Agriculture

"Kansas farmer Larry Kepley is almost out of hope. After drought left the veteran wheat farmer with what he called the 'worst wheat harvest' he's ever known, the odds for next year's crop are looking just as grim.

Sun-baked fields are as hard as rock, and moisture levels deep into the soil are nearly nonexistent as drought persists throughout much of the U.S. southern Plains.

Federal ethanol subsidies are hardly dead. They are still a key controversy in climate change, air pollution, the automotive industry, agricultural markets, food prices, budget wars, and the 2012 presidential race. No wonder the media mob descending on Iowa for the Aug. 13 straw poll is getting a free banquet of PR pitches.

"Monsanto Co. is preparing to launch a genetically altered sweet corn, marking the global seed company's first commercial combination of its biotechnology with a consumer-oriented vegetable product."

"Federal officials said on Tuesday that they were investigating an apparent link between ground turkey meat and a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness that has so far killed one person in California and sickened at least 76 more people in 26 states."

"More than 15 years after a fertilizer bomb was used to blow up a government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, the federal government is proposing to regulate the sale and transfer of the chemical ammonium nitrate."

"Rich countries grabbing farmland in Africa to feed their growing populations can leave rural populations there without land or jobs and make the continent's hunger problem more severe, an environmental think tank said on Tuesday."

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Oluf Johnson and organic farmers like him can sue for damages from neighboring farmers who apply pesticides that drift beyond their fencelines.

Weeds in southern Missouri are becoming resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Some farmers now resort to chemical cocktails -- or even hoes.