Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell traveled Tuesday to a historically black university in the Mississippi Delta to deliver a message that the nation’s prosperity has not been felt in many such areas around the country.Powell said that many rural areas had been left out and needed special support, such as access to affordable credit to start small businesses and high-quality education to train workers. In his comments, Powell did not address the future course of interest rates or the Fed’s decision last month to announce that it planned to be “patient” in its future interest rate hikes. [node:read-more:link]

Support was strong at a Senate hearing for spending public funds to spread the benefits of high-seed internet, but many questions remain such as how much money will be available and for whose benefit.The Inslee administration has put forward a bill to connect every home and business in Washington with internet fast-enough to meet the federal definition of broadband by 2024. A new office within the Commerce Department would oversee "central broadband planning."The bill does not appropriate a specific amount of money. As a start, Gov. [node:read-more:link]

Despite the large amount of funding coming from the Rural Utilities Service and the F.C.C., rural America has not seen broadband deployed and adopted at the same speed and effectiveness that it had with electricity and telephone service almost a century ago. The reason for this lag is a lack of coordinated federal policies, which in turn has allowed major telecommunications companies to receive a large portion of these funds without much regulatory accountability. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration has persuaded a U.S. appeals court to reconsider its recent decision ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos, which critics say can harm children and farmers.the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it will again review former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s March 2017 refusal to ban chlorpyrifos for use on food crops such as fruits, vegetables and nuts.Pruitt’s ruling reversed a 2015 Obama administration plan to extend a 2000 ban on the pesticide that had covered most household settings. [node:read-more:link]

Washington farmers can expect a tougher year covering expenses even if political leaders finalize trade agreements with the countries that import apples, beef and wheat from the Evergreen State, a Washington State University professor said.Randy Fortenbery spoke at length about the troubling overall picture of the forces grinding against what has been a robust U.S. economy."I think commodity prices, except for sorghum, are going to be a little bit better than last year. But we are talking dimes not dollars," Fortenbery said. [node:read-more:link]

The North Carolina Agriculture Department is trying to educate manufacturers and sellers of products containing cannabidiol or CBD oil. The department is sending out letters next week explaining what is legal.  Joe Reardon, assistant commissioner with the department’s consumer protection bureau, says the Food and Drug Administration considers CBD a drug. And since state laws mirror federal laws, CBD can’t be legally added to human or animal food for sale.  [node:read-more:link]

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that $18.4 million in grant funding is available to help New York livestock farms implement water quality protection projects. The funding will be provided through the final round of the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Waste Storage and Transfer System Program, a $50 million program launched in 2017. The program is part of the Governor's historic Clean Water Infrastructure Act, which would double under the 2019-2020 Executive Budget proposal to $5 billion. The application period is currently open and closes April 16, 2019. [node:read-more:link]

Humans have a ''disproportionately huge effect'' on the other species of vertebrates that share Earth's surface with us, causing more than 25 percent of the deaths among an array of species all over the globe, according to a recently published study.A team of scientists from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture analyzed the deaths of 42,755 animals that were reported in 1,114 published studies. They found that 28 percent of the animals' deaths were directly caused by humans. [node:read-more:link]

Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Jim Carroll announced Anne Hazlett as the office’s Senior Adviser for Rural Affairs. Hazlett has served as the Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) since June 2017. [node:read-more:link]

A new economic report finds Oregon’s proposed cap-and-trade planwould create thousands of jobs and boost household income while creating only modest increases in energy prices. [node:read-more:link]