Agriculture News
Snap cuts will hurt rural dispropotionately
Daily Yonder | Posted on May 1, 2018The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill would strip billions in nutrition benefits from American families, rural residents are more likely than metropolitan ones to be participating in the program. Conventional Beltway wisdom is that farm bills pass Congress with relative ease from a rare bipartisan coalition of rural legislators delivering farm programs for their constituencies while urban legislators gain nutrition assistance and food aid in the cities. But House Republican moves to slash nutrition assistance for low-income people might hit rural communities the hardest while derailing passage of the legislation that expires Sept. 30. “The cuts should be a concern for people that live in rural communities, and for people interested in the viability of rural grocers and whether or not they can continue to make it,” Vollinger said. “Many rural grocers have a very high percentage of their sales coming through SNAP.” From 2012–2016, about 15 percent of rural households (defined as nonmetropolitan couties) participated in SNAP. That’s at least 2 percentage points higher than the rate for metropolitan residents. Nearly 90% of counties with a SNAP usage rate of 30% or greater are rural.
UC defends CRISPR patent rights in Court of Appeals
UC Berkeley | Posted on May 1, 2018The University of California will argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn the February 2017 ruling of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and reinstate the interference regarding the patent rights for CRISPR-Cas9.A research team led by UC Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna and former University of Vienna professor Emmanuelle Charpentier was the first to invent methods for using CRISPR-Cas9 outside its natural environment. The Doudna-Charpentier team was the first to disclose, file a patent application, and publish how the CRISPR-Cas9 system works to cleave DNA and employ the necessary and sufficient components of CRISPR-Cas9 in any environment – including plant, animal, and human cells – to make precise alterations to DNA. This stunning scientific breakthrough has the potential to cure countless genetic disorders from sickle cell anemia to Parkinsons, as well as other important applications.
‘Now We Are More Scared’: Migrant Workers, and Dairy Farms, Feel Threat of Immigration Policy
The Middlebury Campus | Posted on April 30, 2018In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, dairying in New England was in crisis. Small farms were faced with a lack of demand for agricultural labor, according to Vermont Representative Peter Conlon, 53. Conlon, who was born and raised in Vermont, worked as a dairy labor specialist for ten years with Agri-Placement, a company that offers employee placement and support services for dairy farms. “Americans have, by and large, walked away from doing this kind of job,” Conlon said. This has played out on many farms throughout New England and into the twenty-first century.“It used to be that there was always somebody knockin’ on the door for a job — always, I mean constantly,” said Marie Audet, who owns Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport with her husband, Eugene. She manages the office side of the business — no small feat for a farm of over 700 mature dairy animals, categorized as a large farm operation in Vermont. Eugene, a “herdsman,” works daily with the cows.Other members of her family occupy many different roles of the operation. Her nephew is a mechanic and works with tractors, her sister-in-law runs a day care for the children on the farm, and her son works with the baby cows. Jesús continued: “There is more fear now. There has always been fear. We are illegals. We were illegals before and we still are. Whether we have a racist president or not, the fear was always present. But now we are more scared.”In this state, losses of protection for undocumented immigrants, increased ICE activity, and collaboration with local law enforcement are changes that pose concrete threats to migrant workers, farm owners and Vermonters alike.“The threat to their workforce is causing farm owners stress. When you look at organizations like the Vermont Farm Bureau and other lobbies, immigration is something that people are paying close attention to,” Lambek said.
Vermont lawmakers draft rescue package for dairy farmers
My NBC | Posted on April 30, 2018The Senate Appropriations Committee has added an emergency rescue package to help struggling dairy farmers get through a very difficult year so far in 2018. Wholesale milk prices remain below the cost of production for many northeast dairy operations. "Help is on the way," said Sen. Robert Starr, chairman of the Agriculture Committee.The package includes access to low-cost loans of up to $150,000 to help cash-strapped farmers buy fertilizer and feed for the spring.Taxpayers would help buy down loan interest rates at a cost of $250,000.The second component will pay a portion of the federal premium to enroll in the USDA's milk margin protection program.
Americans care more about animal welfare than children's hunger
Ag Web | Posted on April 30, 2018Americans say they care more about animal welfare than children’s education and hunger. That’s according to the findings of the “Causes Americans Care About,” a new study that gathered responses from 1,000 adults, 41% of which chose animal welfare number one. Children’s education ranked second with 38% of respondents, followed by hunger, chosen by 33% of respondents. The top five causes Americans care about in 2018 is rounded out by disease research (No. 4) and disaster relief (No. 5), which bumped the environment out of the top five to the No. 6 position this year. Environmental issues dropped by 10 points in the last year, from being rated as important by 34 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2018.The study revealed diverging opinions about the cause landscape according to generation, ethnicity and household income:Those 35 and older were more likely to identify animal welfare (43 percent) as a top cause, while young adults (ages 18 to 34) chose children’s education (44 percent) over animal welfare (37 percent).
