You are viewing news tagged as 'agriculture'

Limited federal funds may mean cuts to local firefighting programs

May 14, 2013

Lance Okeson at the Boise Fire Dispatch office had a surprise visit from the secretaries of the U.S. Agriculture and Interior departments Monday, and they came with bad news.

Okeson is in charge of the fuels program for the Bureau of Land Management's Boise District. Agriculture Secretary...

Supreme Court rules for chemical giant in seed patent case

May 14, 2013

The Supreme Court today rebuffed an Indiana farmer's challenge to Monsanto Co.'s patents for its genetically modified soybean seeds that now permeate American agriculture.

In a unanimous ruling, justices held that the St. Louis chemical giant's patents remain in effect for seeds that were...

Carbon milestone a reminder of things to come

May 13, 2013

The Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed an ominous milestone yesterday when a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observatory on the Big Island in Hawaii registered 400 parts per million for the first time.

It's a concentration of CO2 that has not existed in the...

House farm bill cuts deeper than last year

May 13, 2013

The House farm bill would strip the Department of Agriculture of its authority to fund the installation of ethanol pumps at gas stations, as well as prohibit new permits that U.S. EPA requires for pesticides sprayed over water.

The 576-page chairman's mark, which was posted on the House...

BLM pressed in committee on fire, sage grouse and grazing

May 10, 2013

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who holds the reins in the House over Interior Department spending, urged the Bureau of Land Management yesterday to boost its focus on wildfire management as a means of protecting the imperiled sage grouse.

Republicans like Simpson have long called on the...

Mont. farmers adapt to climate change

May 10, 2013

While spring planting in Montana might be a little behind this year because of a particularly cold winter, in the last 60 years the state has experienced a warming trend, a study showed.

Wheat researchers from Montana State University documented the trend by looking at weather and crop...

New Interior secretary waiting for study on wild horses

May 9, 2013

New Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Tuesday that she is still undecided about how to handle a burgeoning wild horse and burro population that is eating more than half the horse budget at the BLM and sparking outrage among wild horse advocates.

Jewell said in an interview with The...

EPA to change the way it handles environmental justice complaints

May 6, 2013

U.S. EPA plans to change the way it investigates environmental justice complaints, recently releasing two policy papers that address long-standing criticism of the agency's Office of Civil Rights.

The papers target so-called Title VI complaints, which are named after a provision in the...

Report recommends steps for managing scarce water in parched N.M.

May 6, 2013

New Mexico will need to manage its increasingly scarce water supplies more carefully and more collaboratively if the state is to have a sustainable future, according to a report commissioned by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and released today.

The report details the need to restore New Mexico's...

Sequestration pushes conservation agency toward 'breaking point'

May 2, 2013

Sequestration has affected the federal government's ability to put in place conservation measures on farmland, according to several organizations that work closely with the Agriculture Department.

The effects of the across-the-board spending cuts on farmland conservation programs, which...

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