Agriculture News
Farm to pharma: This story at a glance
Stat News | Posted on March 15, 2018On the night before his weekly trip into the slaughterhouse, Fraser Taylor stepped into the back of the truck to make sure everything was in place. The hold still smelled faintly of cow — a subtle whiff of something grassy — but the equipment inside seemed better suited to a day of spelunking through the sewers. There were hard hats and hoses and straps. There were huge conical tanks, and a valve-laden contraption that might come in handy for siphoning off the contents of pipes. The truck itself was white. It bore no sign of the company it belonged to or the strange journey it was about to take. If they didn’t get onto the floor before the cattle started coming by, there would no way to load their equipment in, and they would get none of the precious liquid they’d come to collect.It’s a substance that most meat processing plants hardly think about: Just another fluid in the fluid-filled business of turning an animal into a side of beef. But Taylor would panic if he saw any spill on the slaughterhouse floor — those lost drops could have saved babies’ lives.This small firm had carefully courted slaughterhouses so that its workers could be allowed inside to suck this off-white foam out of cow lungs. Then, they purified the hell out of it, and shipped vials of it across Canada, and to India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ecuador, and Iran, where it was shot into the lungs of struggling premature infants. Preemies’ lungs, like the rest of them, aren’t quite ready for birth, and some — almost all of those born very early — haven’t started producing this foam themselves. It’s called pulmonary surfactant, and without it, their air sacs could collapse. In the 1980s, doctors had tried squirting surfactant collected from other creatures in through the tiny nostrils and mouths of babies with respiratory distress syndrome, while also putting them on ventilators. The transformation was immediate: Newborns went from blue to pink. Their chests filled with air.
How Sensitive is the Farm Sector’s Ability to Repay Debt to Rising Interest Rates?
Choices magazine | Posted on March 15, 2018Recent farm sector trends, including rising debt and declining income, have led to comparisons between agriculture’s current economic environment and the period leading up to the farm financial crisis. Between 1970 and 1980, inflation-adjusted farm sector debt grew rapidly, expanding by 5.6% annually. Over the most recent decade, inflation-adjusted farm sector debt was still climbing an average of 4% per year, and the USDA currently projects inflation-adjusted debt to be at its highest level since the early 1980s. After inflation-adjusted net farm income declined nearly 50% between 1973 and 1979, a sharp rise in interest rates in the late 1970s—as well as other factors—led to a wave of financial stress in many agricultural sectors. As of 2016, net farm income has also declined by 50% from its 2013 peak, and a rising interest rate environment is expected as the Federal Reserve transitions toward tighter monetary policy. In the 1980s, the concurrent trends of higher debt, lower income, and rising interest rates combined with other factors to increase farm debt repayment challenges. This article considers whether today’s rising interest rate environment could also lead to increased farm sector repayment risk. Analyzing the impact of several interest rate path scenarios on farm repayment risk suggests that the sector remains well positioned to handle interest rate increases within a likely range. However, farmers starting from a worse financial position and farmers with a larger share of variable-rate debt may face greater financial stress.
Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America
USDA | Posted on March 14, 2018The Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America provides statistics by broad categories of socioeconomic factors: People: Demographic data from the American Community Survey (ACS), including age, race and ethnicity, migration and immigration, education, household size, and family composition.Jobs: Economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources, including information on employment trends, unemployment, and industrial composition of employment from the ACS.County classifications: The rural-urban continuum, economic dependence, persistent poverty, persistent child poverty, population loss, onshore oil/natural gas counties, and other ERS county typology codes.Income: Data on median household income, per capita income, and poverty (including child poverty).Veterans: Data on veterans, including service period, education, unemployment, income, and demographic characteristics.
Low Milk Prices + Higher Labor Costs + Pricing System = Closing CNY Dairy Farms
Syracuse University | Posted on March 14, 2018Central New York dairy farmers are facing such difficult times that they’re considering leaving the business altogether. A combination of persistently low prices of milk and rising labor costs are forcing long-time farmers to make some tough decisions. John F. Tucker and Sons has 140 milking cows, with another 80 so-called young stock. They also grow corn, soybeans, oats, wheat, and alfalfa hay for the cows on their 1,200 acres. Mark Tucker says it’s just he and his brother, along with a few hired hands. The other six siblings and his grown children aren’t interested in the long hours and hard work. So, he says, that doesn’t leave him much of a choice. Tucker says they'd try to boost their production to improve their margins. But he says there's already too much milk on the market, and they pay a penalty to milk companies for over-producing. Tucker says the problem is exacerbated by reduced demand and limited exporting opportunities. "It started about four years ago. You usually go in cycles anyway, where you have good years and bad years. This cycle has been running a bit longer than we've had in the past. We're really starting to feel the pressure this year."
