A farm group in northeastern Wisconsin announced plans on Wednesday to supply water to residents with tainted wells in Kewaunee County, where the practice of manure spreading — especially by large-scale farms with thousands of cattle — has been a contentious political topic.  In an unprecedented step, Peninsula Pride Farms will provide water and a subsidy for a system to treat it in selected cases — regardless of whether the source of contamination is from animal waste or another form of pollution. [node:read-more:link]

Not all the data are in just yet, but California is already banking on a lower gross value of its agricultural output for 2015. The California Department of Food and Agriculture collects reports from each of the county agricultural commissioners on crop output during the previous year. Several, but not all of the major crop-producing counties have submitted their reports. Of those that have, the numbers are disappointing and predictable. Citing U.S. [node:read-more:link]

At first, Sebastopol area resident Nancy Martin and her husband did not know what to make of the frequent booming noises they suddenly started hearing in mid-August.  Neither did their neighbors. “We were walking around the neighborhood and we’d run into people, and they’d say, ‘What’s that noise we’re hearing?’ ” Martin said. “And we would say, ‘I don’t know, maybe hunting.’ ” But the sounds were going off at very frequent intervals — sometimes as much as 20 per minute — and could last for 13 hours a day, Martin estimated. [node:read-more:link]

Researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology show catastrophic declines in wilderness areas around the world over the last 20 years. They demonstrate alarming losses comprising a tenth of global wilderness since the 1990s -- an area twice the size of Alaska and half the size of the Amazon. The Amazon and Central Africa have been hardest hit. [node:read-more:link]

While the U.S. egg industry surges toward what looks like a cage-free future, individual egg producers and the organization that represents more than 90 percent of them, the United Egg Producers (UEP), find themselves at a crossroads. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted that Iowa firms have an opportunity to make money by manufacturing equipment related to cage-free egg production. Vilsack said McDonald's and other large restaurant chains and other businesses have switched to cage-free eggs, and the demand is stacking up. This cage-free egg thing is going to be huge because all of these companies like McDonald's decided to announce at the same time they are going to use only cage-free eggs. "No one bothered to ask if we have enough cage-free eggs," he said. [node:read-more:link]

On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers. Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind. Instead, the dead heaps signaled the killer was less mysterious, but no less devastating. The pattern matched acute pesticide poisoning. [node:read-more:link]

Virginia dairy farmers have always endured price fluctuation in milk prices. But the latest downswing has seen milk checks shrink by 35 percent the past two years, with little improvement in sight. That’s why some dairy farmers welcomed news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 11 million pounds of excess cheese from private sources for use in food banks across the nation. [node:read-more:link]

California Democrats are taking further steps to advance the state’s ambitious climate-change agenda, agreeing to regulate methane emissions from landfills and dairy farms for the first time and approving $900 million in spending on environmental programs. The approval came in the final hours of the two-year legislative session Wednesday following a flurry of negotiations involving Gov. Jerry Brown, Democratic legislative leaders and the affected industries. [node:read-more:link]

EPSOM, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire dairy farmers say low milk prices and ongoing drought have contributed to the state losing 16 percent of those farms over the past eight months.

The state’s agriculture commissioner says 19 of the state’s 120 dairies have closed this year. The state had lost 10 dairies over the previous four years combined.

Federal agricultural prices list 100 pounds of milk as selling for $14.80 last month. That’s down from $23.40 in June 2014 and $16.90 in June 2015. [node:read-more:link]