding to Novo Dia, while advocates and farmers try to figure out a permanent solution to replace the processors’ services. [node:read-more:link]

o the delight of dog lovers, cities and states have begun passing laws to allow dogs to join patrons on restaurant and bar patios. Many diners have simply asked, “Wait, that was illegal?”Sure, the United States doesn’t have the rich history of outdoor dining of say, Paris, where pooches are almost as common as croissants at outdoor cafes. But when the weather is pleasant, it’s fairly common to see people settling in for an outdoor beer with their dog at their feet. And as U.S. [node:read-more:link]

A new study this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is relevant to an ongoing vindication process for saturated fats, which turned many people away from dairy products such as whole milk, cheese, and butter in the 1980s and ’90s. An analysis of 2,907 adults found that people with higher and lower levels of dairy fats in their blood had the same rate of death during a 22-year period. [node:read-more:link]

Following nine years of research and extensive public outreach, the State Water Resources Control Board today released a final draft plan to increase water flows through the Lower San Joaquin River and its tributaries—the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers—to prevent an ecological crisis, including the total collapse of fisheries.  Release of the third and final draft of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan update for the Lower San Joaquin River and Southern Delta, and an accompanying Substitute Environmental Document, follows a nine-year process during which the Board studied and a [node:read-more:link]

On July 2nd, a month after the Trump Administration imposed a twenty-five-per-cent tariff on steel imported from Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, Stuart Speyer sent a carefully worded letter to his customers. Speyer is the president of Tennsco Corporation, a “storage and filing solutions” manufacturer based outside of Nashville, in Dickson, Tennessee. ”Ninety-nine per cent” of the steel that Speyer buys, he recently explained to me, is manufactured by domestic suppliers, including Nucor. [node:read-more:link]

A story published recently by The Intercept, a news organization focused on investigative journalism, casts a spotlight on complaints raised by a former USDA inspector who believes she became sick from working around chemicals at a poultry plant. The article focuses on Jessica Robertson, who worked as an inspector in the Norbest turkey facility in Moroni, Utah, from 2002 until earlier this year. [node:read-more:link]

Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller was elected the president of the Southern U.S. Trade Association (SUSTA) at the organization’s annual board of directors’ meeting this week. The meeting was held in connection with the annual business meeting of the Southern Association of State Departments of Agriculture. SUSTA is made up of the Departments of Agriculture in 15 southern states and is chartered to facilitate exports of U.S. food and high value agricultural products by small to medium-sized companies in the region. [node:read-more:link]

The decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit earlier this week in Collins v. Mnuchin holding that the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is unconstitutional is an important development not only for the FHFA but also for the constitutionality of the CFPB.  The per curiamopinion in Collins almost guarantees that the Supreme Court will grant cert in the near future on whether the FHFA, the CFPB and similarly structured agencies are unconstitutional. [node:read-more:link]