Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

If the Fourth of July just isn't a holiday without a burger on the grill, you're in luck.

Arizona may be more known for its cattle, citrus and vegetables, but dairies and dairy farmers produce the state’s No. 1 commodity with nearly 200,000 cows producing more than $750 million worth of milk.

State lawmakers are moving to keep medical marijuana dispensaries in the rural areas of the state.

The number of H-2A visas issued to agricultural workers in the state has more than doubled in the past five years, mirroring a national increase in the temporary “guest worker program” for noncitizens.

Food advocacy groups said Apache County children had the least reliable access to healthy food in the nation in 2014, when 41.5 percent of children in the county were deemed to be “food insecure.”

Traditional veterinary medicine for large food animals in rural Arizona has all but vanished, leaving the state’s livestock industry increasingly vulnerable to disease and even death.

Drawing groundwater from near a stream can suck that stream dry. In turn, using all the water in streams and rivers lessens their ability to replenish the aquifers beneath them. Yet California and Arizona -- the two states water experts say are facing the most severe water crises -- continue to count and regulate groundwater and surface water as if they were entirely separate.

A year after a tense standoff between a Nevada rancher's armed supporters and federal land agents, Cliven Bundy is hosting a barbecue and celebration to mark the event that vaulted him into tea party stardom.

Of the nearly 800 fully automatic M-16s Arizona law enforcement organizations have received under a Department of Defense program that gives away surplus military hardware, 13 have gone to a state agency better known for serving farmers and ranchers and protecting consumers.

Moises de la Cruz grows corn on a 7-acre plot of mountainous land 120 miles north of the Mexico-Guatemala border just as his father did and his father before him. He has never heard of the North American Free Trade Agreement but is profoundly aware that his life as a farmer has drastically changed over the past 20 years.