The so-called stinging “murder hornets,” the world’s largest hornets, can grow to five centimetres in length and prey on native bee and wasp populations, consuming honeybee hives and threatening agriculture.

“Any time you get any organism that is not native to an area move in, the consequences are really immeasurable,” said Sven Spichiger, the department’s managing entomologist.

A day before the nest was located, Washington and Oregon state Department of Agriculture employees gathered in an open-air classroom just south of the British Columbia border to learn how to trap, track and eradicate the invasive species.

The employees donned protective suits, complete with black boots and blue gloves, and practised using telemetry systems to find the hornets, tag them and then destroy their nests.

Thousands of traps baited with orange juice or jam are hung in trees along likely hornet flight paths. Once spotted, the hornet must be tracked to its nest, so its queen and other hornets can be destroyed, ideally before reproducing.

When a hornet is captured, it’s fitted with a radio transmitter and released, in the hope it can be followed back to its nest.

Once a nest of Asian giant hornets is confirmed by thermal imaging to be in a tree, the tree is wrapped in plastic wrap to prevent escape while its trunk is hit with a piece of wood to get the hornets out so they can be vacuumed up and eradicated.

“My biggest fear for this year is that there will be lots of nests out in our county and we just don’t know where they are, that’s the biggest problem, is nests going undetected. So that’s why it’s so important for the public to continue telling us when they think they see one,” Looney said.

According to the Invasive Species Council of B.C., Asian giant hornet nests have yet to be found in mainland B.C. — except for one nest Washington state officials found and destroyed directly over the border line at Blaine last October.

That said, several dead Asian giant hornets were found in B.C.’s southern Fraser Valley in 2020, the council said. The lone nest seen on the Canadian side of the border was found and destroyed at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, in 2019.

The Washington state ag department today maintains a map of Asian giant hornet sightings in both the U.S. and Canada.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tim Exton. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Jason Hanson expects his crews may only harvest five tons of grapes, including his Chardonnay and Gamay varieties, down from the 25 to 30 tons his fields yielded last year. The birds can have the rest, he said, as the fruit has likely absorbed too much smoke to be salvaged and would produce wine that tastes like a “wet ashtray.”

“With the dense smoke that we’ve had at the ground level for so long now, almost everything has to be affected or damaged,” Hanson said. “I have a yearly fight with the birds. This year I’ll just let them win.”

The historic wildfires across the western U.S., home to the bulk of the country’s vineyards and major producers of crops from apples to zucchini, have ravaged farmers and ranchers already hard hit by the Trump administration’s trade wars and demand disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic.

Atmospheric smoke has obscured grape-ripening sunlight while ash has coated green beans, cauliflower and other produce in nearby fields just days before scheduled harvesting. Poor air quality is slowing harvesting as farms limit fieldwork hours and some run low on particle-filtering masks due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For wineries, the wildfires have only deepened recent wounds. A drop in restaurant traffic and smaller crowds visiting vineyards for tastings had already been sapping key sources of revenue.

Many tasting rooms remain shuttered due to fire and smoke risks, while grapes awaiting harvest in storied wine regions such as Willamette Valley or California’s Napa and Sonoma Valleys may be damaged or ruined entirely.

Oregon, Washington state and California together produce about 90 per cent of all U.S. wine. The true impact on the US$70 billion industry will not be known for months as the typical wildfire season is only just beginning, and crop damage can vary greatly from field to field.

“You have a far greater potential for tainted wine the closer you are to the fire,” said Eric Jensen, owner of Booker and My Favorite Neighbor wineries in California’s Paso Robles region.

“We’re testing constantly and we believe in Paso we’ll be blessed because of the distance that the smoke traveled to get to us. But in Napa and Sonoma, the proximity is causing issues.”

Smoke has blanketed much of the U.S. West as fires have charred nearly five million acres, but some wine areas such as Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz and Monterey have been much closer to blazes than areas like Santa Barbara and Paso Robles.

Labs overwhelmed

Laboratories that test grapes for smoke contamination are overwhelmed this year, with some taking up to a month to return results, instead of less than a week normally. Vineyards use that data to gauge whether to harvest or not.

Winemakers and scientists are still learning how smoke can affect wine grapes and how the effects can be mitigated.

Australia has been at the forefront of research, as drought-fueled bushfires have riled its industry for years. But studies at American universities have ramped up over the past five years, helped by U.S. Department of Agriculture funding, as climate change is expected to increasingly impact U.S. wineries.

It is too soon to judge how the wildfires will impact 2020 vintages, but harvested grape supplies will likely be smaller, said Glenn Proctor, partner and broker at California-based Ciatti Global Wine + Grape Brokers.

