Lassen County, California, is bigger than Rhode Island, but what isn’t? And it has less people than the average funeral in New Orleans. It is famous for its volcano and Western tradition. Joy and her husband run cows, guide hunters and rent cabins at their ranch near Butte Creek.

With less than one week left before World Ag Expo begins, the beef and livestock pavilion is buzzing with activity in preparation for the world's largest annual agricultural exposition.

Over a decade of research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has resulted in the development of a new matrix for invasive plant management. The model was created by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Burns, Oregon, and helps land managers recognize how rangeland degradation processes vary across landscapes. ARS is USDA's chief scientific research agency. Using the model can also increase the success rate of restoring native vegetation on damaged landscapes, which supports the USDA priority of responding to climate change. Ecologist Roger Sheley synthesized a range of findings from scientific literature and field research to develop the model, which is called Ecologically Based Invasive-Plant Management (EBIPM).

Livestock Grain Market News report for Feb. 3  

Lactalis American Group has announced a $40 million expansion to its Idaho plant that will increase its mozzarella production, create jobs and increase the plant's purchase of local and regional milk. The new 61,300-square-foot plant will be built behind the existing Lactalis plant east of Nampa.

Junk food remains plentiful at the nation's elementary schools despite widespread efforts to curb childhood obesity, a new study suggests. Between 2006 and 2010, nearly half of public and private schools surveyed sold sweet or salty snack foods in vending machines or other places, the study found. There was little change over the four years, a surprising finding given vocal advocacy campaigns to improve kids' diets, said researcher Lindsey Turner, a health psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the study's lead author.

The Oklahoma Farm Bureau is praising the U.S. Department of Labor's decision to modify its regulations regarding child farm labor. Farm Bureau President Mike Spradling says the original federal rules could have had a dramatic impact on the future of agriculture.

A Vermont Senate committee is considering a bill that would create a farm guest worker program to allow the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 immigrant workers on Vermont dairy farms. The bill would create a state identification for the workers and a registry of those workers that would allow them to be eligible for state services.

EXPO Magazine has listed World Dairy Expo as No. 12 in its listing of the Top 25 Fast-Growing Shows of 2011. This ranking concentrates on performance metrics, conferences and expos that implement new strategies, innovative ways of showcasing exhibitors, blockbuster growth, and use of new media and IT. Eight metrics are used to compare trade shows including square foot size, square foot growth, attendee size, attendee growth, exhibitor size, exhibitor growth, revenue growth and attendees per square foot.

Dairy co-ops throughout the country have, or will soon have, communicated to dairy producers how a recently announced USDA agreement with the E.U. for individual farm testing of somatic cell counts (SCC) will impact them in upcoming months. In Nov. 2011, the USDA notified the industry of a new E.U. health certification program required for all dairy products and dairy ingredients being exported to E.U. nations. In short, the key element of the new program is individual farm testing of SCCs and calculation of a farm’s three-month rolling geometric mean, which must be less than 400,000 SCCs per mL to certify for export to the E.U.