Agriculture

"More than 15,000 mink in the United States have died of the coronavirus since August, and authorities are keeping about a dozen farms under quarantine while they investigate the cases, state agriculture officials said."

"In one of the day's biggest political flips, House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) solidly lost his bid for reelection after a 30-year career in Congress, and a few other seats on the committee were either lost or in jeopardy for Democrats."

"Vice-President Hamilton Mourao on Tuesday defended Brazil’s environmental policies, saying the country was working to protect the Amazon rain forest and adding nothing will change if Democrat Joe Biden wins the U.S. presidential election."

"Amazon fires this year are seriously threatening Indigenous territories in which isolated uncontacted Indigenous groups make their homes. Brazil has an estimated 100+ isolated Indigenous groups living within its borders, more than any other Amazonian nation."

"Some of the most popular products of biotechnology — corn and cotton plants that have been genetically modified to fend off insects — are no longer offering the same protection from those bugs. Scientists say that the problem results from farmers overusing the crops, and are pushing for new regulations.

These crops were the original genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. They weren't the first ones invented, but they were the first to be widely embraced by farmers, starting in the late 1990s.

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday finalized a rule that narrows the areas where farmers are required to limit human presence during the application of pesticides."

"The recent lawsuits filed against Corteva Inc. and Dow Chemical Co. in California are the beginning of an expected wave of toxic tort cases in the Golden State that take aim at the widely-used insecticide chlorpyrifos."

"As expected the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today issued a rule that would remove gray wolves (Canis lupus) from the protection of the Endangered Species Act."

"When the Trump administration finalized a key Clean Water Act rule last year, it slammed media outlets for citing federal data showing it would erase protections for more than half the nation's wetlands and 18% of streams."

"The farmworker parents of a girl with autism, obesity, and vision problems are suing Dow Chemical Co., Corteva, a California town, and two pesticide application companies, claiming that exposure to the powerful insecticide chlorpyrifos led to her significant health problems."