LE PECQ, France — By taking meat off the menu at school cafeterias, the ecologist mayor of one of France’s most famously gastronomic cities has kicked up a storm of protest and debate as the c…
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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.
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PORT HURON, Mich. — A team of Blue Water Area locals are sowing the seeds of a Port Huron farming initiative, with plans to buy city lots to provide food and education to the community.
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LeROY, Mich. — With 2020 in the rearview mirror, farmers throughout the country are feeling an anxious mixture of optimism, uncertainty, apprehension and relief heading into 2021.
The world likely can’t keep global warming to a relatively safe minimum unless we change how we grow, eat and throw away our food, but we don’t need to all go vegan, a new study says.
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PHOENIX — Thousands of gallons of wasted milk. Unpredictable, zigzagging prices. Abrupt dips and surges in demand.
CASA GRANDE — Groundwater is essential for the survival of Arizona and its growing economy.
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SACATON — The cool, wet weather at the beginning of the year and the slow start to the monsoon season caused a number of delays in starting or growing cotton and tepary beans, but Terry and Ramona Button of Ramona Farms still have high hopes for this year’s harvest.
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FLORENCE — Bowl with pumpkins and play other midway games, enjoy food and wander through a 3-acre corn maze on weekends Oct. 11 through Halloween at the Rankin Family Farm Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch, 924 W. Butte Ave., next to the Windmill Winery.
CASA GRANDE — As the housing market in Casa Grande and Pinal County picks up and water allotments get smaller, the pressure to sell land is growing on Pinal farmers.
COOLIDGE — When life gives people lemons, they should make lemonade. When life gives an irrigation district a drought, they should make the most of the land.
COOLIDGE — The San Carlos Irrigation Project will have two extensive dry-up periods on the canal system this year and next due to continued construction on the Pima Lateral and Florence-Casa Grande Canal, the project announced.
ELOY — The University of Arizona and the tire company Bridgestone Americas have teamed up to research a new source of natural rubber that can supplement the company’s current sources and provide Arizona farmers with a new drought-resistant crop.
MARICOPA — It’s an ever-changing industry with close to 83,000 acres in Pinal County that involves a lot of innovative technology.
ELEVEN MILE CORNER -- When Stockton, California-area farmer Andy Stein drove his “Freedom Coach” recreational vehicle to Arizona in September to visit cotton grower Nancy Caywood, he brought with him two buckets of dirt.
CASA GRANDE — An international trade war with China has made farming that much more difficult.
ELEVEN MILE CORNER — An area farmer who couldn’t plant cotton last year due to water shortages has planted about 20 acres this year, but she says her family is now considering other, less water-reliant crops for the future.
RANDOLPH — Community garden volunteers recently tried out their new two-wheel tractor, an Italian product with a Honda motor designed for gardens or small farms with hilly terrain.
FLORENCE — This year’s weak monsoon season was disappointing to some people, but not cotton farmers. A heavy monsoon season is usually bad for cotton.
PHOENIX — The median age of a farmer or rancher in Arizona is 55 to 64. It’s part of a nationwide trend as fewer young people go into agriculture. But three Arizona millennials are hoping to use their passion and the technology they grew up with to ensure the future of the state’s agribusine…
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Peter van Wingerden’s dairy farm smells just like any other farm — the rich aroma of cow manure and grass hangs in the air around the unusual stable housing the cattle. The farm itself is far from traditional.
CASA GRANDE
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MARICOPA — Large areas around Maricopa are dedicated to agriculture, a resource that has provided for the community since the 1930s.
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MARICOPA — Nearly 80 years ago, the Italian Amadio family emigrated from New Zealand to the small town of Lehi, Arizona, bordering Mesa. The Amadios brought with them their love of growing, sharing and exchanging food crops with their community. It was a way a life, and a happy one.
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MESA — Dairy farmers in Arizona are dealing with challenges brought by tariffs and competition from alternative-milk products, such as almond and soy milk, as well as persistent drought across the Southwest. But they’re forming new partnerships and adjusting their agricultural practices to s…
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SAN TAN VALLEY — While much of San Tan Valley has a suburban feel to it, the area surrounding Combs High School remains quite rural.
SPOKANE, Wash. — The number of wolves in Washington state is likely much higher than previously thought, according to a University of Washington researcher who spent two years studying the animals using scat-sniffing dogs.
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ELEVEN MILE CORNER — A row of one-room cabins, built in the World War II era and once temporary homes for migrant farmworkers, now sits empty on Caywood Farms, near Eleven Mile Corner.
CASA GRANDE — Cotton prices remain steady this year, which is good news for farmers of the increasingly shrinking crop.
COOLIDGE — Pinal County has a rich history, especially when it comes to families with a longstanding heritage in farming and agriculture.
COOLIDGE — With the traditional start of the harvest season, those driving through Pinal County have likely noticed a peculiarity — there just isn’t as much farming as usual. But what could seem like a mystery has a very simple answer: You can’t farm if there isn’t any water.
FLORENCE — Learn to grow almost every type of vegetable in the hot Arizona desert. Put your hands in the dirt and learn by doing.
Alfalfa is a big crop in Pinal County, which goes hand in hand with another leading part of farm income, livestock.
CASA GRANDE — After months of tariffs and trade wars, local experts say Arizona agriculture is being impacted by low prices and uncertainty about the future.
MARICOPA — Growing the most superior plants in the quickest manner is the goal of high throughput phenotyping, or HTP, and that is exactly what researchers at the Arid Land Agricultural Research Center in Maricopa are trying to accomplish.
MARICOPA — In a time when sufficient water supply is uncertain, it is important to start planning for the possibility of shortages. Sensing that urgency, Kelly Thorp and his team at the Arid Land Agricultural Research Center in Maricopa are preparing for that possibility.
Pests — especially whiteflies and lygus bugs — attack central Arizona cotton fields and lower yields, but farmers are making steady progress toward winning the war, and the good news in central Arizona is being shared around the world.
TUCSON — A native bee wraps its hind legs around a flower and vibrates its wings to unlock the flower’s hidden treasure –pollen. Its fuzzy body coated in yellow, the bee flies off to discover its next pot of gold.
PHOENIX — The population is rising, water is scarcer and demand for energy is growing.
ELEVEN MILE CORNER — Nancy Caywood prays for rain.
WASHINGTON — A warmer world likely means more and hungrier insects chomping on crops and less food on dinner plates, a new study suggests.
OKCHEON, South Korea — Behind a blue wall that seals a former highway tunnel stretches a massive indoor farm bathed in rose-tinted light.
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CASA GRANDE -- China. It’s a country that has become known as of late as a power on both the economic and technological front.
PHOENIX — Thirty miles south of Phoenix, green fields of alfalfa and Pima cotton stretch toward a triple-digit sun. Hundreds of yellow butterflies dance above the purple flowers that dapple the tops of the young alfalfa stalks — to expert eyes, the flowers signal that the plants are heat-str…
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PHOENIX — Phoenix is working with a California company to turn fronds into cattle feed, reducing landfill trash.
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MARICOPA