Agriculture

"Is the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load and its cleanup deadline enforceable? The answer is complicated."

"A lobbyist turned senior Agriculture Department official repeatedly shared information with her former industry on policy and enforcement. “It’s highly inappropriate conduct,” said one ethics expert."

"Swarms of desert locusts have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into eastern and northern Kenya, posing a threat to food production and grazing land, its agriculture minister said on Friday."

"TAOS, N.M. — Twice a day, every day, Vicente Fernandez walks along the banks of the Rio Fernando, inspecting the river that has shaped his valley’s fortunes for generations."

"EPA continues to approve pesticides that have been banned in other countries or identified by its own scientists as possibly causing cancer, a group critical of farm chemicals said."

"Environmentalists and politicians worry Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts could be weakened, if not doomed, days after the federal official overseeing that work called an agreement to reduce water pollution an “aspirational” goal and not rules to be enforced."

"In a desert far from any city, farmers use groundwater to grow lush green hay. The hay fattens livestock all over the world. But there's a big problem: The water is drying up."

"Some farm groups and farm-state lawmakers expressed anger at the Trump administration Thursday over final ethanol rules that they said failed to uphold the president’s promises to the industry."

"The U.S. is weighing in on Bayer AG ’s side in its appeal of the first, and so far only, federal jury verdict finding the company’s Roundup weed killer causes cancer."

"EPA today proposed new restrictions on the use of the weedkiller atrazine, a widely used agricultural chemical. But environmentalists say EPA's plan weakens protections and would allow 50% more of the endocrine-disrupting herbicide linked to birth defects and cancer to end up in waterways."