Fridays verdict was the second against Bayer CropScience for losses sustained by farmers when an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing infiltrated crops.
A jury awarded about $2 million to two Missouri farmers in December, and three additional test cases are scheduled for this year involving farmers from Louisiana and Texas as well as a rice exporter. No punitive damages have been awarded in any of the verdicts.
About 6,000 rice producers have filed claims against Bayer since the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in August 2006 that trace amounts of the genetically modified Liberty - - - - >

Its a wise strategy, according to most industry experts. Milk prices are expected to rebound in 2010 thanks to improved U.S. sales and a recovering export market, so producing as much milk as they can may be the best way for dairy farmers to make up last years losses.
Farmers from California to New York say they plan to do just that. In Wisconsin, for example, one dairy is expanding from 4,000 cows to 8,000, a move that might have seemed ill-conceived during last years recession.
“Our goal today is to have our facility full,” said Jim Ostrom, a partner with Rosendale - - - - >

Tons of Chinese exports, from computers to catfish and cashmere, are shipped west every year, but Wisconsin ginseng goes the other way, flowing against that mighty tide of trade. U.S. ginseng growers rely almost exclusively on sales to China, and after years of declining profits due to new competition from Canadian and Chinese farmers, those in Wisconsin are defending their brand and hoping to tap a growing Chinese middle-class market.
Ginseng is prized in China, Korea and other Asian countries by consumers who say the bitter root, typically sipped as tea or added to soups, eases stress, fatigue and insomnia.
At a - - - - >

Is this sushis future? Tuna raised like chickens or cows?
As the worlds love affair with raw fish depletes wild tuna populations, long-running efforts to breed the deep-sea fish from egg to adulthood may finally be bearing fruit. Though the challenges are daunting, the potential profits are huge.
By the end of this year, an Australian company says it will begin selling small amounts of southern bluefin tuna hatched in its fishery. A Japanese firm breeding the more prized Pacific bluefin tuna hopes to start sales in 2013 and ship 10,000 fish by 2015.
Whether tuna farming will become viable on a large - - - - >

Armstrong, 82, lives in the same house near Geraldine that his grandfather built and lived in as a homesteader. Its a little bigger now, but lonelier since his wife, Norma, died about six years ago.
“As long as I live, Ive got rights to live here,” he said. “The one thing about this that Ive been especially proud of is we were able to make it these 100 years on relatively small acreage.”
Historians say tales like Armstrongs are becoming increasingly rare.
As employment pressures and the lure of faraway opportunities split apart agricultural families, many farms and ranches have been consolidated, sliced - - - - >

The arid, wind-swept ground stripped of topsoil by Dust Bowl storms has laid undisturbed beneath a protective cover of native grasses that took two decades to re-establish under the Conservation Reserve Program. But millions of those acres are being plowed again after the 2008 Farm Bill capped the program at 32 million acres.
More than 3.4 million acres nationwide were taken out of the program in September when the owners contracts expired. Most of them were in Texas, Colorado and Kansas, but hundreds of thousands of acres also came out in Montana and the Dakotas.
The environmental and economic repercussions could extend - - - - >

In the year since he won a so-called genius grant from a Chicago foundation, Allen has mingled with former President Bill Clinton, appeared in Oprah Winfreys O magazine and spoken to scores of groups across the nation and overseas.
“The thing that makes me happiest is that more people of color are joining the good-food revolution,” Allen told The Associated Press. “Ten years ago, an African-American would say, this is slaves work, why you doing this? Now we have more people of color at my talks. Before this I had never been interviewed by black media, and now Ive had stories - - - - >

Hes one of an increasing number of Japanese farmers who say they can make a profit by leaving the worlds most heavily subsidized agricultural industry and selling directly to consumers rather than through the national cooperative.
“Profitable farming is the same as pornography,” Takahashi, 50, said in an interview near the 3.2 hectares (7.9 acres) of farmland near Tokyo he bought in 2006. “You have to create an image and make it cool.” He sells eggplants and peppers online and at his vegetable-themed restaurants. - - - - >

Agriculture industry leaders pushed the issue onto the state ballot, hoping to thwart an attempt by animal rights activists who were threatening to force farmers to change how they house livestock.
Voters in California, Florida and Arizona already have approved measures that require more space for confined farm animals. Lawmakers in Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Oregon have adopted similar rules.
Supporters of the changes say animals raised for food deserve humane treatment. Opponents argue the regulations will force farmers to make costly changes that could put them out of business and drive up the price of eggs, chicken, pork and beef.
Thats why - - - - >

Hawaii Oceanic Technology aims to create an environmentally friendly open ocean farm for bigeye tuna, a favorite source for sushi and sashimi thats overfished in the wild. The project would also be the worlds first commercial bigeye farm.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 4-to-1 to give Hawaii Oceanic permission to install three large underwater cages for the tuna.
“Im concerned on a global level and a local level that we have severe overfishing going on, and something needs to be done,” said board member John Morgan, who voted in favor of the project.
Unlike many tuna farms around the - - - - >