Land O’Lakes, Inc. is calling on innovators from the tech industry to enter the Land O’Lakes Prize: Drone Challenge, a crowdsourcing competition designed to develop proposed solutions that enable scalable, autonomous drone usage in precision agriculture. A prize of $140,000 will be awarded to a grand prize winner who is found to meet all the requirements of the challenge, and two $5,000 prizes are available to two runners up. Winners will retain intellectual property rights to the solutions they develop to help farmers use drone technology more effectively. [node:read-more:link]

The Canadian government said Wednesday it will permit the sale of fresh and frozen raw ground beef treated with irradiation.  [node:read-more:link]

An immigration related bill opposed by many Idaho farm groups has been amend ed and reintroduced in the Idaho Legislature. The new legislation initially appears to be more palatable to farm groups. The original legislation, House Bull 76, sought to prevent so-called sanctuary cities from being established in Idaho. But it also included a provision that ag groups believe would have required law enforcement officers to hold anyone arrested for up to 48 hours for further checks if they could not prove legal residence. [node:read-more:link]

California dairy co-ops and milk producers have a lot to evaluate in USDA’s recommended proposal for establishing a federal milk marketing order for the state, which has long operated under a state order. The biggest difference in the two is that California’s order regulates all milk prices, and all processors must pay those minimum prices established for different utilizations. [node:read-more:link]

Today there are no more coal trains. But Joliet is not among the scores of coal plants that have closed in recent years. Instead, it burns natural gas. A number of coal plants nationwide have converted to natural gas, a move that uses much of the same infrastructure but involves different economics, less pollution and fewer workers. Unlike the coal plant which ran nearly around the clock, the Joliet plant, owned by NRG, now fires up and down more frequently depending on demand and profitability. The plant sometimes goes weeks or months without operating. [node:read-more:link]

Flood events are becoming more intense across the United States, affecting the physical and economic stability of communities and threatening human lives and delicate ecosystems. Every part of the country is vulnerable to losses from increased flooding; in the past five years, all 50 states have experienced flood events. Federal, state, and local entities share the responsibility for weather-related disaster preparedness and response. This series of fact sheets examines the flood risks, mitigation efforts, and associated costs for states. [node:read-more:link]

Evidence-based policymaking is the systematic use of findings from program evaluations and outcome analyses (“evidence”) to guide government policy and funding decisions. By focusing limited resources on public services and programs that have been shown to produce positive results, governments can expand their investments in more cost-effective options, consider reducing funding for ineffective programs, and improve the outcomes of services funded by taxpayer dollars. [node:read-more:link]

States have regained much of the fiscal and economic ground they lost in the Great Recession, but not all have fully rebounded, despite more than seven years of recovery. Some states are in a stronger position than others as they try to gauge how long the economic recovery will last and how President Donald Trump’s promises of action on federal taxes, trade, and health insurance could affect their finances. The slow pace of tax revenue growth has left many with little or no wiggle room in their budgets. [node:read-more:link]

The battle to legally grow, sell, buy and smoke pot in California has been a long one.  Voters in the state ushered in medical marijuana 20 years ago, but took until last fall to approve a plan to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana. Now, California officials are faced with setting rules for a product that has been outlawed by the federal government since the 1930s — a challenge that lawmakers and regulators in the other states that chose some form of marijuana legalization in the November election also are confronting. [node:read-more:link]

In Wyoming, Republican Gov. Matt Mead is counting on a state-funded research center set to open this year to find a way to produce energy from coal without releasing carbon dioxide into the environment. In Kansas, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is eyeing new wind farms to bring jobs and economic growth. And in Ohio, Republican Gov. [node:read-more:link]