DuPont (DD.N) and Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) have won U.S. antitrust approval to merge on condition that the companies sell certain crop protection products and other assets.The asset sales required by U.S. antitrust enforcers were similar to what the companies had agreed to give up in a deal they struck with European regulators in March. [node:read-more:link]

For over 100 years, the Bandon Cheese Factory in Bandon, Oregon, was the pride of the town. The cheese brought in the tourists, the factory employed the locals, and the business kept the town afloat. Then 17 years ago disaster struck. A national competitor, Tillamook Cheese, bought the name, closed the factory, sent the workers home, and most of the surrounding dairy farms went bust.For nearly 10 years the town’s economy tumbled, the old building lay vacant until it was eventually torn down, and the land was turned into a parking lot. [node:read-more:link]

A recent study shows that data backed by professional opinions should push producers to change their ways of dealing with consumers, and let emotion and passion tell the ag story.

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Headlines from the past month reveal the disappointing truth about the state of Wisconsin’s dairy industry. “Dairy industry breathes a sigh of relief,” said one headline, celebrating a “return to normal” now that most of the farmers who were axed by Grassland Dairy Products have found new milk buyers. And what does “normal” look like? [node:read-more:link]

The Science Team of the Canadian Research Icebreaker CCGS Amundsen has cancelled the first leg of the 2017 Expedition due to complications associated with the southward motion of hazardous Arctic sea ice, caused by climate change. [node:read-more:link]

That means farms on the Great Plains and in many other parts of the country have had to grow in size and adopt new technologies to make ends meat. He can’t just farm 80 acres and make a living, he says. “I wish you could. I think life would be a lot simpler, easier,” Biesemeier says. “And there’d be a lot more people out here if that was the case.”About a hundred years ago, farming was the way a third of the country made its living. [node:read-more:link]

The goal is to avoid the sort of public backlash that rocked Monsanto in the late 1990s and still plagues agriculture two decades later. In the United States,  consumer skepticism of genetically modified crops has forced biotech companies into long, costly battles over issues such as whether these foods should be labeled; elsewhere in the world, the public outcry has prevented seeds from winning government approval. “It’s more about social science than science,” said Neal Gutterson, the vice president of research and development at DuPont Pioneer. [node:read-more:link]

2017 has been a great year for winning legislative battles against bills threatening to curb or eliminate municipal broadband networks. For example: Missouri: anti-muni bill defeated;Tennessee: co-op won, muni lost in compromise bill that became law;Virginia: anti-muni bill also defeated;Maine: anti-muni bill DOA, sponsors killed it within day of introducing it. Constituents were able to work without the threat of punitive legislation in several states. West Virginia and Georgia are among those states whose legislators have opted to work with communities. [node:read-more:link]

World coal production had its biggest drop ever last year, 230 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe), BP reported Tuesday in its 2017 Statistical Review of World Energy. China led the way with a 7.9 percent decline in coal production (140 mtoe), followed by the U.S. with a 19 percent drop (85 mtoe). For the first time, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest producer of non-hydro renewables. “The fortunes of coal appear to have taken a decisive break from the past,” BP’s chief economist Spencer Dale said Tuesday. [node:read-more:link]