Agriculture

After an outbreak of drug-resistant salmonella in 2013 was traced to Foster Farms chickens, the Natural Resources Defense Council used the Freedom of Information Act to get records of the firm's food-safety violations. As a result of the pressure, Foster Farms says it has cleaned up its act and is using less antibiotics.

"Canadian beekeepers have filed a class action lawsuit against Bayer CropScience Inc. and Syngenta Canada Inc. claiming C$450 million ($414 million) in damages for negligence related to the use of neonicotinoid insecticides."

"PINK HILL, N.C. — On many mornings, as tobacco plants tower around her, Saray Cambray Alvarez pulls a black plastic garbage bag over her 13-year-old body to protect her skin from leaves dripping with nicotine-tinged dew."

"The cloud of insecticide that drifted from a neighbour's corn field onto the asparagus on Andrew and Melissa Dunham's central Iowa farm cast a shadow over their organic vegetable business."

"Perdue Farms says it has ditched the common practice of injecting antibiotics into eggs that are just about to hatch. And public health advocates are cheering. They've been campaigning against the widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture, arguing that it's adding to the plague of antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

"Wednesday is biofuel's big moment: The first of three commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants comes online in Iowa. It took years of tricky engineering to get to this point. But that may prove the easy part, for the fuel's promise as a climate solution hinges heavily on federal policy."

"A coalition of environmental and food-safety groups is asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to grant endangered species protection to the monarch butterfly, whose U.S. population, the groups say, last year fell to 90 percent below its 20-year average."

"The corn rows are high and tassled, pumpkins are gaining girth and, amid these signs the fall harvest is near, evidence is growing that farmers and others who live or work around pesticides are at greater risk for neurogenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease."

"In a sharp rebuke of state plans for a massive water tunnel system in Northern California, federal environmental officials say that the project would violate pollution standards and could worsen conditions for imperiled fish species."

"FARGO, N.D. — The furious pace of energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by a vast new movement of oil by rail, leading to millions of dollars in agricultural losses and slower production for breakfast cereal giants like General Mills."