Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is fresh off a legislative session in which he signed nine bills aimed at supporting the clean energy sector. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott recently signed a tax exemption that solar installers say is essential to jump-starting the residential and commercial market in the Sunshine State. And in Iowa, where wind now accounts for 36 percent of the state's electricity generation, newly installed Gov. Kim Reynolds recently finished an energy plan that calls for growing the wind, biofuels and solar industries."For years, our fields have fed the world. [node:read-more:link]

Arkansas's pesticide regulators have stepped into the middle of an epic battle between weeds and chemicals, which has now morphed into a battle between farmers. Hundreds of farmers say their crops have been damaged by a weedkiller that was sprayed on neighboring fields. Today, the Arkansas Plant Board voted to impose an unprecedented ban on that chemical. [node:read-more:link]

It’s a growing problem: some of the vegetables for sale in farm markets may have come from a local grocery store. Farmers might resort to buying vegetables from outside sources — including Amish wholesale auction houses, other farms and grocery stores — to supplement booths, or at times when their own farms aren’t producing.In some instances, they’re pushed by the punishing need to fill a table every week come hell or high water.Granted, it’s not exactly a scandal. [node:read-more:link]

The Arkansas State Plant Board (ASPB) has voted to ban the sale and use of in-crop dicamba, with an exemption for pastureland. The decision came in a meeting Friday to consider an emergency rule on the herbicide.The Agriculture Council of Arkansas says the 9-5 vote Friday morning also calls for expediting enforcement of new penalties."The proposed rule is the first step in the process of establishing an emergency rule. [node:read-more:link]

Scientists are engaged in an increasingly bitter and personal feud over how much of the United States' power it can get from renewable sources, with a large group of scientists taking aim at a popular recent paper that claimed the country could move beyond fossil fuels entirely by 2055. In 2015, Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues argued that between 2050 and 2055, the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Historically, farmers of color and military veterans have not had the same access to or rates of participation in the programs administered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA); often this disparity has been due to insufficient or inadequate outreach to these communities. [node:read-more:link]

The New York State legislature has unanimously passed a measure that calls for the setting of statewide targets for energy storage. The bills, SB 5190 and AB 6571, direct that state’s Public Service Commission to develop an Energy Storage Deployment Program, including a storage procurement target for 2030. If the bill is signed into law by Gov. [node:read-more:link]

A couple in Washington State recently filed a lawsuit against Wheeling, Illinois-based Evanger’s Dog & Cat Food Company Inc., owned by Holly and Joel Sher, after one of their dogs was poisoned by pet food tainted with pentobarbital, a euthanasia drug. Nicole and Guy Mael of Washougal, Washington, filed the lawsuit against Evanger’s and Nutripack LLC, a pet food company owned by members of the same family, in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The couple is seeking a jury trial and class-action status for their complaint. [node:read-more:link]

North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler on Thursday responded to recent criticism by state auditors who say his agency's inspectors aren't tough enough on dairies when handling out grades on their milk.According to an audit released Wednesday, inspectors rarely took action when they noted repeated violations. In one case, for example, the inspector marked violations of the same two requirements for six successive inspections without suspending the dairy's permit to market its milk as Grade A.Troxler mostly spoke about what he called "inaccuracies" in the audit. [node:read-more:link]

To be able to build those tools, they first need to be intimately familiar with the substance and the microorganisms that tend to contaminate it. They'll sequence and analyze the DNA and RNA of dairy samples from Cornell's farm, as well as of all the microorganisms in environments milk tends to make contact with, including the cows themselves, from the moment it's pumped. Their tests will characterize what's "normal" for raw milk, so the tools they make can easily tell if something's wrong even if it's an unknown contaminant we've never seen before. [node:read-more:link]