Winemakers short of newly harvested grapes are expected to buy bulk wine from the 2019 season for blending with what is available from this year, he said. Fear of reputational risk will prevent winemakers from bottling and selling any wine with an unpleasant smoke taste, he said.

Ample supplies coming into this season should offset any shortfall from this year’s harvest so work-from-home Zoom Happy Hours will likely not notice any impact, he said.

“I still think we’re going to see some good wines coming out of 2020 because the growing conditions were great through the season,” Proctor said.

“The fires have put a question mark on everything but I’m still hopeful that most of those wines will play out.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Karl Plume in Chicago.

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U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists said 14 translucent parasitic worms of the species Thelazia gulosa, all less than half an inch long, were extracted from the 26-year-old woman’s eye over a 20-day period before her symptoms dissipated.

This species of Thelazia worm was previously seen in cattle throughout the northern U.S. and southern Canada, the researchers reported in a study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. They said the study indicates that North Americans may be more vulnerable than previously understood to such infections.

If the worms remain in a person’s eye for a prolonged time, they can cause corneal scarring and even blindness, according to the researchers.

“Cases of eye worm parasitic infections are rare in the USA, and this case turned out to be a species of the Thelazia that had never been reported in humans,” said study lead author Richard Bradbury, who works with the CDC’s division of parasitic diseases and malaria.

Bradbury said previously it was thought there were only two different species of these eye worms that infected humans worldwide, and that Thelazia gulosa is now the third.

The researchers said the woman noticed a small, translucent worm in her left eye after experiencing irritation. Her frequent outdoor pastimes during the summer months exposed her to the infection, they added.

She was from the city of Gold Beach, on Oregon’s coast along the Pacific Ocean about 65 km north of the California border.

Previous cases of such eye worm infections have been reported worldwide, predominantly in Europe and Asia and in rural communities with close proximity to animals and with poor living standards, the researchers said.

Eye worms are found in a variety of animals including dogs, cats and certain wild carnivores.

— Reporting for Reuters by Gina Cherelus in New York.

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Federal authorities said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon would remain closed for several weeks as agents secured what is now considered a crime scene.

After their surrender on Thursday, protesters told authorities they had left behind booby traps but did not say whether the trip wires and other devices would trigger explosions, a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Materials to create explosives could be found on the refuge, the official said, because workers there previously performed controlled burns.

The final four protesters had enough food on hand to last them for many months, the official said.

The nearby town of Burns, which has been caught in the middle as the occupiers protested federal government control of expanses of Western land, was quiet on Friday as residents sought to resume normal life after the 41-day standoff.

The final four protesters surrendered on Thursday with David Fry, 27, repeatedly threatening suicide in a dramatic final phone call with mediators before he gave up. All 12 people arrested in connection with the standoff will face charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers, according to the FBI.

The takeover, which began on Jan. 2, was sparked by the return to prison of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal property near the refuge. It was led by brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who were arrested in January along with nine other protesters on a snow-covered roadside while on their way to speak at a community meeting in John Day, Oregon.

A spokesman for the group, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was shot dead in the stop.

The Bundys’ father, Cliven, was arrested on Wednesday night in Portland and charged with conspiracy and assault on a federal officer in connection with a 2014 standoff on federal land near his Nevada ranch.

The official who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said that the Bundy brothers and others began confronting the local sheriff in November but federal authorities did not get involved until the protesters began occupying the refuge.

That low profile was intentional because “a federal face is often a trigger for these militia” groups, the official said.

The official told Reuters that authorities made the decision to arrest the Bundy brothers and their fellow protesters out of concern that the standoff movement could spread as the group took their message to other communities.

— Jimmy Urquhart is a contributing reporter and photographer for Reuters, based in Salt Lake City. Additional reporting for Reuters by Julia Edwards in Washington, D.C., Jonathan Allen in New York and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; writing by Dan Whitcomb.

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Authorities said the new security involves a series of checkpoints along key routes into and out of the refuge, and was made out of an “abundance of caution” to protect the public and law enforcement after the confrontation.

The month-long occupation of the wildlife reserve over federal control of large tracts of the country turned violent on Tuesday after officers stopped a car carrying protest leader Ammon Bundy and others near the refuge. Activists said Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers, was killed.

There were no details on why shooting broke out at the traffic stop. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said authorities would hold a news conference on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. PT in Burns, a town near the refuge.

One of the remaining occupiers, Jason Patrick, told Reuters by phone they would stay until the “redress of grievances.”

