Agriculture

"The video shows corn being harvested against an orange sky as a pianist plays a somber tune."

New undercover videos of cruel treatment of pigs in a facility raising them for meat raised questions that resonated across the US meat industry.

"It’s the kind of scenario that might evolve in Hollywood: A college professor detects drug-resistance genes collecting in local wetlands, where they survive for weeks and are spread far and wide by seabirds.

But the discovery of extra-hardy DNA flourishing on the edge of San Diego isn’t science fiction. It’s the result of research by David Cummings, a microbiologist at Point Loma Nazarene University.

"Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say."

"Some of the main proposals in a draft text for negotiation at a U.N. sustainable development conference next month are being watered down at informal talks in New York, observers said on Tuesday, heightening fears the summit will fail to deliver."

"WASHINGTON -- Biotechnology's promise to feed the world did not anticipate 'Trojan corn,' 'super weeds' and the disappearance of monarch butterflies."

"Get ready for the heat. Scientists at Stanford University in California and Purdue University in Indiana say global warming is going to hit hard in Corn Belt states where it most matters -- the corn market. The study, financed by the U.S. Department of Energy, says that the corn market will be walloped in the coming years by climate change."

The US Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services agency, at farmer request, kills predators that may harm farm animals. But critics say it does serious harm to non-target species and uses needlessly cruel and indiscriminate methods.