Agriculture

"As climate change brings longer, more destructive fire seasons, the wine industry scrambles to protect vineyards from the dreaded taint of smoke."

"Water cuts aimed at farmers amid the West’s megadrought have set the stage for bitter legal and political fights over one of the most overlooked water uses—the right of water to remain in streams to sustain fish and endangered species, lawyers say."

"Numbers of the country’s carrion-loving birds dropped by over 97% in the 1990s. Now, a successful breeding scheme is giving them a boost".

"There was barely a buzz in the air as John Miller pried the lid off of a crate, one of several "bee boxes" stacked in eight neat piles beside a cattle grazing pasture outside Gackle, North Dakota. 'Nothing,' Miller said as he lifted a plastic hive frame from the box, squirming with only a few dozen bees."

"A divided federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed that parts of Kansas' "ag-gag" law - among the first laws in the nation restricting undercover animal rights activists - violates the First Amendment, upholding a permanent prohibition against the state enforcing the provisions."

"Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again."

"The Environmental Protection Agency will ban the use of a pesticide widely applied on food crops but linked to neurological damage in children, reversing one of the Trump administration’s most fraught public health decisions."

"Doctors in Haiti on Monday battled in makeshift tents to save the lives of hundreds of injured people, including young children and the elderly, outside hospitals overwhelmed by an earthquake that killed at least 1,419 people."

"The federal government on Monday declared a first-ever water shortage on the Colorado River, announcing mandatory cutbacks next year that will bring major challenges for Arizona farmers and reduce the water allotments of Nevada and Mexico."