The "Brexodus" — the British withdrawal from the EU — "is being felt particularly acutely in the agriculture industry, which relies heavily on manual laborers, especially from poor European countries like Romania and Bulgaria," says the New York Times. Thousands of foreign-born workers have left England, or have decided not to return to harvest-time jobs on farms or other industries.

In a joint letter, British farm groups urged the European Union to reauthorize use of the weedkiller glyphosate "for the maximum period possible." The European Commission has proposed a five-year extension of the license for glyphosate, and an EC committee could discuss the future of the herbicide at a meeting expected on Thursday, said news site Farming UK.

French shoppers will be able to tell at a glance if food products are healthy or not under a voluntary "Nutri Score" color code for food products, ranging from a dark green "A," for the best foods, to a red "E," for the worst, says Euractiv. The ministries of health, agriculture and economy jointly introduced the plan, saying it would allow nutritional value to be weighed as easily as price at the grocery store.

Bird flu will have a “meaningful impact” on turkey supplies in coming months, said the head of Hormel Foods, the second-largest turkey processor in the country, on Thursday. Chief executive Jim Snee said Hormel anticipated “large supply gaps” for its Jennie-O Turkey Store operations in the months ahead because of flock losses.

Up to $7 million will be paid in bonuses to "team members who continue to produce food during the Covid-19 outbreak," said Hormel Foods on Thursday. The money will be paid in July to employees at Hormel's meat and processed food plants and would follow a $4 million bonus paid in April. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Seven major food companies, with $124 billion in combined annual revenues, will work with growers around the world to reduce water use and pollution, said World Wildlife Fund and Ceres, a nonprofit group promoting sustainable food. The companies, Diageo, General Mills, Hain Celestial, Hormel Foods, Kellogg, PepsiCo and WhiteWave Foods, will submit detailed sustainable sourcing and water stewardship plans as part of the AgWater Challenge.

China barred pork imports from six U.S. processing plants and six cold storage facilities as part of its ban on the feed additive ractopamine, which helps hogs gain weight more rapidly, said Reuters.

Between 1980-2015, 99 percent of rural counties saw a rise in their minority population, bringing new economic vitality and slowing population decline in those areas, according to a report by Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group focused on Western land use. The U.S. is predicted to have a majority minority-population by 2044.

Two Republican-held House seats in the heavily agricultural Central Valley of California could be ripe for picking by Democrats if voters are riled by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's criticism of Hispanics and immigrants, says the Los Angeles Times. Rep. David Valadao, a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA and FDA funding, represents a district that is 71 percent Latino, and Agriculture Committee member Jeff Denham has a district that is 26 percent Latino.

Less than 24 hours after a vote of confidence from the board of the Humane Society of the United States, Wayne Pacelle resigned as its chief executive due to complaints of sexual harassment. "Major donors said they would withdraw or reconsider their support," said the blog Nonprofit Chronicles. "Two of Pacelle's accusers went public with their charges. Others surfaced."

Seven of the 31 members of the board of the Humane Society of the United States resigned in protest of the decision to keep Wayne Pacelle as the group’s chief executive, said the Washington Post.

The U.S. appeals court in Washington "is breathing new life into a previously dismissed lawsuit alleging pork checkoff funds were indirectly used to benefit the lobbying efforts of the National Pork Producers Council," said Agri-Pulse.

Poultry processors would be barred from making deductions from the base prices that they list in contracts with growers under a rule proposed by the Agriculture Department on Monday. The USDA said the proposal aims to curb abuses of the so-called tournament system that determines a farmer's revenue and processors' demands for growers to make additional investments in their facilities.

The pandemic has given the idea of agricultural collectives a boost—in some instances, a gigantic boost. In 2020, when the coronavirus disrupted industrial food systems, causing widespread backlogs and shortages, local co-ops, farm collectives, food hubs, and other distribution projects found fresh relevance. Some food hubs reported revenue increases as high as 500 percent, according to a May 2021 report from the Wallace Center, a nonprofit that supports community food and farming solutions.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

The holding company Icahn Enterprises was subpoenaed for information about its founder’s attempts to change U.S. biofuel policy while he was an informal White House advisor, reported Bloomberg.

The EPA rejected a petition by oil refiners to relieve them of the responsibility for blending biofuels into gasoline and diesel fuel, "dealing a blow to billionaire investor Carl Icahn and oil companies that had sought the change," reports Bloomberg. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt told farm-state lawmakers a few weeks ago that the agency was unlikely to change the "point of obligation," based on its preliminary analyses.

Billionaire Carl Icahn has been an informal White House adviser on regulatory issues since the early days of the Trump administration. Five Democratic senators asked EPA chief Scott Pruitt for all documents involving any communications involving Icahn and his businesses and the EPA, which regulates air pollution laws and biofuel usage.

With a letter to President Trump, two dozen senators, mainly from the Midwest, stepped into a dispute that recently fractured the unity of ethanol trade groups. Spearheaded by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the letter asks the president to keep petroleum refiners responsible for compliance with the Renewable Fuels Standard, which requires use of biofuels in the gasoline supply.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.

California state agriculture officials ordered the recall of raw milk from a dairy farm in the Central Valley after tests found bird flu virus in a sample from the farm's bulk tank. The state Department of Food and Agriculture warned against consumption of milk from Valley Milk Simply Bottled on the grounds that it "may lead to infection with this rare, emerging flu virus." No illnesses were reported.

Arizona health officials said two workers employed at poultry farms have recovered from mild cases of bird flu while the public health agency in Marin County, north of San Francisco, said it was investigating a possible bird flu infection of a child. If confirmed by the CDC, the U.S. total for bird flu infections would rise to 61 people in eight states this year.

A Fresno dairy recalled all of its unpasteurized whole milk and cream products following “multiple bird flu detections in the company’s milk and dairy in the past week,” said the California Department of Public Health. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the 32nd human case of bird flu in the state.

Jane Kleeb, a key figure in the successful fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, was awarded the $3 million Climate Breakthrough Award by a global philanthropy on Wednesday. Kleeb, who chairs the Nebraska Democratic Party, said she planned to use the award to build rural alliances for land preservation and clean energy development.

Fulfilling campaign promises, President Donald Trump signed memorandums that would lead to U.S. approval of the 1,100-mile Keystone crude oil pipeline and to completion of the Dakota Access pipeline from the Bakken and Three Forks oilfields of North Dakota. He also signed memos to encourage use of U.S. steel in pipelines and to speed up approval of domestic manufacturing plants and to expedite environmental review and approval of high-priority infrastructure projects, said a White House release.

With Conservatives voted out of power, the incoming administration of Justin Trudeau is "probably prepared to take No for an answer" from the United States on building the Keystone XL pipeline, says a CBC News analysis by Chris Hall.

If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, "it will mean higher costs for many producers" at a point when farm income is falling and growers are making increased use of credit, says Brent Gloy at Agricultural Economic Insights.

With sharply lower commodity prices at hand, "one of the key supports for sky high farmland values is changing rapidly," writes economist Brent Gloy at the Agricultural Economic Insights blog.