EDGE Dallas

Hundreds of small blueberry farms have opened in the Sunshine State in the past three decades, and blueberry production has increased more than tenfold in the past decade.

Dozens of farmers in California and other states have started replacing some of their crops with flowers and shrubs that are enticing to bees, hoping to lower their pollination costs and restore a bee population devastated in the past few years.

Among the thousands of colorful potatoes - from yellow German Butterballs to Magic Mollys with flesh so purple it’s nearly black - is a half-row of red potatoes with yellow flesh that University of Alaska researchers believe could become popular.

Braden Janowski has never planted seeds or brought in a harvest. He doesn’t even own overalls. Yet when 430 acres of Michigan cornfields was auctioned last summer, it was Janowski, a brash, 33-year-old software executive, who made the winning bid.

A Louisiana researcher looking into ways to produce more and bigger crawfish in the same space said she’s had success with lighting the ponds at night and believes her work could pave the way for expanding crawfish farming in cooler areas.

hreatened with a series of state laws cracking down on cramped cages, the egg industry on Thursday said it would agree to seek federal regulation to improve conditions for egg-laying hens.

When milk prices crashed in 2002, Chris Lekberg gave up. He sold his cows and bought goats. It turned out to be a wise decision. He now has more than 50 goats, and with growing demand for goat cheese, he gets a steady price for their milk.

It started with an ad on Craigslist: Free holiday on an organic farm on Long Island, work for your keep and enjoy wineries and great beaches nearby. The farm would even supply transportation from New York City and bicycles to get around once you arrive.

Along a stretch of Highway 21, in Texas’ pastoral Hill Country, is a vegetative wasteland. Trees are barren, or covered in gray, dying foliage and peeling bark. Fallen, dead limbs litter the ground where pecan growers and ranchers have watched trees die slow, agonizing deaths.

No one expects to find beets and carrots in a sliver of the South Bronx wedged between Metro-North Railroad tracks and a busy elevated highway. But there they are, along with late-season eggplant, tomatoes, basil and habanero peppers.