This week, North Dakota’s governor signed HB 1318 — a bill that reaffirms federal authority in pesticide labeling — into law. The bill passed on Wednesday with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the state and senate.

HB 1318 ensures that pesticides approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, when labeled in accordance with federal law, also satisfy North Dakota’s state requirements for health and safety warnings. The measure protects companies from excessive litigation when they follow EPA guidelines, reducing legal uncertainty and helping stabilize the agricultural marketplace.

“Enacting HB 1318 into law is a resounding win for farmers and all North Dakotans. Governor Armstrong and the legislature have set a strong, bipartisan example for the country by preserving farmers’ access to essential crop protection tools that help keep farms competitive and grocery bills down,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, Executive Director of the Modern Ag Alliance. “Thanks to this legislation, North Dakota farmers will have the certainty they need to keep doing what they do best — growing the food we all depend on. This law sets the standard for states across America to pass legislation similar to HB 1318 and, ultimately, stand up for our farmers.”

Georgia’s General Assembly also passed a version of the pesticide protection bill, but it has not been signed yet. Similar legislation is also in the pipeline in Iowa, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming.  

For North Dakota’s farming community, this legislation brings much-needed clarity and security. The Modern Ag Alliance’s Ag Insights Survey revealed that 81 percent of North Dakotans — including majorities across political lines — oppose litigation that could restrict access to crop protection products.

That consensus was echoed throughout the legislative process by a broad coalition of agricultural organizations who backed HB 1318, including the North Dakota Farm Bureau, North Dakota Farmers Union, and commodity grower associations representing corn, soybeans, canola, pulses, wheat, and barley.

Andrew Mauch, President of the North Dakota Corn Growers Association, said the bill’s passage marks a “significant victory” for growers who depend on reliable tools to manage weeds and keep food and fuel costs in check. “HB 131 — now officially signed into law — is a significant victory for North Dakota corn growers. The new law safeguards our continued access to proven crop protection products that help us manage stubborn weeds with low input costs, helping keep food and fuel costs from rising even further. We appreciate the legislature and Governor Armstrong for standing up for our farmers.”

The sentiments were shared by Justin Sherlock, President of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association.

“On behalf of soybean producers across the state, we are grateful for the strong leadership that got HB 1318 across the finish line,” he said. “This monumental step forward helps ensure our farmers have the certainty they need to make long-term planning decisions and stay productive in the field.”

Growers across different crop sectors praised the bill for its practical implications. From Matt McCabe of the Northern Pulse Growers Association who noted that effective weed control is “one of agriculture’s toughest challenges” to Tim Mickelson of the Northern Canola Growers Association, who highlighted the bill’s role in supporting conservation practices like no-till, the message was consistent: HB 1318 meets the moment.

“Canola growers rely on consistent access to safe crop protection technologies to keep costs low, yields high, and implement conservation practices like no-till farming,” said Mickelson. “Governor Armstrong’s signature on HB 1318 sends a clear message that our leaders understand what’s at stake for our farms and are committed to protecting our ability to effectively feed America.”

Ryan Ellis, President of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, emphasized the importance of science-based tools in maintaining yield and protecting North Dakota’s position as a national wheat producer.

“North Dakota’s wheat and barley producers rely on safe, approved pesticides to control invasive weeds and maintain high yields, ensuring our state continues to be the nation’s leading wheat producer. HB 1318 is a major win for North Dakota agriculture, providing critical assurance that these science-based tools will remain available to support our farmers,” he said.

Motion-activated field cameras, GPS collars, wolf scat analysis and cattle tail hair samples are helping University of California, Davis, researchers shed new light on how an expanding and protected gray wolf population is affecting cattle operations, leading to millions of dollars in losses.

Long believed extinct in California, a lone gray wolf was seen entering the Golden State from Oregon in 2011, and a pack was spotted in Siskiyou County in 2015. By the end of 2024, seven wolf packs were documented with evidence of the animals in four other locations. As wolves proliferated, ranchers in those areas feared they would prey on cattle.

Tina Saitone, a University of California, Davis, professor and Cooperative Extension specialist in livestock and rangeland economics, sought to quantify the direct and indirect costs after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, launched a pilot program to compensate ranchers for wolf-related losses.

“There’s not really any research in the state on the economic consequences of an apex predator interacting with livestock,” she said.

Saitone proposed the research to her husband, Ken Tate, a UC Davis professor and Cooperative Extension specialist in rangeland sciences. Ben Sacks, director of the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit in the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, joined to analyze wolf scat. Brenda McCowan, a professor of population health and reproduction at UC Davis Veterinary Medicine, examined cortisol levels.

“There’s a lot of nervous ranchers,” Tate said, and “there’s a very limited amount of work on this topic.”

The interdisciplinary research centered on three wolf packs — Harvey, Lassen, and Beyem Seyo — and their interactions with rangeland cattle in northeastern California from June to October of 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The team found that:

• One wolf can cause between $69,000 and $162,000 in direct and indirect losses from lower pregnancy rates in cows and decreased weight gain in calves;
• Total indirect losses are estimated to range from $1.4 million to $3.4 million depending on moderate or severe impacts from wolves across the three packs;
• 72 percent of wolf scat samples tested during the 2022 and 2023 summer seasons contained cattle DNA; and
• Hair cortisol levels were elevated in cattle that ranged in areas with wolves, indicating an increase in stress.

“It is clear the scale of conflict between wolves and cattle is substantial, expanding and costly to ranchers in terms of animal welfare, animal performance and ranch profitability,” Saitone said. “This is not surprising given that cattle appear to be a major component of wolf diet and the calories drive their conservation success.”

