City dwellers really do have it much better than rural inhabitants, at least when it comes to job opportunities in the 21st century. After looking at who’s working in urban and rural areas, the Federal Reserve found that the labor market began to recover earlier and improve much faster in cities than in the countryside. While there’s always been a gap, it’s become more severe during the current expansion. The yawning gap between city and country is most glaring in what’s known as the labor force participation rate. [node:read-more:link]

Consumers have moved to large lenders offering online transactions; community lenders left behind struggle.

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American farmers are having trouble navigating a financial maize. U.S. farm debt is the highest its been since the 1980s when the agriculture community was last in calamity. [node:read-more:link]

 A bill authored by State Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg) that would help address an animal importation issue facing Indiana today passed the Senate by a unanimous vote. Senate Bill 533 would require a person who transfers a domestic dog or cat from a foreign country to Indiana to provide an electronic or paper copy of the animal’s veterinary inspection or official health certificate to the recipient of the animal.According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), globally, dogs remain the principal source of human rabies infections. [node:read-more:link]

The California Department of Food and Agriculture has mailed more than 19,000 ballots to state cattle producers, urging them to vote on a referendum asking whether or not to establish the California Cattle Council.  If approved, the Council would perform research aimed at the development of best management practices to improve sustainability and efficiency; assist with regulatory compliance; and develop consumer education programs for California beef.
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 Beef producers in the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement enjoyed a surge in sales to Japan in January, as ranchers benefited from lower tariffs than their U.S. competitors. Beef imports from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Mexico, all of which have approved the trade pact, surged to 33,000 metric tons in January, up 56% from the previous year, according to Japan's Finance Ministry. [node:read-more:link]

Ashley Tyrner, founder and CEO of Farmbox Direct, is out to change how Americans eat. The service delivers fresh produce straight to your door, making healthy diets more accessible. "I had a really hard time having accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetablesthat were great, organic produce," Tyrner told TODAY's Jill Martin. [node:read-more:link]

As the Trump administration draws flak for how it’s running the Environmental Protection Agency, one critic is putting out charts like the one above to make his case. The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative’s Chris Sellers provided the above graphic and others to a Democratic-controlled House subcommittee that held a hearing last week on a drop in the EPA’s enforcement efforts. The chart shows how “civil judicial referrals” have slumped to a level last seen in 1976. [node:read-more:link]

Critics of the Green New Deal have attempted to smear its ideals, goals, and policies as dangerous “socialism,” displaying a deep skepticism of the government’s capacity to do good. But if ever a time called for dramatic democratic action, for thoughtful deliberation and policy development by our elected officials and our expert agencies, now is that time. Climate change is not just another environmental problem. Emerging impacts — floods, droughts, heat — provide only a taste of the anticipated devastation and its human and environmental costs. [node:read-more:link]

A new study published Thursday in the journal Science outlines the impacts warming waters are having on commercially important fish species.The world's fishing industry relies on what's called fisheries, the clusters of regional fish populations that people can catch economically. And on average, the researchers found that the numbers of fish in critical fisheries around the world have decreased by four percent since 1930.Fisheries located in the Sea of Japan and the North Sea were the worst off. They experienced as much as a 35 percent drop in their numbers. [node:read-more:link]