The Brooklyn Grange Farm — which was given a stop order by the city of New York to halt work on a 40,000-square-foot garden on the roof of the Standard Motor Products building — has received the permits needed to continue constructing the city’s largest rooftop garden. The group was stopped from spreading 600 tons of soil on top of the building because architectural permits were not secured to confirm that the building could hold the weight of a rooftop farm. (NY Daily News). Read more.

Two counties in New Mexico have been named primary natural disaster areas due to drought and high winds that caused damage to forage and pasture areas. Producers in Colfax and Harding counties qualify for low interest emergency loans from the USDA Farm Service Agency along with producers in five other New Mexico counties and two counties in Colorado that are contiguous to Colfax and Harding. Read more.

Less than two weeks remain for producers to sign up for the 2010 Direct and Counter-cyclical (DCP) and Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) programs. Farmers and landowners must enroll eligible farms no later than June 1. DCP and ACRE contracts can be completed and signed at any USDA Service Center or on the USDA website. Learn more.

Computer engineers are seeking ways to power servers with cow manure. Researchers from Hewlett Packard presented a paper on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots to generate electricity to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference being held this week in Phoenix. Many dairy farms currently use cow manure to generate power; however, HP is looking at ways the process could be extended to run a data center. Current estimates by HP project that 10,000 cows could power 1,000 computer servers. (Computerworld) Read more.

The second meeting of the Dairy Industry Advisory Committee will be held June 3-4 at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The meeting, which is open to the public, will allow the committee to review farm milk price volatility and dairy farmer profitability. The committee also will discuss USDA programs and federal dairy policy, as well as listen to proposals from dairy industry groups and hear comments from the public. Register to attend or submit a comment.

An independent study has found that USDA’s international market development programs have had a significant impact on U.S. agricultural trade. According to the report, which focuses on the period between 2002 and 2009, a rise in market development spending increased the annual value of U.S. agricultural exports by $6.1 billion. Learn more.

Corn and soybean planting is still on record-setting pace, but rain has caused a major slow down in much of the Midwest. According to USDA, 87 percent of the nations corn crop is planted, which is 9 percentage points ahead of average pace. Soybean planting is at 38 percent, compared to 23 percent this time last year. Yet, for the past two weeks, some parts of the Corn Belt have seen more than a foot of rain. Farmers are already making plans to replant some waterlogged acres. (Agriculture.com) Read more.

A study conducted by the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Kansas State University found that unplowed soil is more stable than tilled soil and stores more carbon, which helps bind soil particles together. The bound particles make the first inch of topsoil up to seven times less vulnerable to the force of raindrops. Researchers stated that understanding the resistance of soil to erosive forces of wind and rain is critical to evaluating soil erodibility. (UPI). Learn more.

Republican Senate candidate Clint Didier of Pasco, Wash., is campaigning against federal government aid programs, while being the recipient of more than $270,000 in farm subsidies since 1995. Although Didier acknowledges receiving the subsidies, he believes farms should be weaned off such payments. He added that government should be completely out of the agricultural market and the farm bill should be eliminated. (The Seattle Times). Read more.