Collaborating for access, information

Researchers trekked into remote rangelands to mount motion-activated game cameras, obtained access agreements from ranchers and permission to put GPS collars on cows. Neither Saitone or Tate had undertaken that kind of work, but years of collaborating on other research paid off, with land managers and ranchers providing information and support.

“This is such a sensitive issue for ranchers and landowners that it took pretty much every bit of my 30 years of network building to get us access to land and cattle for this study,” Tate said.

Local cattle ranchers and others provided tips on locations to post cameras. “Folks on the ground were really helpful in facilitating our understanding of wolf dynamics in general,” he said.

Scanning for wolves

Saitone and Tate deployed a network of more than 120 trail cameras and put GPS collars on 140 cows in locations with and without wolves in their grazing areas. Every two weeks they checked on the trail cameras, swapped out memory cards and cleared away brush or branches that could activate the cameras with just a simple breeze.

The two didn’t know whether they would capture any wolf photos.

“You don’t see these animals very often,” Tate said. “They’re nocturnal. You engage with them almost exclusively via the cameras.”

But one evening reviewing trail camera data, Saitone noticed a herd of cows and calves walking fast and running by a camera for about 30 minutes, followed by two wolves in the middle of the night. “They’d been chasing those cattle and we just caught it on camera,” Tate said. “That stress event just streamed by and, for me, was the first and most exciting finding of evidence wolves were negatively interacting with cattle.”

That wasn’t the end of the discoveries.

Sampling scat

During camera checks, they found canine scat. “Wolves will use roads and trails primarily, just like humans and cattle will,” Saitone said. “It’s the easiest path for them to take so frequently their scat is deposited along the way.”

They began collecting the scat, preserving it with desiccant and handing it over to Sacks for analysis. Of 377 samples they turned over, about 27 percent were from wolves, with the remainder coming from coyotes, bobcats and lions.

Of the summer 2022 samples, 86 percent the wolf scat contained cattle DNA and 13 different wolves were identified, all of which had eaten cattle. Over the two years, 72 percent of the samples had cattle DNA. Mule deer, rodents and occasional bear and bird DNA also showed up in the scat analysis, Sack said.

Sacks emphasized that the data didn’t indicate what killed the cattle, “it just tells us what’s for dinner,” he said.

A new phase of management

Gray wolves are protected under the state and federal law as endangered species. CDFW’s depredation compensation program paid out $3.1 million in initial funding and the agency said April 2 it was moving into a new phase of wolf management given increasing population numbers.

The next phase entails evaluating the status of gray wolves, evaluating potential permits to allow “less-than-lethal harassment” such as noise or use of motorized equipment to deter the predators, an online tool to provide location details of wolves with GPS collars, investigating livestock losses due to depredation and other actions.

Saitone and Tate say the research could better inform the conversation.

“We do need to get toward some kind of coexistence,” Tate said. “We don’t know what that’s going to look like but it doesn’t look like what we’re doing now, that’s for sure. It’s not sustainable. This research helps, I think, to advance that conversation.”

This article was written by Emily C. Dooley and is republished here with permission from University of California Davis.

When you think of a farmer, you probably don’t imagine someone driving a school bus, teaching in a classroom, or managing a bank. But for most U.S. farm households, off-farm jobs are the lifeline that keeps their farms afloat.

According to Daniel Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, “In 2023, just 23 percent of farm household income came from farming itself — meaning a remarkable 77 percent came from other sources.”

That other 77 percent — known as off-farm income — includes wages, salaries, pensions, investment returns, Social Security and other non-farming income.

“At the median, farm income in 2023 was actually a loss of $900,” Munch said. “Compare that to median off-farm income, which was $79,900, and you start to see how critical these outside jobs really are.”

Off-farm income isn’t just supplemental — it’s often the main source of financial stability. Over the past five years, median farm income hasn’t topped $296 annually, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. “The vast majority of farmers are not living off what they grow. They’re relying on a second income to survive,” Munch said.

Smaller farms are particularly reliant. Among farms earning less than $100,000 annually, more than 60 percent of farmers worked at least one day off the farm. “Smaller operations often don’t generate enough revenue to cover basic household expenses,” Munch explained. “That’s why off-farm jobs are essential — they’re paying for everything from housing and health insurance to college tuition and retirement savings.”

Young and beginning farmers, too, are leaning heavily on outside employment.

“Only about 20 percent of young farmers and 24 percent of beginning farmers are working exclusively on the farm,” Munch noted. Without inherited land or equipment, off-farm jobs help cover startup costs and offer vital benefits like insurance and stable paychecks.

Income sources vary across farming types. Dairy farms, with their intense labor demands, earn most of their household income on-farm — around 81 percent. But for cattle operations, that figure drops to just 10 percent. “Dairy farming requires around-the-clock labor,” Munch said. “There’s simply less opportunity for off-farm work.” In contrast, row crops and cattle are more seasonal, giving those producers flexibility to earn income elsewhere.

The decision to work off-farm isn’t made lightly. USDA surveys show that farmers pursue outside jobs primarily for “more reliable income, better pay than farming and access to benefits like health insurance,” said Munch. “It’s not just about extra money — it’s about managing risk in an unpredictable business.”

But commuting for those jobs has become more difficult. As rural America urbanizes, many farmers now travel far from home for work. “In farm-dependent counties, 64 percent of residents commute outside their home county,” Munch explained. “That’s higher than both nonmetro and metro counties. The jobs just aren’t next door anymore.”

In today’s economy, farming is as much about flexibility and adaptation as it is about agriculture. “Supporting U.S. agriculture means more than just supporting farms,” Munch emphasized. “It means supporting rural schools, hospitals and jobs — all the things that enable farm families to stay in business.”