ANANTAPUR, India — Ramesh Hanumaiya digs a few inches into his field with his hand and examines the soil. There is movement in the thick, brown earth: Tiny earthworms being disturbed from their homestead.

QUESADA, Spain — An extremely hot, dry summer that shrank reservoirs and sparked forest fires is now threatening the heartiest of Spain's staple crops: the olives that make the European country the world's leading producer and exporter of the tiny green fruits that are pressed into golden oil.

ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER — Adam Thomas starts harvesting soybeans on his Illinois farm when the dew burns off in the morning. This year, dry weather accelerated the work, allowing him to start early. His problem was getting the soybeans to market.

DIXON, Ill.

SALEM, Ore. — Thousands of immigrants working on southern Oregon illegal marijuana farms that authorities say are run by foreign cartels are living in squalid conditions and are sometimes being cheated and threatened by their gangland bosses.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Sixth-generation rancher Devere Dressler remembers seeing the Carson River teeming with fish as it flowed out of the eastern Sierra Nevada range, where the peaks were always capped with snow.

OMAHA, Neb. — Rural America lost more population in the latest census, highlighting an already severe worker shortage in the nation’s farming and ranching regions and drawing calls from those industries for immigration reform to help ease the problem.

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.

WASHINGTON

CASA GRANDE — Groundwater is essential for the survival of Arizona and its growing economy.

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.

CASA GRANDE — An international trade war with China has made farming that much more difficult.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

SEVERN, Md.

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.