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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.

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.

DuPont Pioneer, the agricultural seed unit of DuPont, said Tuesday that it signed a deal with DTN/The Progressive Farmer to provide weather and market information to farmers, along with new grain trading capabilities, all accessed through mobile devices. "Our customers are running small businesses. Production in the field is really important as well as the business side. So this is just another step to being able to address key needs," said DuPont Pioneer Director of Services Joe Foresman. Foresman said financial terms of the deal are not being released. Branding, packaging and pricing decisions for the offerings are still being determined, he said.

Critics of genetically modified crops protested at Monsanto Co's annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday, calling for the world's largest seed company to provide a report on contamination in non-GMO crops and to stop fighting mandatory labels on foods containing GMO ingredients. The requests came in the form of two shareholder resolutions that were backed by environmental, food safety and consumer activist groups. They said that more than 2.6 million members support their efforts.