“I’ve heard ‘peaceful resolution’ for weeks now and now there’s a cowboy who is my friend who is dead — so prepare for the peaceful resolution,” Patrick said.

Authorities on Wednesday said the checkpoints will allow only ranchers who own property in the area to pass and anyone coming out of the refuge will have to show identity and have their vehicle searched.

The Malheur takeover, which started Jan. 2, was a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West. Protesters say they are defending the Constitution.

Federal officials said they had probable cause to arrest Finicum, who told NBC News earlier this month that he would rather die than be detained.

Patrick likened Finicum’s death to that of Tamir Rice, an unarmed 12-year-old black youth fatally shot by Cleveland police outside a recreation center in 2014. The officers were not charged.

“The government can kill who they want for whatever reason they want with impunity,” Patrick said.

He was asked how the occupiers would respond to authorities entering the refuge but did not indicate a clear plan.

“I don’t know what to tell you but if somebody saying ‘peaceful resolution’ comes in and points guns at me …” Patrick said before trailing off.

— Peter Henderson is Reuters’ U.S. West Coast enterprise editor. Reporting for Reuters by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen and Ed Tobin in New York.

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Saturday’s takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Ore., marked the latest protest over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual rights.

Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, who on Monday surrendered to serve longer prison terms for setting fires that spread to federal land, had been regulars at a town diner where residents were sympathetic and said they feared the federal government wanted to seize ranch lands for its own use.

“The BLM wants that land bad and they’ll probably end up getting it,” said Tim Slate, a butcher who said he had gone out to slaughter the Hammonds’ cattle many times over the years, using an acronym for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. “The federal government wants to take over the state of Oregon and turn it into a park.”

Diners voiced skepticism about protest leader Ammon Bundy, the son of a Nevada rancher who along with a large group of armed men successfully stared down federal agents in 2014 when the government attempted to confiscate his livestock because he refused to pay grazing fees.

“I don’t think it’s right to take over a public building,” said James Arndt, a retired painter. “I’m kind of mixed about that.”

He echoed other residents of the town of some 3,000 people about 450 km southeast of Portland, who viewed the occupation as the work of outside agitators. Lawyers from the Hammonds have sought to disassociate themselves from the occupiers, saying that the action did not represent their clients’ will.

But Bundy said some locals had been stopping by with food for the occupiers.

“A particular rancher… brought a very, very good pot of soup that was needed on a late night when we were very hungry,” he said.

Authorities have closed schools for the week in the area out of concerns of possible violence, although so far the occupation has been peaceful.

‘Not about fear’

Bundy on Tuesday said his group, which has named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, wanted to work with residents of Harney County to help them regain unfettered access to public lands for ranching and logging.

“We’re not about fear, we’re not about force, we’re not about intimidation,” Bundy told reporters at the refuge. “If the government is bringing that fear and intimidation, it needs to be checked and balanced.”

Early in the occupation Bundy said that many of his supporters were armed, although members of the occupation have not been showing weapons in recent days.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward, in a statement on behalf of himself and County Judge Steven Grasty on Monday, asked group members to go home. He called a Tuesday afternoon meeting for county residents to discuss their concerns about the situation.

Neither protesters nor authorities have said how many people are involved in the occupation. About a dozen occupiers have been visible at the site.

The FBI said it was working with state and local law enforcement for a peaceful resolution and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which is closed to visitors. They are following U.S. policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning deadly as they did in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas in the early 1990s.

“It’s not exactly clear what the motives or intentions are of the individuals who are involved in this particular situation. The speculation by some is that it’s politically motivated,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday. “I certainly wouldn’t want to say something from here that could be construed as inflaming that situation.”

The success of the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch, likely emboldened the occupiers of the refuge, observers said.

“They forced the federal government at gunpoint to stand down. They won,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.

“The group that’s holed up there in Burns seems to think they’re going to take that same idea to another level: You solve your issues over land usage or grazing fees or whatever by refusing to pay up and then using weapons to run cops off the land.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Jonathan Allen and Jim Urquhart in Oregon; additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Andy Sullivan and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; writing by Scott Malone.

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As armed anti-government activists occupied a snowy wildlife refuge for a third day to call attention to a land-use dispute, militia leaders from similar groups across the country criticized the seizure of federal land and a building.

The protesters have said they aim “to restore and defend the Constitution” to protect the rights of ranchers and ignite a national debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy they hope could ultimately force the federal government to release tracts of Western land.

Their occupation of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge comes as the number of paramilitary groups is on the rise in the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks their numbers.

