As Americans gear up to eat more than 40 million pounds of turkey this month, a handful of U.S. senators are calling for stronger Department of Agriculture oversight to reduce pathogens in poultry. Their push follows a recent government report that found poultry products – such as chicken and turkey
Authorities this month issued recall alerts affecting hundreds of thousands of pounds of food, including thousands of pounds of chicken contaminated with potentially deadly – and costly – bacteria.
Researchers say that food prices may double nearly every seven years as the world's population soars toward 9 billion people and demand sharply increases. Researchers covered food demand, along with other topics, at the iSEE Congress 2014 sustainability conference this week.
The amount of money that the government spends on expensive crop insurance subsidies has long come under criticism. This month, a federal report found that small cuts to premium subsidies could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. The findings come as the national debt soars near $1
Farming, once again, is one of the country's deadliest jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released preliminary occupational fatality data this week, revealing that farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers have the eighth-highest workplace fatality rates.
The EPA’s proposed “Waters of the United States” rule would add to the Clean Water Act by defining whether a water body is – or is not – protected by the act. The public has until Oct. 20 to formally comment on the proposed rule. So far, the rule has received nearly 6,000 comments. Hundreds of other
More than a dozen potentially hazardous food products were recalled last month, federal food-safety agencies announced. Overall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced six recalls for the month of August. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, an
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as "SNAP," takes up about 80 percent of the 2014 Farm Bill, a chunk worth between $70 and $80 billion a year. While the program helps provide groceries to tens of millions of Americans, a recent report found that the program may be s
Each summer, hundreds of seasonal workers leave their homes in Texas and Mexico and travel more than 1,000 miles north to work in the corn fields of central Illinois. Many of those hundreds make their way to Rantoul, a village of about 13,000 people in Champaign County and the summer home of the Uni
During the 2013 planting season, U.S. farmers had nearly two dozen different crop insurance policies to sort through when deciding how to best protect themselves from losses caused by bad weather, price drops and other perils. A Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting analysis revealed that two o
Ten years ago, U.S. farmers who chose to insure their crops from weather disasters and market fluctuations received a combined total of about $3.2 billion in insurance payouts in a year. Those payouts have steadily increased by billions of dollars since then, leaving some skeptics arguing that the i
A government report from last month revealed that most experts foresee water shortages within the next decade. Yet, studies show that countless of gallons of water are currently wasted every day by an aging and inefficient infrastructure.
