5@5: Hain Celestial reports increasing sales at Whole Foods | Almond grower creates a backup bee

Hain Celestial CEO says Whole Foods sales are increasing despite Amazon price cuts

Hain Celestial CEO Irwin Simon, whose company has more than 1,500 products stocked at Whole Foods, has seen costs fall and volume of sales increase since Amazon completed its purchase of the brick-and-mortar natural grocer. Read more at CNBC …

Building a backup bee

Almond trees need lots of bees—1.9 million colonies of them—to produce the popular nut that is California’s second-largest crop. Unfortunately, honeybees are suffering from a variety of diseases and pesticide exposure, threatening a collapse of the entire $21 billion (in California alone) almond industry. To ward off such a disaster, Gordon Wardell, director of bee biology for the Wonderful Company, has been developing the blue orchard bee. It’s a been a slow process, but he will put his new bees through their biggest test this year, when he expects to deploy 128,000 female blue orchard bees in the field. Read more at Food & Environment Reporting Network …

No-till farmers’ push for healthy soils ignites a movement in the plains

Every year, 1.7 billion tons of farmland is lost to erosion. While we might think first of what could be grown in that amount of soil, we also must realize that the nitrogen it contains is damaging our lakes and oceans, as well as releasing greenhouse gases back into our atmosphere. No-till farming restores farmland and could be key to solving drought, nitrogen pollution, climate change and other environmental disasters. See how this farming method fits in the regenerative agriculture movement. Read more at Civil Eats …

Matching DNA to a diet doesn’t work: ‘We didn’t even come close,’ researcher says

Most dieters don’t succeed in keeping off the weight they lose, and a new study shows they probably can’t blame their genes. A new study called DIETFITS, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that randomly assigned study subjects did not see a “significant difference in weight change” when their diet matched their genotype. Read more at Stat News …

Is the farm ''safety net'' safe?

The perennial Farm Bill, created in the 1930s to protect farmers from the Dust Bowl and the Depression, has become a relic of the 20th century. As the country’s farmers need to innovate and find ways to feed millions more by 2050, the Farm Bill supports the status quo through a system of taxpayer-supported crop insurance. As Congress and stakeholders begin to look at the 2018 Farm Bill, they need to look to the future, not stick with the past. Read more at GraceLinks …