Articles by Fran Howard

In a major win for livestock and poultry producers, the Animal Disease Prevention and Management provisions included in the recently passed farm bill authorize a U.S. vaccine bank, a diagnostic laboratory network, and state block grants, while providing mandatory spending for all three.

Protecting pollinators is critical to the health of U.S. agriculture, yet some beekeepers are leery of registering their honey bee hives.

Three federal agencies -- USDA, EPA and FDA -- have signed a formal agreement aimed at making Americans more aware of the importance of reducing food waste.

Researcher hope new "functional foods" could some day help prevent or slow diseases like cancer.

The nation's dairy cows are getting their "mooves" on in some states that might surprise you.

Laser beams and drones that look like hawks are among the hi-tech tools farmers have available to chase away birds that are taking big bites out of their crops.

As an aging American population struggles to maintain and lower cholesterol levels and U.S. farmers work to maintain or improve soil health, oats have the attention of scientists, farmers, and consumers.

Researchers say their successful decode of the wheat genome can help feed the growing world population.

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.

Snow and ice in late April prevented Iowa farmer Wayne Fredericks from planting as early as he normally would, but he knew that his soils and nearby streams were protected from erosion and runoff with a cover crop of cereal rye that he planted the previous fall, following corn and soybean harvest.