Latest from The Spokesman-Review

• Massive Napa do-over prompts grape plant shortage

  December 16, 2012 in Nation/World SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Napa Valley, one of the world’s premier wine growing regions, has an uncommon problem these days: not enough new grapevine root stock is available to supply …

• Conservationists team up with ranchers, loggers

  December 15, 2012 in Nation/World FRIANT, Calif. (AP) — Two cowboys on horses pushed cattle across an expanse of golden hills overgrown with tall grasses and oak trees, up an unpaved road toward another pasture. … 1

• USDA chief: Rural America becoming less relevant

  December 8, 2012 in Nation/World WASHINGTON (AP) — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: It’s “becoming less and less relevant,” he says. A month after an election that Democrats won …

• APNewsBreak: Feds funnel millions into Gulf Coast

  December 5, 2012 in Nation/World HOUSTON (AP) — Days before a newly formed council focuses on long-term Gulf of Mexico cleanup, a report released to The Associated Press shows that one federal agency has committed …

• Program trains farmworkers to be organic farmers

  December 2, 2012 in Nation/World SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Bending over beds of shriveled strawberry plants, former farmworker Domitila Martinez pulls pieces of black plastic row covers in preparation for next season’s planting. Except this …

• High Court to decide how logging roads regulated

  December 1, 2012 in Nation/World GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to switch gears on more than 30 years of regulating the muddy water running off logging roads into …

• Calif oyster farm closure ends long battle

  November 30, 2012 in Nation/World SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Kevin Lunny’s struggle to keep his family’s oyster farm running in Point Reyes National Seashore appears to be over, closing out an era of oysterman plying …

• EPA turns down states’ request for ethanol waiver

  November 16, 2012 in Nation/World WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday denied requests from several governors to waive production requirements for corn-based ethanol. A renewable fuels law requires that 13.2 billion gallons …

• Federal government ending Wyoming wolf protections

  August 31, 2012 CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The federal government will end its protections for wolves in Wyoming, where the species was introduced two decades ago to revive it from near extinction in …