Keep in mind: These are early days. 3D printer ideas will grow increasingly sophisticated and interesting as more armchair inventors get involved. But the projects below can be replicated and tinkered with right now, using your home 3D printer. Consider them a taste of what’s to come.

1) Encouragement Eggs

Sometimes hens need a little gentle encouragement to get laying; surrounding them with fake eggs can get results. Texan Paul Waak came up with this design to goose his Cuckoo Marans into productivity. His wife says encouragement eggs have doubled their output (though Waak thinks the increase was more modest). This design was customized to the size and shape of a Maran egg, but you can always tweak it to your chickens’ specs.

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This is the story of how the world’s largest banks came to love the House Agriculture Committee.

In Washington, we often witness politicians forgetting the lessons of a year or five years or 10 years ago. It takes some special obliviousness to forget the lessons of Friday. Five days ago, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., delivered a critical report and held an explosive hearing detailing the “London Whale” trades, made by a JPMorgan Chase satellite office in London. As you may have read, these trades turned sour and led to a $6.2 billion loss for the bank in a matter of weeks. More important, JPMorgan misled regulators about the nature of the trades, altered its internal processes to take on more risk, and then hid the losses by improperly mismarking the value on its balance sheet, pretending the shortfall was inconsequential to avoid oversight and present a positive financial picture to investors.

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And so I have long been ashamed to admit that, well, I love working. I love working! I love the transcendent pleasure of creating something that didn’t exist before, the tidy accumulation of hours, the inflating sense of having Done A Good Job. Completed tasks! Schedules! Productivity! My favorite courtship is the dairy farm workplace romance in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. How dreamy to be wooed, as Tess is, “in undertones like that of the purling milk—at the cow’s side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs”?

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PETA’s Mimi Bekhechi was quick to issue a response, pointing out (correctly) that meat consumption is a key driver of a host of ecological and social ills, among them world hunger and global climate change, but failing to dispute the core argument at hand – that is, that Western demand is pricing out poor folks.

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Food waste amounts to 23 percent of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, the study says, and it is also the largest component of solid waste in U.S. landfills.

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An airplane pilot guided troopers on the ground through browning forests and corn fields Tuesday to uncover grow sites in Clark, Scott and Harrison counties. The troopers cut down more than 100 marijuana plants.

Sgt. Jerry Goodin tells The Courier-Journal the resilient green marijuana plants "stick out like a sore thumb."

Trooper Mike Bennett tells The News and Tribune that marijuana can flourish in harsh conditions, pointing out, "It's not called weed for nothing."

Bennett says the seized plants will be destroyed once a burn ban is lifted.

He says the owners of property where marijuana grows are rarely arrested, because most "have no idea that it's growing on their land."

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10.8 billion bushels is still a lot of corn. The USDA report notes that this year’s harvest could be the smallest since 2006. What it doesn’t point out is there are only two years in U.S. history prior to 2006 where the country produced more corn than it will produce this year. Those years were 2004 and 2005.

Even with the drought, America will grow and harvest more corn in 2012 than in almost any time in its history.

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As you likely know from this arid summer, America is suffering through the worst drought since 1950. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, half of all counties in the nation are officially disaster areas -- a situation that has devastated the country's supply of agriculture commodities. Consequently, food prices are expected to skyrocket, and eventually, water-dependent power plants may be forced to shut down.

This is a full-on emergency, and USDA, a key agency involved in the national security issues surrounding our food and water supply, last week responded with a minor non-binding recommendation. In its inter-office newsletter to agency employees, it suggested that those who want to conserve water could simply refrain from eating meat on Mondays.

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Authorities said Wednesday that a Faulkner County sheriff's deputy was responding to a call about a bull running loose when he saw the man slapping and trying to guide the bull.

The Log Cabin Democrat reports that as the patrol car drew near, the animal reared up and pinned the man against the vehicle. According to the deputy's report, the bull then "tried to mate with him."

The bull then lost interest and followed a truck down the road.

The patrol car sustained minor damage, though no injuries were reported. The bull's owner says it was the animal's first escape.

