In a bid to make up for a shortfall of high-quality nutritious food, some Canadian food banks are growing their own produce — and even farming fish. The Mississauga Food Bank recently launched AquaGrow Farms, where tilapia is being raised in tanks and lettuce is raised through hydroponics, or without soil. [node:read-more:link]

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s proposal to let power cooperatives get into the broadband business looks like an improvement for Tennessee consumers. But, in my view, the proposal is mostly a bait and switch.  The plan, which the governor announced at a press conference last month, maintains strict limitations on the ability of public entities to improve their citizens’ broadband options. [node:read-more:link]

The Maryland Department of Agriculture and Irish agri-tech company Biomass Heating Solutions Limited, or BHSL, have committed nearly $3 million toward manure-to-energy technology that they hope will significantly reduce the impact of Murphy's chickens — and perhaps one day all Eastern Shore poultry — on the Chesapeake Bay.  "Our main objective is bird enhancement," BHSL project engineer James O'Sullivan said. "We want to completely diminish ammonium (from Murphy's chickens to the bay). [node:read-more:link]

A new study contradicts decades of thought, research and teaching on the history of corn cultivation in the American Bottom, a floodplain of the Mississippi River in Illinois. The study refutes the notion that Indian corn, or maize, was cultivated in this region hundreds of years before its widespread adoption at about 1000 A.D. [node:read-more:link]

This time, suspicion is being buttressed by some economists with a proposition not too dissimilar to Laughlin’s: that immigrants could sap America’s vitality by bringing inferior cultural traits from their dysfunctional home countries to erode American social norms. It’s an unsettling assertion. It is laid out with striking candor by Paul Collier, the noted British development economist from Oxford, in his 2013 book “Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World” (Oxford University Press). “Migrants bring their culture with them,” he wrote. [node:read-more:link]

Agricultural labor is not just an issue for farmers. For every job on the farm, there are two to three more supported in transportation, food processing, equipment and supply manufacturing, sales and marketing, and other fields beyond rural farm communities. The ongoing shortage of available seasonal farm labor and the uncertainty related to the legal status of the existing workforce has prompted many growers to attempt to use a federal temporary guest-worker visa program for agriculture, known as H-2A. [node:read-more:link]

An environmental group is suing the Trump administration for delaying an endangered-species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee.  The Natural Resources Defense Council says the U.S. Department of Interior broke the law by postponing the listing without public notice and comment. It was scheduled to take effect Feb. 10. But one day before that, the department put off the effective date until March 21 because of the administration's temporary freeze on new regulations. [node:read-more:link]

The Artic Apple, an apple that has been genetically modified to prevent browning, saw its first commercial harvest this past fall and is now being market tested in 10 Midwestern U.S. stores.  Rabobank analysts recognize that the Artic Apple could truly test consumers’ willingness to purchase a fresh, GM produce item which delivers a consumer-centric characteristic. The World Health Organization has repeatedly stressed the safety of GM foods, but opponents continue to put the pressure on leading U.S. [node:read-more:link]

President Trump signed his first piece of legislation on Tuesday, a measure that could presage the most aggressive assault on government regulations since President Reagan. The bill cancels out a Securities and Exchange Commission regulation that would have required oil and gas and mining companies to disclose in detail the payments they make to foreign governments in a bid to boost transparency in resource-rich countries. [node:read-more:link]