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Most of the time Squirrel is running around, playing fetch, and living like your average young dog. What makes the rescued Labrador mix special is the job he’s being trained for.

A growing number of U.S. dairy producers are realizing innovative income streams from what they are calling “brown gold.” They are using digesters to turn manure into biogas, which is later converted into compressed or liquefied natural gas, electricity or other fuels.

With an escalating trade war threatening to drive already low commodity prices and farm income even lower, could bioplastics be part of a sorely needed rescue mission?

A meeting scheduled by the Food and Drug Administration next week will offer a window into the debate over who should regulate the fast-growing lab-grown meat industry, which uses animal cells to produce meat grown outside the animals.

Traditional petroleum-based plastics that can survive for centuries are piling ever deeper across once pristine beaches and ocean floors around the world. According to a report from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “the ocean is expected to contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight).”

University of California researchers are on the path to discovering genes that assist in drought resistance in sorghum, which could potentially be applied to other important cereal crops like corn, wheat, rice and barley in the years to come.