Halloween may still be four weeks away, but this story's already got me spooked: Scorching weather and lack of rain this summer wiped out some pumpkin crops from western New York to Illinois, leaving fields dotted with undersized fruit. Other fields got too much rain and their crops rotted. It's the second year in a row that pumpkin production has been down. First we're losing our woolly turtlenecks and now our jack-o'-lanterns? Scary. Good thing no one's predicting scorching heat and unseasonable rain for future autumns ...

Once again, a prime example of our misguided farm policies hits like a ton of factory-farm manure sludge -- or in this case, a massive sack of federally insured, genetically modified corn. Last Wednesday, Monsanto announced that the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) approved a pilot program that will give farmers a 20 percent discount on insurance premiums if they plant a majority of their corn acres with seeds featuring Monsanto's trademarked YieldGard Plus with Roundup Ready Corn 2 or YieldGard VT Triple stack technology. This is the first time the FCIC Board has approved a crop insurance discount for …

Well, phew. Ethanol's not to blame for high food prices and a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border will actually benefit the environment. If we can't believe the top federal farm official and the top federal security official, whom can we believe?

An ever-greener and ever-more-caffeinated world is boosting the fair-trade market -- not just for coffee, but for products such as cocoa, cotton, tea, pineapples, and flowers. The certification, which holds growers to strict standards per child labor, pesticide use, recycling, and more, is not a phenomenon specific to hippie shops: all Dunkin' Donuts in the U.S. and all McDonald's in England sell fair-trade coffee. Starbucks is also a big buyer, while Sam's Club just converted its private label of ground coffee to fair trade. It's still a niche market: in 2006, only 3.3 percent of coffee sold in the U.S. …

The U.S. donates more food internationally than any other country, but shipping costs and rising food prices (thanks, biofuels!) have contributed to its lowest level of donation in a decade. The situation is likely to get worse: the appropriations bill moving through Congress contains no significant increases in the U.S. food aid budget, and the United Nations estimates that low-income countries will see a 14 percent jump in the price of grain imports next year. A restriction in the farm bill requires food aid to be shipped from the U.S.; in a rare proposal aligned with green values, the Bush …

Women exposed to the pesticide DDT as children are five times as likely to develop breast cancer, according to a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives. Draw your own conclusions.

It's World Vegetarian Day, everyone! Go celebrate by pissing someone off.

The ethanol boom in the United States, the political darling of presidential candidates, farm-state lawmakers, and others, has recently been showing signs of slowing due to a market glut that's exacerbated by infrastructure troubles. It seems everyone and their farmer have been constructing ethanol refineries to turn corn into fuel, but the means to get that fuel to gas stations hasn't been keeping pace with output. Due to ethanol's corrosive properties and its propensity to soak up water and other impurities, it can't travel by oil pipeline and instead makes its way to market by boat, train, or truck. Ethanol's …

In case you missed this hilarious letter that made the email rounds early this year poking fun at bizarre agricultural subsidies ... it gets to carbon credits midway through, naturally: Secretary of State Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Smith Square London Dear Secretary of State, My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business. In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is …

Delightfully defying our dire predictions, the U.S. EPA will (again) delay approval of nasty pesticide methyl iodide, after 54 scientists wrote a letter expressing shock that the agency was even considering giving such a toxic chemical the thumbs-up for agricultural use.