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    Cucumbers Are Recalled After Salmonella Sickens People in 19 States

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    At least 68 people have fallen ill in the outbreak believed to be linked to cucumbers sold in the United States and Canada, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.At least 68 people, including 18 that needed to be treated at hospitals, have fallen ill across 19 states in a salmonella outbreak that may be linked to cucumbers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.Federal officials announced they were investigating the outbreak believed to be tied to cucumbers grown by Agrotato, S.A. de C.V. in Sonora, Mexico, and sold by SunFed Produce, which is based in Arizona, and other importers. No deaths have been reported.The C.D.C. said it was working with public health and regulatory officials in several states, including the Food and Drug Administration, to investigate the infections.The cucumbers were sold in the United States and Canada, according to the F.D.A.SunFed recalled all sizes of the product described as “whole fresh American cucumbers.”Craig Slate, the president of SunFed, said in a statement that the company “immediately acted to protect consumers.”“We are working closely with authorities and the implicated ranch to determine the possible cause,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Brooke Rollins, a Conservative Lawyer, to Lead Agriculture Dept.

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump on Saturday chose Brooke Rollins, his former White House domestic policy adviser, to helm the Agriculture Department, whose wide-ranging purview includes supporting farmers who grow the nation’s two biggest crops, corn and soybeans, and setting the nutrition standards in school cafeterias across the nation.Ms. Rollins, a conservative lawyer, was considered for Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, but ultimately lost to Susie Wiles, his campaign manager. She is the chief executive of the America First Policy Institute, a prominent think tank founded in 2021 to promote Mr. Trump’s agenda and staffed with many who worked in the first Trump administration.“Brooke’s commitment to support the American farmer, defense of American food self-sufficiency and the restoration of agriculture-dependent American small towns is second to none,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, in announcing his selection.Before her tenure in the White House, Ms. Rollins served as president of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential nonprofit that has worked to push public funding to private schools, increase the role of Christianity in civic life and heavily promote fossil fuels.Ms. Rollins hails from Glen Rose, Texas, and is a former member of National FFA Organization, which promotes agricultural education for youth, and 4-H, a youth development organization. She studied agricultural development at Texas A&M University and said of her career in a recent video recorded for Ag Women Connect: “It all started in agriculture.”If confirmed, Ms. Rollins would oversee an agency with an annual budget of more than $200 billion and nearly 100,000 employees. The department, responsible for promoting, subsidizing and regulating the nation’s agriculture sector, has a sprawling portfolio. It also administers most federal food assistance programs, supports rural development in part by providing electricity to the most isolated areas of the country, and manages nearly 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Farmers Brace for New Trump Trade Wars Amid Tariff Threats

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      Despite their concerns, some farm operators still support the former president and prefer his overall economic plan.To former President Donald J. Trump, “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.But to farmers in rural America, the blanket import duties that Mr. Trump wants to enact if elected are a nightmare that they would rather not live through again.As president, Mr. Trump imposed tariffs in 2018 and 2019 on $300 billion of Chinese imports, a punishment he wielded in order to get China to negotiate a trade deal with the United States. His action triggered a trade war between Washington and Beijing, with China slapping retaliatory tariffs on American products. It also shifted more of its soybean purchases to Brazil and Argentina, hurting U.S. soybean farmers who had long relied on the Chinese market.When Mr. Trump finally announced a limited trade deal in 2019, American farmers were frazzled and subsisting on subsidies that the Trump administration had handed out to keep them afloat.Now it could happen all over again.“The prospect of additional tariffs doesn’t sound good,” said Leslie Bowman, a corn and soybean farmer from Chambersburg, Pa. “The idea of tariffs is to protect U.S. industries, but for the agricultural industry, it’s going to hurt.”The support of farmers in swing states such as Pennsylvania could be pivotal in determining the outcome of Tuesday’s election. Mr. Trump remains popular in rural America, and voters such as Mr. Bowman say they are weighing a variety of factors as they consider whom to vote for.Mr. Trump has said that if he wins the election he will put tariffs as high as 50 percent on imports from around the world. Tariffs on Chinese imports could be even higher, and some foreign products would face levies upward of 200 percent. Economists have warned that such tariffs could reignite inflation, slow economic growth and harm the industries that Mr. Trump says he wants to help.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Amid Climate Crisis, Svalbard Global Seed Vault Gets a Huge Deposit

