Results are in for World Ag Expo's Top-10 New Products competition. The winners will be showcased Feb. 10-12, 2015, during the 48th annual World Ag Expo in Tulare, California. A group of judges made up of farmers, ranchers and industry professionals selected the top-10 new products.

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Dec. 10 granted five regulatory exemptions for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations to four companies representing several industries that promise to benefit from UAS technology.

The American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) last week unveiled results of research commissioned by the seed industry, revealing that consumers under appreciate the role of seed and seed improvement in their lives, until they are presented with specific examples of the environmental, economic and health benefits of seed.

NRGene has mapped five novel complex maize genomes from the most commercially successful, publicly available lines using its proprietary DeNovoMagic big data analysis platform.

On Dec. 5, the USDA joined nations from across the globe to kick off the International Year of Soils, an effort to highlight the importance of soil in everyday life.

Valent USA Corporation announced today a series of expansions to its commercial business aimed to support its growing specialty and row crop portfolio, as well as enhance service and technical support to customers across the agricultural regions of the U.S.

On Oct. 22, the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced nearly $1.25 million in grants for research and extension to improve alfalfa and forage yield and seed yield of crops grown for propagation; improve persistence of plantings; reduce pest pressure for both forage and seed production; improve genetic quality of commercial cultivars; and reduce losses during harvest and storage.

There were 229,237 farms with 55.3 million irrigated acres in the U.S., according to the 2013 Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey results, published on Nov. 13 by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The report also showed that the number of farms with irrigation declined from the 235,715 published in the 2008 irrigation survey.

According to the Terrace Standard, the Chinese plan to build an alfalfa protein extraction plant on the land they just purchased at the Skeena Industrial Development Park from the City of Terrace, British Columbia. The facility will employ 170 workers.

As I visit with hay producers and buyers, I hear comments about “collecting two samples from the same lot of hay, sending them to two labs and getting results that are not identical.” This is generally followed by something to the effect that “one of the labs must be wrong.”