Agriculture

"From Florida to New Jersey, workers and doctors are worried about more outbreaks during the summer harvest."

"A controversial flood control and drainage project in Mississippi that EPA vetoed more than a decade ago is aggravating old tensions among environmental groups, lawmakers and agricultural groups in the Magnolia State as the Trump administration plans its next move."

"Titanic swarms of desert locusts resembling dark storm clouds are descending ravenously on the Horn of Africa. They're roving through croplands and flattening farms in a devastating salvo experts are calling an unprecedented threat to food security. On the ground, subsistence planters can do nothing but watch — staring up with horror and at their fields in dismay."

"Three states that ask the EPA every year for permission to use a pesticide proven to harm bees are using emergency exemptions as a backdoor way to evade pesticide rules, an environmental group argues."

"Oil, logging, mining, and grazing will be the priorities of national forests and grasslands, with expedited environmental oversight, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue told the U.S. Forest Service Friday."

"In the midst of uprisings against police brutality across the U.S., Iowa legislators quietly passed a bill on Friday to increase penalties for animal rights activism that has targeted the factory farming industry. Debates in both the state House and Senate were followed rapidly by votes in favor of the legislation. The bill now awaits the governor’s signature."

"The world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned as it urged governments to act swiftly to avoid disaster."

"In a remote area of Maine, the Wakeman family maintains the traditions of island shepherding, the cycles of which have been largely unchanged for centuries."

"Three miles off the coast of Maine, in a remote area northeast of Acadia National Park, lies a cluster of islands — including Little Nash Island, Big Nash Island and Flat Island — populated only by sheep.

"The landscape where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet is withering again as the pandemic persists."

"For five years, Zay Lopez tended vegetables, hayfields and cornfields, chickens and a small flock of sheep here on the western edge of Colorado's Grand Valley—farming made possible by water from the Colorado River."