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Information from: Log Cabin Democrat, http://www.thecabin.net

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With the worst dry spell in 50 years threatening to kill corn and soybean crops across a wide swath of the Midwest, driving food prices to record highs, Chinese officials are bracing for a shock that could complicate plans to revive the economy this year.

In 2011, China imported $20 billion worth of soybeans, corn, cotton and hides from US farmers, surpassing Canada for the first time.

China is particularly dependent on soybeans, which have become a crucial feed crop for the country’s massive pig farms. As more Chinese can afford to eat meat more regularly, pork consumption has skyrocketed. More than half of the world’s pork is now produced and consumed within China. Corn imports are also important, with China purchasing more from the US than any country but Japan. Next year, it is expected to buy 5 million tons of American corn.

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According to the Financial Times, corn surpassed $8 a bushel for the first time, hitting a record $8.055, while soybeans also hit a fresh peak at $17.115.

"Currently, almost 61 percent of the country (not including Alaska and Hawaii) is in drought, compared to 29 percent a year ago," Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, explained to USA Today. Fuchs added that even with the variability of the climate, "this is a rare event." He believes nearly 78 percent of the U.S. corn-growing regions are in drought.

The worst of it isn't over yet. Bloomberg reported that due to the extremely low output of crops like corn and soybeans, the U.S. may be looking at higher food inflation into 2013.

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Bronner's company, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, spends over $100,000 to buy over 20 tons of hemp seed oil from Canada each year to use in its soaps. Bronner wants to give that money to American farmers instead.

If it's legal to use in soaps – and even to eat – then why is it illegal to grow here? Because according to the government, hemp is a drug. Specifically, it's considered identical to its close cousin, marijuana. But Bronner says it is no more a drug than a poppyseed bagel. The plants he gathered seed from to press his oil in front of the White House had been tested to confirm they contained less than 0.3 percent THC, which means it would be “impossible to get a high of any kind” even from smoking extremely large quantities of it. A more likely result from smoking that much industrial hemp would be a bad headache or perhaps a sore throat.

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So the Farm Bill is due to be voted on (it is being stalled, of course, because this is the Senate we're talking about), and as usual it's a massive thing larded up with horrible policy. (Like: cutting $4.5 billion from the food-stamp program, but sugar price supports and quotas were maintained, thank god!) Grandstanding attention-seekers (aka "senators") are now trying to blow up the whole thing with horrible amendments, like Rand Paul's wonderful plan to just get rid of the food-stamp program entirely, and Jim DeMint's very farm-focused amendment that would repeal Dodd-Frank.

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"When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer's markets, the first one told me that 'no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer's markets were stocked with 'black market vegetables' that 'are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.' It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket."

Unfortunately, she's not alone. Conducting research requires funding, and today's research follows the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules.

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Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling indicated on MSNBC on Tuesday night that the Republicans have gone as far as they are willing to go when it comes to compromise. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and others held a press conference this morning urging the supercommittee to “go big” on an agreement over deficit reduction. The White House, in the meantime, is bracing for failure, according to the Washington Post.

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But Jordan doesn’t take the credit. The secret to her booming business, she says, is instead a complex and seemingly rather dull legal contract called an agricultural easement. The arrangement, made with a land trust, allows farmers to be paid in return for stripping their land of its development rights – no new subdivisions or shopping malls allowed – and instead keeping it as farmland. In 2004, the Jordan family placed 47 acres of their property under an easement with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust for an undisclosed sum. “The Jordans settled Cape Elizabeth,” Jordan says. “We would not have kept the farm, let alone been able to invest in the business, without this.”

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It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.

As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.

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Yet our favorite fruit may not be quite as innocuous and delicious as it appears. In his new book "Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit," journalist Barry Estabrook writes the biography of the modern tomato, revealing the environmental and human costs of big agribusiness. Estabrook traces the history of the tomato from the wild tomato berries that once grew in abundance in the rocky foothills of the Andes to the most familiar salad staple on the planet. A true tomato devotee, Estabrook explains why our love for tomatoes is hurting not only field workers and the environment, but our taste buds, too.

Salon spoke to him over the phone about what the tomato—and its taste—really says about us.

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