agriculture

This year was the third-driest on record for the state, but recent storms, plus new groundwater regulations, have given the hardest-hit agricultural towns a glimmer of hope.

Recent years were a good time to invest for beginning farmers, who run a quarter of U.S. farms. But with some crop prices crashing, paying back debts may require hard conversations and delayed dreams.

New brands are reshaping the apple aisle of supermarkets. Many are "club apples" --varieties that are controlled and managed by select groups of farmers.

Three years of severe drought in California is forcing farmers and ranchers to make some tough choices. In some cases, they're rethinking everything about their business and finding new opportunities.

Farmers will haul in a record-breaking harvest of soybeans and corn this year, but they could be victims of their own success: Prices for these crops, falling for months, are at five-year lows.

Farmers across the Midwest harvest billions of bushels of corn nowadays using giant machines called combines. But a contest keeps a more primitive corn-picking technique alive: human hands.

Ohio farmers say they are not the only ones to blame for Toledo's polluted drinking water. They say they are using only as much fertilizer as they need to grow their crops.