As Tennessee soybean farmers harvest their crop after a difficult growing season, they are facing a farm economy that resembles “death by a thousand cuts,” Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council Executive Director Stefan Maupin said.

Some farmers keep growing in flood- and drought-prone fields because subsidies soften the losses, while federal programs meant to help them change course have been underfunded and mired in bureaucracy. Under Trump, those programs may weaken further.

Birds in a dozen Kentucky counties have tested positive for avian influenza since October, and Kentucky officials are trying to raise awareness so that those numbers don’t soar.

The state of Tennessee and the city of Spring Hill will jointly pay two businesses $735,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging state and local law enforcement wrongfully seized 231 pounds of legal hemp products earlier this year, according to a statement from an attorney representing the businesses.

Industry experts say the decline of what was once one of Kentucky farms’ top crops coincides with shifts in tobacco consumption habits and to the long tail effect of the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act signed into law by former President George W. Bush 20 years ago this month.

Even in the dying days of summer, many Kentuckians are facing high humidity and heat indexes. Some scientists say corn crops could be partially to blame.

The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce.

Farmers, landowners and government agencies have been using treated sewage to fertilize land in Tennessee for decades, but the practice is being increasingly scrutinized: Sewage sludge can be contaminated with toxic chemical compounds known as PFAS. The latest evidence comes from northeastern Tennessee.

Federal grants have been issued to more than 1,500 Black and minority farmers, ranchers and forest landowners in Tennessee who experienced discrimination in United States Department of Agriculture farm lending programs prior to January 2021.

The first specimen of an invasive species of tick was found recently in Illinois.