International workers are the backbone of the Seaside Farm Market in the remote northern Outer Banks town of Corolla. Only 500 people live there, but up to 50,000 visit every week in the summer.But for the first time in 23 years, the family-owned produce and seafood market didn’t open this summer. Owners Bill and Julie Grandy weren’t able to get the H-2B visas they needed to bring in the workers from Mexico they’ve employed for years.They didn’t get a single local applicant for jobs advertised at $15 per hour, Bill Grandy said, calling Corolla a “black hole” for local labor. [node:read-more:link]

The G20 nations provide four times more public financing to fossil fuels than to renewable energy, a report has revealed ahead of their summit in Hamburg, where Angela Merkel has said climate change will be at the heart of the agenda. The authors of the report accuse the G20 of “talking out of both sides of their mouths” and the summit faces the challenge of a sceptical US administration after Donald Trump pulled out of the global Paris agreement. [node:read-more:link]

The number of dairy farms in Vermont continues to decline, with around 805 in business this spring. While large farms, with more than 700 cows, are a growing sector of the dairy economy, small operations with fewer than 200 animals still make up 80 percent of the state’s dairy farms.It’s challenging for small farms to stay in business as costs increase and the price of fluid, non-organic milk fluctuates, but some have found a way, including Silloway Farms in Randolph Center. They figured expanding would mean expenses. [node:read-more:link]

Central California's largest rendering plant is overwhelmed by the number of cows that died during a June heat wave, so officials are allowing dairy farmers to bury or compost hundreds of carcasses. The unusual run of heat last month — including nine straight days of triple-digit temperatures — and a mechanical malfunction at Baker Commodities have contributed to the overload at the plant

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In 2013, the Chinese firm Shuanghui received wide public attention when it purchased U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods for a record $4.7 billion.In an overlooked part of the deal, Shuanghui also acquired more than 146,000 acres of farmland across the United States, worth more than $500 million, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. The deal made Shuanghui, now the WH Group Limited, into one of the biggest foreign owners of U.S. [node:read-more:link]

For many years, environmental and other interest groups have filed lawsuits to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct rulemakings on a variety of issues. During President Barack Obama's administration, his EPA faced sharp criticism for a seeming willingness to readily settle with those groups on such lawsuits, resulting in new rules being drafted. Now, the EPA reportedly is moving in a different direction. The chairmen of five different Congressional committees that conduct oversight of EPA last week asked new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Rural hospitals are nearly three times more likely than urban hospitals to lack a rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. That could lead to consumer confusion about the quality of care those facilities offer, UNC researchers say. [node:read-more:link]

Kathy Bartlett watched helplessly this spring as Kentucky lawmakers cut back on mine safety inspections and replaced them with coaching sessions on miners' safety habits. [node:read-more:link]

The N.C. House and Senate agreed to restore the solar compromise provisions of a reform bill on renewable energy regulation and cut a proposed wind moratorium from four years to 18 months. Duke Energy, a principal in the more than nine months of negotiations that led to the original House version of the "Competitive Energy Solutions for NC" act, welcomed the final result.The bill establishes a bidding procedure initiated by Duke for new solar construction and commits the company to seeking 2,660 megawatts worth of new solar projects over the next 45 months. [node:read-more:link]

The California Supreme Court refused to consider a challenge by business groups of the state's cap-and-trade law, a ruling that environmentalists hailed as ending a legal fight that had cast a cloud over the program. The state supreme court did not issue a written opinion on the program itself but declined take up the case on appeal from a lower court. California's program to cap emissions and trade carbon permits is a crucial component of a broader effort to reduce the state's output of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the end of the decade. [node:read-more:link]