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      A storage facility in Norway built to safeguard crop diversity recently received more than 30,000 samples as concerns grow about climate change and food insecurity.The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the far reaches of northern Norway, is meant to be humanity’s last resort. Imagine it as the world’s doomsday garden shed: a secure genetic capsule, kept safe in case some catastrophe — a meteor strike or climate disaster, perhaps — threatens the planet’s crops.The vault already had about 1.3 million seed samples from about 7,000 species, sent from all over the world. Last week, it received about 30,000 new ones.The number itself is notable: It’s one of the largest one-time additions since the vault opened in 2008. (There are often three deposits a year.)But perhaps more significant is the amount of so-called genebanks — organizations that store their own hoards of seeds in locations around the world — that participated in the latest donation, said Asmund Asdal, the Norwegian vault’s coordinator.“It is more important now that many new genebanks in developing parts of the world are depositing valuable and unique genetic material,” he wrote in an email. Some, he said, made their first contributions last week. Svalbard is not the only place where seeds are stored. But it is meant to be a vault, a mostly sealed storage place for use in case of emergency. Most of the work of seed saving, studying and sharing happens in the genebanks. Those banks are a bit like a computer’s filing system, in which documents are stored but easily accessible. Svalbard is the external hard drive from where files can be recovered if lost.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      One-Third of World’s Trees Face Extinction Risk, Report at COP16 Says

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      They play an essential role in supporting life on Earth, but many species are in decline, researchers found.More than a third of the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction, according to the first comprehensive assessment of trees by the world’s leading scientific authority on the status of species.The findings, announced on Monday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, are especially sobering given the amount of life that trees sustain. Countless species of other plants, animals and fungi rely on forest ecosystems. Trees are also fundamental to regulating water, nutrients and planet-warming carbon.“Trees are essential to support life on Earth through their vital role in ecosystems, and millions of people depend on them for their lives and livelihoods,” Grethel Aguilar, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said in a statement.The tree assessment is considered comprehensive because it includes more than 80 percent of known tree species. In all, 38 percent were found to be at risk of extinction. More than a thousand experts from around the world contributed.Island biodiversity is particularly vulnerable, in part because those species often have small populations that exist nowhere else, and island trees accounted for the highest proportion of trees threatened with extinction. In Madagascar, for example, numerous species of rosewoods and ebonies are threatened. In Borneo, 99 species in the family of trees called Dipterocarpaceae are imperiled. In Cuba, fewer than 75 mature individuals of the red-flowered Harpalyce macrocarpa, known in Spanish as maiden’s blood, remain.Around the world, the biggest threats to trees are agriculture and logging, followed by urbanization, said Emily Beech, head of conservation prioritization at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, a nonprofit group that led the research now included in the Red List.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A 50-Mile Art Road Trip Celebrates the Culture in Agriculture

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      It’s not every day that lifelong Wisconsin farmers take time out during the frenetic harvest season to do pirouettes and turns in their tractors like so many John Deere Baryshnikovs.“The Hay Rake Ballet” in an alfalfa field — set to opera music in front of a rapt crowd who oohed and aahed at every lift of the rakes used to move hay into rows — was a hit of the Farm/Art DTour, a 10-day, 50-mile self-guided driving tour of large-scale art installations and “pasture performances” along the pristine, hilly back roads of rural Sauk County, Wis.“The Hay Rake Ballet,” choreographed by Sarah Butler.Held every other October, the DTour draws more than 20,000 “D-Tourists” from Madison, Milwaukee and beyond. They come to soak up art in surprising contexts — a screaming pink abstract deer blind hoisted above a corn field, for instance, or a plucky dragon concealing a 250-foot-long irrigation system.“I think it’s neat that urban people get a kick out of what we see every day,” said Andy Enge, a dairy farmer and a star of the ballet, in which three tractors twirled around each other in a pas de trois.His 93-year-old father, Maurice, saw it differently. “If a man drove like that out in the hayfields, I’d fire them!” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hurricane Helene Aftermath: 6 Issues Across the Southeast

