In Missouri, advocates quietly defeated another bill that would have created hurdles for municipal broadband providers. In Tennessee, a new law gives electric cooperatives the authority to go into the broadband business in their service areas.  Unlike battles occurring in Virginia and Tennessee between activists and large communication companies, the struggle in Missouri didn’t seem to attract a lot of attention. [node:read-more:link]

Chinese state-owned Sinochem and ChemChina are in merger talks to create the world's biggest industrial chemicals firm, to be headed by Sinochem chief Ning Gaoning, four people with knowledge of the negotiations said. [node:read-more:link]

While the situation varies from species to species and state to state, sellers of noncommodity pork, beef, and chicken agree: there simply aren't enough facilities to humanely and safely kill their animals. The numbers are stark. In 1967 there were 9,627 livestock (cattle, calf, hog and sheep) slaughtering establishments in the U.S. That same year, Congress passed the Wholesome Meat Act, requiring producers to use a USDA-inspected facility if they sell meat across state lines. A mass consolidation of the meat industry followed. Today, commodity meat is dominated by large companies. [node:read-more:link]

Two of farmers’ most powerful Republican advocates in the Senate slammed President Donald Trump’s proposal Tuesday to slash crop insurance, warning those and other budget cuts would badly wound one of the president’s most loyal constituencies. Voters who live in rural areas gave Trump a 61-34 percent advantage over Democrat Hillary Clinton in November, according to network exit polls. Kansans voted overwhelmingly for Trump, by 56-36 percent.Kansas Sens. [node:read-more:link]

Wisconsin’s environmental protection agency has authorized a Georgia timber company to fill more than 16 acres of Monroe County wetlands in order to build a $65 million frac sand facility.Meteor Timber, one of the largest private landowners in Wisconsin, has proposed building a processing and loading facility along Interstate 94 near the town of Millston to dry and ship frac sand the company will mine from a nearby site it acquired in a 2014 purchase of nearly 50,000 acres.The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on Friday granted the company a permit allowing it to fill the wetlands, [node:read-more:link]

The Federal Communications Commission voted to start dismantling 2015 rules that regulated internet service providers the same way as utilities. So what does that mean for your internet access? The answer to that question will take months to hash out.   The debate swirls around two related issues: whether the internet is a public utility, and how (or if) to ensure a concept known as net neutrality. Net neutrality is the framework for an internet in which all data is treated equally. [node:read-more:link]

In recent weeks, on the U.S. side of the border with Canada, much noise has been made about a festering dispute with our Canadian neighbors over ultra-filtered milk in U.S.-Canadian dairy trade. Ultra-filtered milk is condensed skim milk; a high protein, fat adjusted, reduced cost ingredient, used to fortify cheese and yogurt products. It did not exist at the time the North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA) was signed. [node:read-more:link]

As USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue outlined major department budget cuts, including a 10 percent overall reduction in personnel, representing 5,263 staff - 973 of them Farm Service Agency positions – for 2018, he didn’t mince words.  Perdue said. “I just don't think it's moral to continue to kick a $20 trillion debt down to our grandchildren without any relief. Overall farm bill spending would be cut $240 billion over a 10-year period. Approximately $46 billion of those reductions would come from agriculture programs – while the other $194 billion would be slashed from the nutrition programs. [node:read-more:link]

The ERS Rural Manufacturing Survey is linked to employment records to examine the relationship between survival and plant- and community-level factors from 1996 to 2011. [node:read-more:link]

State milk regulators requested that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration work with them to enforce the proper use of milk and milk product labeling terms, especially those meant to distinguish between real dairy products and plant-based imitators – a development the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) hailed as “the strongest statement yet that the abuse of dairy terms has gone too far.”“It’s time for FDA to work with state agencies in defending standards of identity for dairy products,” said Beth Briczinski, NMPF vice president of dairy foods and nutrition. [node:read-more:link]