Dakota Growers Pasta Co. Inc., a Carrington, N.D.-based pasta manufacturer with a plant in New Hope, Minn., has agreed to be acquired by a Canadian firm for about $240 million.

Andy Beckstoffer, a Napa Valley green pioneer who was recently elected to the Culinary Institute of America’s Vintners Hall of Fame, has given two conservation easements totaling 92 acres to the Napa County Land Trust.

Monsanto said it plans to break ground Tuesday on a new $2.4 million corn breeding station in Flora, Miss. (MON)

Beijing-based agricultural biotech firm Origin Agritech Ltd. said Monday that it has developed a pesticide business unit for premium branded chemical products, including a glyphosate weed killer. Monsanto initially patented and sold glyphosate under the name Roundup, for which its U.S. patent expired in 2000. (MON)

The Oregon Association of Nurseries and the California Association of Nurseries and Garden Centers has filed a lawsuit against the state of South Carolina.

A Colorado Senate committee did not add a broad job-creation exemption Monday to a bill that would clamp down on the types of land used in urban-renewal zones, setting up what could be a lively debate on the chamber floor.

Dr. Richard Sayre, director of the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels and principal investigator of the BioCassava Plus program at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will be a guest on a live broadcast of NPR’s “Science Friday.”

DURHAM – For more than 50 years, dairy farmers have relied on a crude, manual test to determine whether their cows suffer from a common and costly infection that cuts milk production and dairy farm profits.

Blue Diamond Growers will expand its local operations with an 80,000-square-foot warehouse at McClellan Business Park, making it the sixth lease the former air force base has attracted during the past two months.

Urban-renewal authorities, once the redeveloper of last resort for inner-city slums and dilapidated factory sites, are being used more by local governments looking to attract manufacturers and even malls in recent years.