Tyson works to 'stop food waste, save money'
Meat + Poultry | Posted on April 30, 2018Toronto-based Flashfood and Tyson Innovation Lab have partnered up to “stop food waste and save money.” The two companies’ new initiative to offer food boxes, called flashfoodbox, to the Detroit metro market was launched on April 22, Earth Day.
“We’re proud to be taking a lead role in finding an innovative way to get the public involved in reducing food waste,” said Rizal Hamdallah, head of Tyson Innovation Lab, a special product development acceleration team at Tyson Foods. “Flashfood was a perfect fit and together we developed the flashfoodbox concept and readied it for testing within three months.”Each flashfoodbox, priced at $44.99, contains around 15 lbs. of surplus food including protein, fruits and vegetables. “Each box has 5 lbs. of protein including meat, and nearly 10 lbs. of produce. That’s enough to prepare about 14 meals at less than $4 per serving,” said Josh Domingues, founder and CEO of Flashfood.
E-Verify Immigrant Job Screening Is a Game of Chicken, Politics and State Laws
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on April 30, 2018Amid the Trump administration’s vocal efforts to crack down on the hiring of undocumented immigrants, little attention has been paid to a federal program that, if used uniformly, could go a long way toward stopping the practice. E-Verify — which is run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and matches job applicants and federal immigration data — has been touted as a solution to helping employers determine whether a potential hire is legally entitled to work in the United States. But Congress has spent years struggling to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and the E-Verify program remains voluntary across most of the country. Although President Donald Trump included mandatory E-Verify use in his 2019 federal budget proposal, some traditionally Republican interest groups, such as agriculture, have concerns about mandating E-Verify without an overhaul to the U.S. guest-worker program.Stateline conducted a state-by-state analysis of E-Verify use, looking at Homeland Security data and hiring statistics from the federal Quarterly Workforce Indicators, and found that a critical tool for preventing the illegal hiring of undocumented workers hasn’t been used uniformly even in the states that require it.
Arkansas Supreme Court Halts Farmers' Access to Dicamba
DTN | Posted on April 30, 2018A group of Arkansas farmers had little more than a week of access to dicamba before the state Supreme Court intervened on Wednesday, April 25. Nearly 200 farmers had gained temporary access to new dicamba herbicides after three judges in Clay, Mississippi and Phillips counties issued temporary restraining orders (TROs) of the state's in-season dicamba ban in the third week of April.Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge quickly filed appeals in the Phillips County and Mississippi County cases and asked for "expedited stays" -- or halts -- of the restraining orders until those appeals are decided. Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to issue those stays. A state judge also denied an additional request for a restraining order filed by 13 farmers in Greene County last week.For now, only 38 farmers continue to have access to dicamba under a Clay County restraining order still in effect.
Bayer sells more assets, bringing Monsanto deal closer
Reuters | Posted on April 30, 2018Bayer AG agreed to sell more crop science businesses to BASF in a deal that fulfils undertakings to the European Union and other regulators as part of its takeover of Monsanto Co. The package, being sold for up to 1.7 billion euros ($2.1 billion), includes its global vegetable seeds business, certain seed treatments and digital farming activities with total sales of 745 million euros in 2017.“With this move, we are implementing the corresponding undertakings made to the European Commission and other regulatory authorities to allow the successful closing of the Monsanto transaction,” Werner Baumann, Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG, said in a statement.
Service, Emotional Support and Therapy Animals
AVMA | Posted on April 30, 2018Animals can play a very important role assisting people with disabilities and as part of therapeutic activities. Most people are aware of the role of service animals, such as guide dogs, but other types of assistance animals may be less familiar. A more recently developed legal category of assistance animals is the emotional support animal (ESA). These are animals that provide companionship and emotional support for people diagnosed with a psychological disorder. They are documented by a letter from a human health professional, which legally guarantees that they may live with their handler and accompany them on aircraft, exempt from the fees that would be charged for a companion animal.Some people misrepresent their animals as assistance animals in order to bring them to places where pets are not allowed, to avoid fees, or out of a misunderstanding of the animal's role. It is important for veterinarians to assist their clients in correctly identifying their animals, and to provide care and advice consistent with the animal’s role.The AVMA recognizes and supports the federal definition of service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act; the federal regulations for emotional support animals under the Fair Housing Act and Rehabilitation Act of 1973; and provides guidelines related to animal-assisted interventions. At its July 2017 meeting, the AVMA House of Delegates approved a new policy on the Veterinarian’s Role in Supporting Appropriate Selection and Use of Service, Assistance and Therapy Animals proposed by the Steering Committee on Human-Animal Interactions.