Agriculture, food and beverage manufacturing news and stories

Agriculture, food and beverage manufacturing

Century-old fight for Budweiser name hits new snag
They've been arguing about a name for 106 years. A small brewer in the Czech Republic and the world's biggest beer maker have been suing each other ...
Farmers worry about dairy prices as deadline nears
As the nation inches toward the economic "fiscal cliff," anxiety is growing in farm country about an obscure tangent of the Washington political ...
Tropicana uses the carrot to squeeze juice sales
Tropicana wants more people to drink its juice, so it's extending a carrot — and a bushel of other vegetables. As sugar-conscious Americans continue ...
Diet Pepsi quietly changes sweetener
Diet Pepsi is quietly changing its sweetener ahead of a major rebranding of the soft drink set for next month. The change comes as PepsiCo Inc.
Massive Napa do-over prompts grape plant shortage
A massive replanting in Napa Valley of some of the world's priciest vineyards is so widespread a critical shortage of grapevine root stock has ...
No water, power, cash: Syria rebels run broke town
The anti-regime locals who have thrown together a ramshackle administration to run this northern Syrian town have one main struggle: Finding money to ...
Mexico's Mayas face Dec. 21 with ancestral calm
Amid a worldwide frenzy of advertisers and new-agers preparing for a Maya apocalypse, one group is approaching Dec. 21 with calm and equanimity — the ...
Conservationists team up with ranchers, loggers
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 ...
FDA review of tobacco products grinds to a halt
Talk about a smoke break. Tobacco companies have introduced almost no new cigarettes or smokeless tobacco products in the U.S. in more than 18 months ...
Spanish botched fresco artist sells work on eBay
The 80-year-old Spanish artist who became famous because of her botched restoration of a Christ fresco in a small-town church is auctioning one of her ...
Hands off our heritage: Some wary of China's reach
Life in this French village revolves around wine. The backyards of its tidy houses nurture the grapes that have made Burgundy famous the world over.
New tests could hamper food outbreak detection
New tests that promise to speed up diagnosis of food poisoning pose an unexpected problem: They could make it more difficult to identify dangerous ...
Extortion of American stings Bolivian officials
It is an unlikely tale: Orthodox Jew from New York City comes to Bolivia to rescue a rice-growing venture, gets thrown in jail on suspicion of money ...
China's money changes the landscape in Australia
Tony Clift's family has plowed the rich black soil of Australia's Liverpool Plains for six generations. The thought of selling never crossed his mind ...
Booze, smokes on agenda for quirky gov't group
Deep in a secure laboratory just outside Washington sits the federal government's heaviest smoker. It is a half-ton hulk of a machine, all brushed ...
Blighted icon: Volunteers aim to revive chestnut
Jim Hurst has doted on his trees, arranged in three "families" on a bluff high above the rushing French Broad River. He installed a drip irrigation ...
Israeli beverage maker takes on soda super-giants
An Israeli maker of home soda machines hopes to make a splash in the U.S. soft drink market through a global advertising campaign it will launch ...
CDC: Language barrier caused chlorine gas leak
A chlorine gas leak that sickened nearly 200 people at a Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas last year happened because a worker who couldn't read the ...
Dave Brubeck, legend who helped define jazz, dies
You don't have to be a jazz aficionado to recognize "Take Five," the smoky instrumental by the Dave Brubeck Quartet that instantly evokes swinging ...
Starbucks to open 1,500 more cafes in the US
Another Starbucks may soon pop up around the corner, with the world's biggest coffee company planning to add at least 1,500 cafes in the U.S. over the ...
Paraguayan farmers question probe into killings
Lucia Aguero stood with the other farmers in the standoff. About 300 of them had occupied the rich politician's land that they insisted wasn't legally ...
Group gathers mistletoe for holidays on river trip
There's an old southern tradition of shooting mistletoe out of treetops with a .22 rifle, or even a shotgun. Forrest Altman prefers a kinder, gentler ...
Fast-growing fish may never wind up on your plate
Salmon that's been genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal could soon show up on your dinner plate. That is, if the company that makes ...
Venezuela chocolate king thrives despite controls
Cacao pods ripen to colors from bright yellow to crimson in the forest-shaded plantations of Venezuela, where some of the world's finest chocolate is ...
AP IMPACT: China overtaking US as global trader
Shin Cheol-soo no longer sees his future in the United States. The South Korean businessman supplied components to American automakers for a decade.