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      The worst fallout from the hurricane is in western North Carolina, but at least five other states are grappling with their own intractable problems. More than a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm, state officials across the Southeast are scrambling to repair damaged electrical lines, roads and bridges affecting tens of thousands across the path of destruction.Helene wreaked havoc from Florida to the Appalachian states after making landfall on the Gulf Coast on Sept. 26. The worst fallout is still in western North Carolina, where, in addition to the mass wreckage of destroyed buildings, teams are searching for dozens of missing people, some areas have no potable water, cellphone communication remains spotty, more than 170,000 customers still don’t have power, and hundreds of roads are closed. But at least five other states are grappling with their own intractable problems from impassable highways to ruined farmland.President Biden, who surveyed the storm’s toll this week, said Helene most likely caused billions of dollars in damage, and he asked Congress on Friday to quickly replenish disaster relief funds to help. Here are some of the biggest current issues in the Southeast:In North Carolina, an untold number of people are still missing.The remains of a home in Swannanoa, N.C.Loren Elliott for The New York TimesIn the western part of the state, many families’ greatest concern is their unaccounted loved ones. But looking for them in mountain-ringed towns and rugged ravines has been a daunting task for search teams, and the effort has been hampered by poor cell service and widespread power losses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gabriel Sachter-Smith’s Quest for Wild Bananas Around the World

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      Gabriel Sachter-Smith is a banana aficionado who has identified some 500 varieties of banana on expeditions around the tropical world. “It’s like collecting Pokémon,” Mr. Sachter-Smith said at his farm, Hawaii Banana Source, on the North Shore of Oahu. He was walking through rows of young plants, some of the 150 varieties he grows, in a T-shirt splotched with mud and banana sap. His one-eyed dog, Mendel, trotted along at his boots. “My default mode of being alive is ‘What is that banana?’” he said.Mr. Sachter-Smith, 35, caught the banana bug when he was 14, on a trip with his mother to Washington, D.C., where he saw banana plants in her friend’s yard. The friend said they weren’t trees, that she could dig them up for winter, stick them inside and replant them when it warmed. When he returned home to Colorado, he started growing them as house plants. “I was trying to figure out what is a banana plant,” he said. “It’s just been a never-ending quest since then.”Mr. Sachter-Smith left banana-inhospitable Colorado to study tropical plant and soil science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, ultimately earning a master’s degree. His global quest has introduced him to bananas that are egg-shaped and orange, a foot long and pale yellow, sausage-stubby and green. They are eaten fried, roasted, boiled and as is, but also grown for pig feed, decoration and weaving fabric. In Papua New Guinea, where Mr. Sachter-Smith has gone on two expeditions hunting for bananas, their names carry many meanings: “young men” (mero mero), “can feed a whole family” (navotavu), “something that was fought over” (bukatawawe), “breast” (nono).You probably know just one banana: long, yellow, kind of flavorless. You eat it plain, put peanut butter on it, or toss it, overripe, in the freezer to make banana bread someday. (You won’t.) Its name, Cavendish, comes from a 19th-century English duke who was sent a package of the bananas and whose gardener grew them in a greenhouse. The Cavendish now accounts for almost half of all bananas produced globally and nearly all exports. It holds a Guinness World Record as the most eaten fruit.Red bananas in a Sri Lankan market.Anne-Marie Palmer/AlamyThe hairy banana, or pink banana, growing in Assam, India.Florapix/AlamyBut for years, scientists have warned that fungal diseases like black sigatoka and Tropical Race 4 could wipe out this monocrop, just as a fungus annihilated its predecessor, the Gros Michel, in the 1950s and 1960s. Genetic engineering and breeding are the most likely solutions, so scientists have built a stash of backup bananas from around the world, with genes that might someday see action on the global market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why House Republicans Are Targeting China Weeks Before the Election

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      The G.O.P. pushed through an array of legislation to get tough on China, seeking to persuade voters that they are the party that will protect Americans from economic and military threats from Beijing.The House this week tackled a long-promised package of bills to get tough on China, but few if any have a chance of becoming law after Republicans opted to prioritize a handful of politically divisive measures that Democrats oppose.For months, House leaders had promised a bipartisan show of force against the United States’ biggest economic and military adversary, including curtailing investments in sensitive Chinese industries, clamping down on data theft and espionage, and ensuring more Chinese imports were subject to taxes and forced labor standards.But only some of those proposals made it to the floor this week. Instead, Republican leaders added a handful of partisan measures that appear to be aimed at portraying their party as stronger on countering China and Democrats, including the Biden administration, as weak.It comes weeks before the elections in which the White House and control of Congress are up for grabs.“Because the White House has chosen not to confront China and protect America’s interests, House Republicans will,” Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Tuesday.Here’s a look at what the House did, and why.Subjecting international pandemic agreements to Senate treaty approval.Republicans, who have castigated the World Health Organization for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, pushed through a bill that would require Senate ratification of any W.H.O. agreement on pandemic preparedness. The organization is exploring ways to streamline the international response to the next pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More