But the latest call to arms appears to have failed to resonate with like-minded groups whose support would be crucial for creating a coalition of armed militia members substantial enough to thwart a law enforcement operation.

“There’s a better way to go about things,” said Brandon Curtiss, president of Three Percent of Idaho, a militia group that has been involved in the dispute. “If you want to make a change like that, you need to get the county citizens behind you to go through the proper channels.”

The protesters have rallied behind Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who were found guilty of arson on public land near their property. They were initially sentenced to 12 months in prison, below the federal minimum for arson, but a U.S. judge raised the sentences to five years.

The Hammonds, who turned themselves in as planned on Monday at a federal prison in California, have said they do not support the protesters or their leader, Ammon Bundy, whose father, Cliven Bundy, was at the centre of a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights in Nevada that ended with federal agents backing down in the face of about 1,000 armed militiamen, many on horseback.

The Pacific Patriot Network, an umbrella group for militias in the region, said it did not support seizing federal property even if it understood the underlying frustration with the federal government. “This land use issue is decades old and it’s boiling up in frustration. That’s what you’re seeing,” spokesman Joseph Rice said.

The Oath Keepers, another paramilitary group that participated in the 2014 Bundy ranch dispute in Nevada, also distanced itself from the latest standoff.

‘Wish to hell he hadn’t done this’

Some militia leaders said Bundy was using the dispute to provoke the federal government with little regard for the local community.

“Here you have a guy who believes he’s on a mission from God. What the Hammonds want and what the community wants is immaterial,” said Mike Vanderboegh, a founder of the III Percent Movement, which draws its name from the notion that only three per cent of Americans actively participated in the Revolutionary War.

Vanderboegh and other leaders said they worried Bundy would provoke a violent response from the U.S. government similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that ended in the deaths of 76 people.

Three Obama administration officials said federal authorities had been told to avoid a violent confrontation, in line with official U.S. policy after the deadly clashes at Waco and in 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Armed U.S. paramilitary groups, which had been on the wane since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have seen their ranks swell in recent years, driven by fears among the far right that President Barack Obama will threaten gun ownership and erode local rights.

The movement has also been energized by confrontations between ranchers, miners and federal regulators in the western U.S., where the government owns vast stretches of land.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are 276 active militia groups today, one-third more than before last year’s standoff.

The latest incident began after militia groups from Oregon and Idaho staged a peaceful march in the nearby city of Burns on Saturday to protest what they see as heavy-handed management by bureaucrats with little interest in local concerns.

Other militia leaders declined to question Bundy’s motives but said he stood little chance of getting the federal government to back down.

“If you want me to demonize this guy, I won’t do it,” said Bob Wright, a commander of the New Mexico Militia.

“But I wish to hell he hadn’t done this,” he said.

— Andy Sullivan is a U.S. domestic policy correspondent for Reuters in Washington, D.C.

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The occupation, which began on Saturday, followed a march in Burns, a small city about 80 km north of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in support of Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond.

Hammond and his son, convicted in 2012 of setting fires that spread to public land, traveled to Los Angeles on Sunday evening to turn themselves in to federal authorities, according to their lawyer W. Alan Schroeder. They were to be sent to back to prison after federal prosecutors won an appeal that resulted in their resentencing to longer terms.

Their ranch borders on the southern edge of the refuge, a bird sanctuary in the arid high desert in the eastern part of the state, about 490 km southeast of Portland.

The protest was being led by Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, owner of a ranch in Nevada where his family staged an armed protest against the Bureau of Land Management in April 2014. The agency sought to seize Bundy’s cattle after he refused to pay grazing fees. Federal agents finally backed down, citing safety concerns, and returned hundreds of cattle to Bundy.

Federal and state authorities have not said how they planned to respond to the occupation of the refuge’s headquarters in Princeton, Oregon.

It involved an unknown number of people, Jason Holm, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, said in a statement. No employees were in the building.

Holm described the occupation as a break-in, although federal justice and Interior Department officials contacted later declined to say whether any crimes were committed in the occupation.

Wildlife refuge buildings were closed over the holiday weekend. As of Sunday night, the FWS website for Malheur said the refuge is closed until further notice, citing the occupation at the facility.

In an interview posted on Facebook, Bundy said the occupation was in reaction to the government intrusion into the rights of private-property owners.

“It is the people’s facility, owned by the people,” Bundy said. “It has been provided for us to be able to come together and unite and make a hard stand against this overreach — this taking of the people’s land and resources.”

Bundy told CNN some of the occupiers were armed.

The Hammonds distanced themselves last month from the Bundys, according to a letter Schroeder, wrote to the county sheriff on Dec. 11.

