Rep. Sandy Crawford, R-Buffalo, ensured future GOP control a southwest Missouri Senate seat by defeating Democrat Al Skalicky in a special election Tuesday to succeed Lt. Gov. Mike Parson. Crawford had been elected four times to the Missouri House. [node:read-more:link]

Could any of our communities actually survive on local food alone? Could we ever get to a point where local food makes up most of our diets and where local farmers are successfully supplying that? The more I study this, the more I realize it would be pretty darn tough, if not impossible. But, being an apartment dweller who hasn't had the opportunity to spend much time on farms, I wanted to talk to some real farmers to find out if this rang true from their perspective. Were they supporting themselves with their farm income? [node:read-more:link]

Walmart announced its intent to build a dairy processing plant to supply its own store-brand milks back in March 2016; as a result, Dean Foods stock dropped 12 percent. Today, on reports that the Walmart plant, which is estimated to serve 600 stores (out of its 4,100+ stores in the US), will open soon, Dean Foods' stock price took another hit, declining a bit over 20%. [node:read-more:link]

You've heard that American agriculture loves trade. And it's easy to see why: Under NAFTA, American farmers have quadrupled their exports to Canada and Mexico and the two nations rank second and third, after China, as markets for U.S. farm goods. "American agriculture is virtually always a winner when trade agreements remove barriers to U.S. [node:read-more:link]

After the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, other nations launch 27 separate negotiations to undercut U.S. exporters. The decision to pull out of the trade deal has become a double hit on places like Eagle Grove. The promised bump of $10 billion in agricultural output over 15 years, based on estimates by the U.S. International Trade Commission, won’t materialize. [node:read-more:link]

In demand by multinational retailers and food producers, Inscatech and its agents scour supply chains around the world hunting for evidence of food industry fraud and malpractice. In the eight years since he founded the New York-based firm, Weinberg, 52, says China continues to be a key growth area for fraudsters as well as those developing technologies trying to counter them. “Statistically we’re uncovering fraud about 70 percent of the time, but in China it’s very close to 100 percent,” he said. [node:read-more:link]

A record-breaking, New Jersey-sized dead zone was measured by scientists in the Gulf of Mexico this week—a sign that water quality in U.S. waterways is worse than expected.The Gulf of Mexico hypoxic or low-oxygen zone, also called a dead zone, is an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life. [node:read-more:link]

Myers and his colleagues wanted to quantify what those changes might mean for people around the world. To do this, they built a new database detailing the foods people in each country eat and the nutrient content of those foods. The database lists the "per capita consumption of 225 foods for 152 different countries." It also accounts for differences in diets in each country based on age and gender. The database allowed them to calculate the number of people within each country that aren't getting enough of certain nutrients. [node:read-more:link]

The bill to extend California’s cap-and-trade program through 2030, which was signed recently by Gov. Jerry Brown, included the repeal of a controversial fee charged to rural landowners for fire protection. [node:read-more:link]