Minnesota dairy farmers Amanda and Derek Zigan are still paying for a bold bet they made when dairy prices were flying high. The couple built a new barn equipped with state-of-the-art milking equipment, hoping to reduce their dependence on hired help, lower their vet bills and keep their cows healthier and more productive. Back in 2014, a local paper dubbed them Todd County, Minnesota’s first robotic farm.Then the bottom fell out of the dairy market. [node:read-more:link]

Land conservation modestly increases employment rates, a traditional indicator of economic growth, according to an analysis of New England cities and towns, led by scientists at Amherst College, Harvard Forest, the Highstead Foundation, and Boston University. [node:read-more:link]

A USDA senior adviser acknowledged “missed opportunities to engage stakeholders” on the department’s plan to move the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture outside the Washington, D.C., area, but said the relocations would benefit both employees and taxpayers. [node:read-more:link]

Environmental groups are suing the National Elk Refuge for business-as-usual elk feeding and failing to implement a 12-year-old plan. The environmental law firm Earthjustice — which has sued over Elk Refuge feeding before — filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club. [node:read-more:link]

The Maine legislature has approved a bill that would eliminate the state’s controversial “gross metering” rule for solar. The legislation, L.D.91, was introduced in January by State Rep. Seth Berry, R-Maine, to repeal a fee for solar customers that was enacted under the administration of Maine’s previous governor, Paul LePage. [node:read-more:link]

To the untrained eye, it looks like the major oil companies that helped get us into this whole climate mess — conglomerates like ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell — are starting to envision a world beyond fossil fuels. A few of them have launched their own campaigns charting a path to a greener future — and, surprisingly, even more have backed a carbon tax proposal. [node:read-more:link]

Something unusual is going on in the fledgling but fast-growing lab-grown meat industry. A technology that was developed to displace meat and end animal farming has, in the last couple of years, received a boost from an unlikely source: meat companies. Take Tyson Foods, the world’s second-largest processor and seller of beef, chicken, and pork. If you’ve ever eaten a hamburger or a chicken nugget in the United States, that cow or chicken was reasonably likely to have been slaughtered at a Tyson Foods processing plant. [node:read-more:link]

Outbreaks of African Swine Fever have taken a toll on China’s pork industry, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the US Dept. of Agriculture said in its China Livestock and Products Semi-Annual report. As of March 11, China has reported 115 outbreaks of ASF to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The outbreaks have occurred in every significant pork production region in China. [node:read-more:link]

That key question for agriculture remains unanswered: whether nutrient losses from farm fields collected and channeled through a manmade system of drainage are excluded as agricultural stormwater runoff or whether they are discharges of pollutants, subject to regulation and permitting under the CWA.  The Ninth Circuit decision from Hawai’i Wildlife Fundprovides for concern if the Supreme Court affirms the reasoning of the courts of appeal in the Hawai’i and South Carolina cases, decisively bringing indirect discharges under the purview of the CWA.  In light of this potential line o [node:read-more:link]

I won't mince words: Those photos of the floods in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa make me sick. The images bring to life what the flood's statistics, though impressive, leave abstract. It's one thing to be told that $400 million of cattle and other livestock have been killed, that agriculture losses are approaching $1 billion, that 13 bridges have been washed away and 200 miles of highway will need repair in Nebraska alone. But statistics can be mind-numbing. Seeing is believing. [node:read-more:link]