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A citizens' group on Maui on Monday launched a petition to allow voters to consider temporarily suspending production of genetically modified crops (GMOs) on the Hawaiian island. The group said its "temporary moratorium initiative" seeks a suspension until the completion of an environmental and public health impact study examining the effects of widespread testing of GMO crops and associated pesticide use.

After more than 15 years of using genetically modified crops, U.S. farmers are continuing to see an array of benefits, but the impacts on the environmental and on food production are mixed, and high farmer use of a popular herbicide on GMO crops is a cause for ongoing concern, according to a report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We are not characterizing them (GMO crops) as bad or good. We are just providing information," said Michael Livingston, a government agricultural economist and one of the authors of the report, prepared by the USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS).

Farm workers, children and other people working or living near farm fields would have more protection from hazardous pesticides under changes proposed on Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Today marks an important milestone for the farm workers who plant, tend, and harvest the food that we put on our tables each day," Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator, said in a statement. EPA is proposing revisions to the agency's 22-year-old "Worker Protection Standard" that EPA officials say will help protect approximately 2 million U.S. farm workers and their families from exposure to pesticides used to protect crops from weeds, insects, and disease.

Picking up a gallon of milk at the grocery store is getting pricier and the cost could hit a record high for U.S. consumers in March, analysts warned. Strong global demand and stagnant production in other countries has led to increased exports of U.S. dairy products in recent months, generating more money for dairy farmers but resulting in likely price hikes of 10-20 percent at the retail level in some markets, according to analysts. "Demand has been greater than supply for the last several months," said U.S. dairy analyst Jerry Dryer. "Prices are peaking."

U.S. food companies are rushing to offer consumers thousands of products free of genetically modified ingredients but are finding the effort costly and cumbersome in a landscape dominated by the controversial biotech crops. The hurdles are so high that the growing "GMO-free" trend could result in a price spike for consumers, industry experts say. Eighteen years after GMO crops were introduced to help farmers fight weeds and bugs, they are so pervasive in the supply chain that securing large and reliable supplies of non-GMO ingredients is nearly impossible in some cases. Just ask General Mills.

Institutional investors are buying up U.S. farmland at a rapid rate, and their influence is starting to shift the types of crops grown and the way the land is managed, according to a report issued Tuesday. There is an estimated $10 billion in institutional capital looking to acquire U.S. farmland, and over the next 20 years, as the current generation of farmers retires, an estimated 400 million acres will change hands, according to the report issued by The Oakland Institute, a Calfornia-based think tank with a focus on agriculture.

The growth of biotech crops in the United States appears to have hit a plateau, but farmers are accelerating plantings of genetically modified corn and rice in Asia, notably China, although it still remains a much smaller market, according to an industry report issued Thursday. Farmers around the world grew a record 175.2 million hectares (433 million acres) of biotech crops in 2013, up 3 percent from 2012, with American and Brazilian farmers continuing to be the dominant users, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a pro-biotech industry organization.

Crowd funding has found the farm. AgFunder, an online platform for agriculture-related companies to seek capital through a form of crowd-sourced fundraising, said Wednesday it was launching its first campaign by focusing on a California agricultural data company. Through the online platform, Fresno, California-based OnFarm is looking to raise $400,000 in capital to grow a farm data software service, AgFunder said. The offering is the first to go live on New York City-based AgFunder, which started up late last year and is offering both debt financing and equity offerings for individual and institutional investors to play in the ag space, according to Rob Leclerc, AgFunder co-founder and CEO.

A group of biotech companies battling to increase U.S. consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods is increasing paid advertising efforts as it expands a social media marketing website it started last year. The paid ads will seek to drive traffic to the www.GMOAnswers.com website, started last year by agrichemical industry players that want to allay concerns about GMO foods, according to an executive who helps to run the site. The Internet campaign is part of a broad strategy by the biotech industry to try to beat back growing calls for GMO food labeling and for tighter regulation of the biotech seed industry in the United States.

A group of biotech companies battling to increase U.S. consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods is increasing paid advertising efforts as it expands a social media marketing website it started last year. The paid ads will seek to drive traffic to the www.GMOAnswers.com website started last year by agrichemical industry players that want to allay concerns about GMO foods, according to an executive who helps to run the site. The web campaign is part of a broad strategy by the biotech industry to try to beat back growing calls for GMO food labeling and for tighter regulation of the biotech seed industry in the United States.