“I write to clarify that neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone with his group/organization speak for the Hammond family, Dwight Hammond or Steven Hammond,” Schroeder wrote in the letter, which was seen by Reuters.

The incident is part of a decades-old conflict between ranchers and the federal government over Washington’s management of hundreds of thousands of rangeland. Critics of the federal government say it often oversteps its authority and exercises arbitrary power over land use without sufficient accountability.

‘Alternative motives’

Bundy told a news conference on Sunday he had yet to communicate with any law enforcement officials. He said occupiers planned no violence unless that was justified by actions taken against the occupants. He would not say how many people were inside the headquarters.

He encouraged anyone opposed to overreach by the government in the management of federal lands to join the occupation at the refuge.

“For those that understand what is going on, and those who want to and feel a need to stand, we’re asking them to come,” he said. “We have a facility that we can house them in.”

“We will continue to monitor the situation for additional developments,” Holm said in the statement. He did not immediately return a phone call seeking further details. No one answered a call to the phone number of the refuge.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward was critical of the protesters and their motives, and advised local residents to stay away from the refuge.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, encompassing 292 square miles, was established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt as a breeding ground for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds. The headquarters compound includes a visitor centre, a museum and the refuge office.

— Jim Urquhart is a Reuters reporter and photographer. Reporting for Reuters by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Mark Hosenball in Washington. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Though the roughly 1,200 affected farms in the Klamath Basin had been warned that additional irrigation cuts might be coming, it was unusual for the agency to change its irrigation forecast at this point in the year, said acting Bureau of Reclamation area manager Brian Pearson.

But he said that abnormally low snow levels had made it especially difficult to forecast how much water will be available later this year.

In non-drought years, farmers in the region have been allowed about 390,000 acre feet of water, roughly 127 billion gallons. They had already been told to expect just 254,500 acre feet this year. The cuts announced this week bring the allocation down to between 200,000 and 175,000 acre feet for the full year, Pearson said.

A number of farmers had already removed land from active use or planned for low-water crops. Even so, the further reductions present a hardship, said Matt Vickery, deputy director of the Klamath Water Users Association, a nonprofit advocate for agriculture and irrigation operations.

“People have already planted high-risk, high-yield crops, like potatoes and onions, that may not be irrigated through the season now,” Vickery said.

“These farmers have put money into the land, and now the water may not be there for their crops,” he added.

In a typical year, agriculture contributes about US$600 million to the economies of the Northern California and Southern Oregon Klamath Basin, Vickery said. “The cuts we’ve seen are already affecting the economy,” he added.

The Bureau of Reclamation has little leeway when determining water allocations, because it is legally required to send water to rivers downstream from its reservoir, and also to protect endangered fish populations, Pearson said.

— Courtney Sherwood is the Oregon correspondent for Reuters in Portland.

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“Periods of record warmth in the West and not enough precipitation during the rainy season cut short drought relief in California this winter and prospects for above-average temperatures this spring may make the situation worse,” Jon Gottschalck, chief of the centre’s Operational Prediction Branch, said in issuing its spring outlook.

The centre, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), also said rivers in western New York and eastern New England have the greatest risk of spring flooding in part because of heavy snowpack coupled with possible spring rain.

The western U.S. is expected to see the multi-year drought continue and intensify in 2015 and extend into the northern Plains, the outlook said.

Drought is forecast to persist in California, Nevada and Oregon through June with the onset of the dry season in April.

“I see nothing that would indicate much improvement, if any improvement, in the overall situation for field crops for 2015,” said Brad Rippey, meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, noting he expects to see a significant drop in field crops again this year in California.

“Drought is also forecast to develop in remaining areas of Oregon and western Washington. Drought is also likely to continue in parts of the southern Plains,” NOAA said.

But forecasters expect drought improvement in the Southwest, southern Rockies, southern Plains and Gulf Coast while drought is likely in the northern Plains, upper Mississippi Valley and western Great Lakes.

Above-average temperatures are favoured this spring across the Far West, northern Rockies and northern Plains eastward to include parts of the western Great Lakes, and for all of Alaska. Below-normal temperatures are most likely this spring for Texas and nearby areas of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, the outlook said.

In the U.S. Midwest crop belt, a lack of snowfall in the northern states will mean an early planting season and little to no flooding, Rippey said. In contrast, the southern crop belt is wet and has already seen minor to moderate flooding.

“I would expect planting to go a little better in the upper Midwest this spring than it will in the Ohio Valley,” Rippey added at the presentation of the outlook.

— Christine Stebbins is a Reuters correspondent covering agriculture and ag markets from Chicago.

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