President-elect Donald Trump picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department on Wednesday, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.  Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years. [node:read-more:link]

Two power line projects that won federal approval Tuesday will give a big capacity boost to the Western energy grid, including power for up to 1 million homes from what’s on track to become the biggest wind farm in the U.S.  The TransWest Express project will help California meet its goal of getting half its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 by carrying up to 3,000 megawatts from the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farm in southern Wyoming. The new power lines would span 728 miles from the wind farm to southern Nevada, crossing northwest Colorado and all of Utah along the way. [node:read-more:link]

A ConAgra subsidiary pleaded guilty Tuesday and agreed to pay $11.2 million — including the largest criminal fine ever imposed for a foodborne illness in the United States — to resolve a decade-long criminal investigation into a nationwide salmonella outbreak blamed on tainted peanut butter. ConAgra admitted to a single misdemeanor count of shipping adulterated food. [node:read-more:link]

Is hydraulic fracturing — better known as fracking — safe, as the oil and gas industry claims? Or does the controversial drilling technique that has spurred a domestic energy boom contaminate drinking water, as environmental groups and other critics charge? After six years and more than $29 million, the Environmental Protection Agency says it doesn’t know. A new report said fracking poses a risk to drinking water in some circumstances, but a lack of information precludes a definitive statement on how severe the risk is. [node:read-more:link]

When dairy farmers Gray and Vicki Eatwell purchased a block of farming land just outside the tiny west coast village of Whataroa in New Zealand, the real-estate agent gestured vaguely at a cliff of striking, green-tinged rock on the border of their property at Gaunt Creek. “She said: ‘That’s the alpine fault, the meeting of the Australian and Pacific plates’,” says Gray Eatwell. “But we thought no more of it, locals were blasé about it. I had no idea my whole life would become about that rock.” With one quiet pub and only a few hundred residents, Whataroa is an easy place to overlook. [node:read-more:link]

Iowa's average farmland value declined for the third year in a row, down 5.9 percent to $7,183 an acre over the past year. It's the first time since the 1980s farm crisis that land values have fallen three straight years, according to an Iowa State University report. Despite values tumbling, chances are low that Iowa will face a replay of the devastating farm crisis, said Wendong Zhang, an ISU assistant economics professor who leads the university's annual farmland survey. Average Iowa farmland values are now 17.5 percent lower than the historic high set in 2013 at $8,716 an acre. [node:read-more:link]

Teenagers' use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco declined significantly in 2016 at rates that are at their lowest since the 1990s, a new national study showed.  But University of Michigan researchers cautioned that while these developments are "trending in the right direction," marijuana use still remains high for 12th-graders.The results derive from the annual Monitoring the Future study, now in its 42nd year. [node:read-more:link]

The number of babies born with drug withdrawal symptoms from opioids grew substantially faster in rural communities than in cities, a new study suggests. Newborns exposed to opioids in the womb and who experience withdrawal symptoms after birth (known as neonatal abstinence syndrome) are more likely to have seizures, low birthweight, breathing, sleeping and feeding problems.The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, highlights a dramatic and disproportional rise in opioid-related complications among rural pregnant women and their infants. [node:read-more:link]

DuPont recently received registration approval from the Environmental Protection Agency for DuPont Lumisena fungicide seed treatment, the newest member of the DuPont seed applied technology portfolio. Lumisena fungicide seed treatment improves crop establishment and stand uniformity by controlling phytophthora in soybeans and downy mildew in sunflower crops. In DuPont research trials, soybean seed protected with Lumisena fungicide seed treatment, which has a favorable environmental profile, had 32 percent less Phytophthora sojae incidence than untreated seed. [node:read-more:link]

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced on the second anniversary of the Craft New York Act, the number of farm distilleries has nearly doubled since the law was implemented. This growth is a direct result of the Craft New York Act, which took effect Dec. 13, 2014 and provided significant benefits to farm distillers. [node:read-more:link]