“Organic” doesn’t mean “small”
Daily Yonder | Posted on March 14, 2018Not too long ago a press release from a big CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) called Natural Prairie Dairy crossed the desk of the Daily Yonder, proclaiming a new era for organic dairy production. It offered “a 21st century farm (with) 21st century careers.” A 21st century farm with more than over 4,000 cows, that is. The dairy is proposing to build an operation in northwest Indiana with 4,350 cows. The farm will produce 26 million gallons of urine, manure, and dirty water, according to the Newtown County Enterprise. But don’t worry. The milk will be organic.
Proposal floated would satisfy cooperatives, grain elevator groups
The Progressive Farmer | Posted on March 14, 2018Two major agricultural groups announced a proposal on Tuesday to roll back the Section 199A tax-break deduction that has upended grain trade. The National Grain and Feed Association and National Council of Farmer Cooperatives support a plan that would replace the 20% deduction on gross sales to cooperatives with a tax deduction more comparable to the original Section 199 deduction, known as the Domestic Production Activities Deduction.If approved by Congress, a farmer selling to a cooperative would still see a tax benefit over selling to a private company, but the tax break won't be as lucrative. The new tax provision also would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2018, which would effectively nullify any significant tax savings farmers believe they were going to gain by exclusively selling to grain cooperatives. Under the draft legislation, the 20% gross sales language would be repealed and parts of the old Section 199 DPAD would be restored.Changes would be made to the farmer-level 20% deduction on qualified business income, which all non-corporate taxpayers received under the new tax law. Farmers who do businesses with cooperatives would see their 20% deduction reduced by either 9% of qualified income subject to such sales, or 50% of the farmer's wages allocable to such sales. The farmer would then add any pass-through from the co-op on the new Section 199 back in as a deduction. The total farmer-patron deduction would be the pass-through deduction from the cooperative, plus the modified 20% deduction.So the new change retains a benefit for selling to a cooperative, but it isn't simple.The draft language also notes that farms structured as a C corporation would not be eligible for the 20% pass-through deduction because of the language in the new law.
Iowa could support 45,700 livestock confinements, but should it?
Des Moines Register | Posted on March 13, 2018Trent Thiele loves feeding and caring for the 3,400 pigs that live less than a half mile from his home. "I truly enjoy coming to work every morning. They're always in a good mood," said Thiele, reaching down to scratch the backs of a few pigs inside the confined feeding operation.Without the northeast Iowa business, Thiele said he would be forced to move to a city or town to support his wife and their five children, a common tale in a state that's seen rural jobs and opportunity drain away over several decades.That's why Thiele, 35, doesn't understand calls for a moratorium on concentrated animal feeding operations."I don't know why we'd want to limit future generations," Thiele said, adding that farmers need the fertilizer.The clamor over confinements has grown louder after one expert estimated Iowa could support 45,700 CAFOs, four times more facilities for pigs, cattle and chickens than currently exist in the state.Skirmishes between CAFOs and their neighbors have played out across Iowa for at least three decades. In that time, the number of pigs has grown about 60 percent in the nation's largest pork-producing state as farmers have shifted f
China hog prices plunge after farm building boom
Reuters | Posted on March 13, 2018Chinese pig prices hit their lowest in nearly four years this week, plunging farmers in the world’s top pork market into the red and underscoring concerns that a rapid expansion of large pig farms in China has outpaced slowing demand growth.
Poultry farms aren’t small independent businesses, says the agency that funds them
The New Food Economy | Posted on March 13, 2018The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on Tuesday announced in a new report that most chicken growers may no longer qualify as independent, small businesses. And that means they won’t qualify for small business loans. It’s a finding that could signal a significant loss in support: Between 2012 and 2016, SBA loaned about $1.8 billion to poultry growers. In 2016, poultry companies received more than three-quarters of all the SBA loans that went to agricultural businesses.
Bayer Feed A Bee program funds 20 new projects
PR Newswire | Posted on March 13, 2018Less than one year after launching the Feed a Bee 50-state forage grant program, the Bayer Bee Care Program revealed the list of 20 new organizations that have received funding for important forage initiatives around the country, bringing the total number of projects funded to more than 100. After a rigorous review and evaluation process by the Feed a Bee steering committee, 20 organizations were chosen in the latest round of review to receive awards ranging from $1,000 - $5,000. This brings the total for the program to 112 funded projects in 39 states and Washington, D.C.