A new exemption for drone piloting from the Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the airways for "drone-swarm" agriculture, a method of seeding and spraying crops at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Hylio, a Texas-based drone manufacturer, successfully applied for an exemption from the FAA to allow fleets of drones weighing 55 pounds or more to fly together. 

It's the first exception of its kind for machines that carry what the company calls a "meaningful payload" and makes the process competitive with traditional tractors and seeding rigs.

At dawn on Friday, Baljeet Kaur, a farmer from Punjab, led a group of 200 women to the village of Shambhu in the state with one mission in mind: to join the ongoing farmers’ protest in India on International Women’s Day.

The 38-year-old mother of two from Chamuru village said that it was important to raise awareness of the struggles faced by women farmers in India on this day.

The growl of diesel-powered tractors, the stench of burning tires, manure sprayed at police. This week, in the normally staid Belgian capital of Brussels, months of protests by farmers across the 27-nation European Union became something much closer to a farmers rebellion.

And at its heart is a policy challenge with much wider, international implications: How can governments stem the rapid overheating of our planet, and build more environmentally sustainable economies, in a way that is politically sustainable as well?

U.S. rice exports to Haiti, which account for the bulk of supplies of the country's key food staple, contain unhealthy levels of arsenic and cadmium, heavy metals that can increase risks of cancer and heart disease, according to a recent study by the University of Michigan.

Haiti is among the United States' top buyers of rice, alongside Mexico and Japan, and cheap imports are more affordable than local options in the Caribbean nation, the poorest state in the Western Hemisphere.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal promised more aid for French agriculture on Tuesday and vowed to shield it from “unfair competition” in an attempt to appease protesting farmers, but many appeared unmoved by his efforts as they blocked major roads around Paris for a second day.

The barricades of tractors and bales of hay caused miles of traffic bottlenecks in the Paris region, but protesters have not encircled the city. Neither have they crippled the French capital itself, which has experienced only limited disruptions so far.

Dozens of farmers who descended on a food market outside Paris have been arrested, as tensions over protests for better conditions escalated.

The French government had warned that disruption at Rungis, a food distribution hub which feeds 12 million people, would cross a red line.

About 91 farmers who converged on the market are in custody, police said.

Farmers are aiming to stop food deliveries reaching supermarkets, in a call for better pay and less red tape.

French farmers used tractors, tires, and manure to block off eight major roads to Paris and showcase their displeasure with planned European Union regulations on the farming sector, which they argue could cripple their industry and push business into other, less-efficient parts of the world. 

Pandemic. War. Now drought.

Olive groves have shriveled in Tunisia. The Brazilian Amazon faces its driest season in a century. Wheat fields have been decimated in Syria and Iraq, pushing millions more into hunger after years of conflict. The Panama Canal, a vital trade artery, doesn’t have enough water, which means fewer ships can pass through. And the fear of drought has prompted India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, to restrict the export of most rice varieties.

With the Republican Iowa caucuses just one week away, Hawkeye State farmers are revealing how the 2024 presidential election will serve as a pivotal moment for the economy and agricultural industry.

"I'm afraid if we keep heading down this path, we've got a lot of destruction ahead," fifth-generation farmer Rick DeGroote told FOX Business’ Grady Trimble.

Farmers across Germany on Monday began protests against the government’s economic and agricultural policies, blocking roads and highways with tractors and marching through major cities.

Some signs carried by protesters and attached to tractors had messages such as “no farmer, no food, no future” and “when farmers are ruined, food has to be imported” written on them. Others called for new elections and called the coalition government “senseless” and “incompetent”.

A spokesperson for the German government was not immediately available when contacted by CNBC.