Agriculture

The Health Incentives Program (HIP) now only offers $20 per family, compared to $40-to-$80 previously. Farmers and advocates say, without restored funding, they will have to reduce winter market options.

A spending bill passed by Congress late last year provides $220 million to eight states including all of New England. And the survey will help to determine just how much Massachusetts will see.

The same committee examined whether farmworkers should have collective bargaining rights — but ultimately didn’t make a recommendation to the Vermont Legislature.

The dispute highlights the challenges that come with the region’s growing agritourism scene.

Last year, the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program awarded $300 million to 50 projects across the country, and the Connecticut Department of Agriculture was among them. Now, a $2.5 million-dollar program is rolling out in the state.

Connecticut Public visual journalists photographed one of the largest and longest-running agricultural fairs in the state. Here's what they saw.

Up until about 20 years ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find wheat fields in Vermont — it hasn’t been grown for baking here since it was planted by early European settlers. When colonial America expanded West, the crop largely disappeared from the Northeast. With its return, so too is bread made from 100% local ingredients and related industries like grain milling.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation will receive federal funds to improve conservation and climate practices at its farm in North Stonington. The tribe accepted $2 million from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The state Task Force to Support Dairy Farms in Maine met for the first time Wednesday to come up with recommendations for how the state might help farms be more profitable.

More than 110,000 acres of Massachusetts farmland have been converted to other uses in the last couple of decades.