Dennis Bowden has raised chickens in the town of Waldoboro, Maine, nearly his whole life. For more than 40 years, he raised his chickens in cages. Then four years ago, when he turned 65, he cut down his flock and went cage-free. The decision to switch was Bowden’s alone, but around the country many politicians have firmly taken sides on the issue of penning hens, hoping either to require egg producers to go cage-free or to protect conventional producers by mandating that stores stock their eggs.Eggs are a staple of the American diet, with 88 billion table eggs produced in 2016. [node:read-more:link]

Maine lawmakers overrode Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of an adult-use marijuana regulatory bill Wednesday, putting the state on track to regulate a retail market that has been in limbo since voters legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016. The proposal that survived the Republican governor’s pen was Maine’s second attempt to create a framework for the system after a veto of an earlier bill was upheld in 2017, sending a special committee that was convened to handle the issue back to rehash it. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted most of southeast Wisconsin from the latest federal limits on lung-damaging smog pollution, delivering a political victory to Gov. Scott Walker as he makes a new Foxconn Technology Group factory the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Nathan Deal opened a new door of opportunity for economic revitalization for rural Georgia on Wednesday afternoon when he signed House Bill 951, creating a Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation that will be housed at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. [node:read-more:link]

The world’s biggest oilseed processor just confirmed one of the soybean market’s biggest fears: China has essentially stopped buying U.S. supplies amid the brewing trade war. “Whatever they’re buying is non-U.S.,” Bunge Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Soren Schroder said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “They’re buying beans in Canada, in Brazil, mostly Brazil, but very deliberately not buying anything from the U.S.”In a move that caught many in U.S. agriculture by surprise, China last month announced planned tariffs on American shipments of soybeans. [node:read-more:link]

In Missouri, plant-based proteins designed to look and feel like meat may no longer be allowed to use the term “meat” on their packaging, according to an omnibus agriculture bill which passed in the state’s House of Representatives yesterday. The unprecedented piece of legislation would specifically prohibit the use of the term “meat” on products that don’t come from animals. And, to be clear, the prohibition applies not just to plant-based products. Other forms of alt-protein, including so-called “clean” meat cultured from animal cells, would also be barred from using the term. [node:read-more:link]

Farmers, fishermen, and forestry workers, who are lumped together by government statisticians, have the highest suicide rate of any occupational cluster: 84.5 self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 workers, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis—that would have amounted to almost 900 suicides in 2016. [node:read-more:link]

With a trade war looming, commodity prices swooning, and the dairy industry in full-blown crisis, a growing number of American farmers are embracing a controversial set of farm policies that would manage the country’s commodity production and stabilize crop prices. The policies, known as supply management, governed U.S. agriculture for decades but were abandoned in the late 20th century as large-scale monocropping and commodity exports came to define farm policy. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for the first time, has ordered a mandatory recall of food products under the authority conferred on the agency by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010. The F.D.A. on April 3 issued a mandatory recall order for all regulated products containing powered kratom manufactured, processed, packed or held by Triangle Pharmanaturals L.L.C., Las Vegas, after several were found to contain Salmonella. The ingredient primarily is used in dietary supplements. The F.D.A. [node:read-more:link]

The Pennsylvania congressional delegation has a unique opportunity to work together to restore the nonpartisan integrity of the nation's Farm Bill. [node:read-more:link]