Agriculture News
Empty barns: Prolonged low milk prices pressuring dairy farms to fold
InForum | Posted on February 7, 2018There wasn't really a last straw that made Billy Euerle walk away from his Garfield dairy farm last year.Things had been bad for several years.He trudged through his days, milking Hot Chocolate and Caroline and Brooke and all the others, barely sleeping. Facing terrible milk prices and crushing debt, he struggled to find motivation. Every chore seemed to take twice as long, and his whole family was feeling the stress. To top it off, severe storms in 2017 ravaged several farm buildings."You just had to fool yourself every day that you were going to make it," said Euerle, a father of four. "As a farmer, your mentality is that things will get better, but it didn't."Dairy farms around the region are struggling with prolonged low prices. While the market often takes dairy prices for a joy ride, the peaks and valleys typically come quickly. This time, however, farmers are entering their fourth year of low prices.
Australian farmland to be offered to local buyers first under new rules introduced by Federal Government
ABC Australia | Posted on February 7, 2018New rules overseeing the sale of Australian farmland to foreign investors will force real estate agents to show they have given local investors the chance to purchase the land first. Treasurer Scott Morrison's new 30-day advertising clause will become part of the guidelines the Foreign Investment Review Board considers when assessing the sale of farmland.Sellers will have to demonstrate they have undertaken an open and transparent process.
A Kingdom from Dust
California Sunday | Posted on February 7, 2018Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States, a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns. But the one thing he can’t control is what he’s most dependent on — water. A little farmworker town in a far corner of Kern County called Lost Hills. This is where the biggest irrigated farmer in the world — the one whose mad plantings of almonds and pistachios have triggered California’s nut rush — keeps on growing, no matter drought or flood. He doesn’t live in Lost Hills. He lives in Beverly Hills. How has he managed to outwit nature for so long? The farmer corralled the snowmelt and erased the valley, its desert and marsh. He leveled its hog wallows, denuded its salt brush, and killed the last of its mustang, antelope, and tule elk. He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry.He did this first in the name of wheat and then beef, milk, raisins, cotton, and nuts. Once he finished grabbing the flow of the five rivers that ran across the plain, he used his turbine pumps to seize the water beneath the ground. As he bled the aquifer dry, he called on the government to bring him an even mightier river from afar. Down the great aqueduct, by freight of politics and gravity, came the excess waters of the Sacramento River. The farmer moved the rain. The more water he got, the more crops he planted, and the more crops he planted, the more water he needed to plant more crops, and on and on. One million acres of the valley floor, greater than the size of Rhode Island, are now covered in almond trees.
Horse farm blames tainted feed for killing 6 horses
KXAN | Posted on February 7, 2018The owners of a boarding barn in Cuba, New York are blaming tainted horse feed for the deaths of six horses there. The barn and training facility houses 31 horses. All of them will likely eventually die from being exposed to the poisonous feed.
Mexican Farm Town Says It's Kicked Out Cartels
NPR | Posted on February 7, 2018Avocados have rapidly become a staple in many U.S. diets, with Americans consuming on average 7 pounds a year. To satisfy that surging popularity, imports from Mexico have skyrocketed. That's made a lot of farmers rich — but it's also drawn the attention of organized crime gangs. One town in Mexico has been able to fight off the gangs and keep the peace, and wealth, at home. It's Tancitaro, a small farming town of about 30,000 in western Michoacan state. Super Bowl Sunday is a big deal here. But not because of the sport."We know when it's Super Bowl time," says Hugo Naranjo, the manager at Frutas Finas packing plant. "Our production jumps." That's not something a lot of mayors in Michoacan can say. The state, long a key center for some of Mexico's most vicious organized crime gangs, was just slapped with the U.S. State Department's highest advisorywarning travelers to not go there.Mayor Olivera says his town was once very dangerous. As avocado production grew, drug cartels moved in realizing they could make good money extorting growers and packers.
The Farm Bowl: The Most Minnesotan Event of Super Bowl Week
Daily Norseman | Posted on February 7, 2018A star-studded affair with tractors, drones, milk pipe puzzles, and hay bales. Welcome to the Land O’ Lakes Farm Bowl.So what exactly is the Farm Bowl? Think of it like American Ninja Warrior except with farm equipment. Or maybe MTV’s The Challenge with agricultural education instead of drunken hookups. Six NFL athletes were paired with real life farmers to compete in four different stations in what has to be the world’s most unlikely pro-am ever. Especially since the pro athletes were the amateurs in this case.
Dicamba Cases Consolidated in St. Louis
DTN | Posted on February 7, 2018Dicamba-related off-target crop damage complaints will be consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, according to an order issued Thursday by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). Multiple lawsuits have been filed by farmers alleging off-target dicamba damage to crops in at least 24 states from dicamba-based products manufactured by Monsanto, BASF and DuPont. Lawsuits have sought the stoppage of sales of dicamba products under the names Xtend, Engenia, FeXapan and XtendiMax, and have also sought damages for crop losses.
U.S. Sen. Nelson calls for funding to save Florida citrus industry
Villages News | Posted on February 7, 2018In an effort to save Florida’s $9 billion citrus industry and speed-up work on Herbert Hoover Dike, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida on Tuesday called on Senate leaders to include additional disaster assistance for Florida in a government spending bill the chamber is expected to take up this week.
Philadelphia Energy Solutions wrong to blame renewable fuel standard for bankruptcy
The Hill | Posted on February 7, 2018Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) filed for bankruptcy last week, pointing fingers and laying blame squarely on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal program that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol and other biofuels. That may make for a provocative headline, but the public and PES’ 1,100 employees deserve to know the truth: PES has no one else to blame but itself. PES operates one of the nation’s oldest refineries, which is handicapped by hopelessly antiquated technology. This is not the first time the refinery has found itself in a precarious financial position. In 2012, the Carlyle Group and Sunoco rescued the refinery from bankruptcy, thanks to a taxpayer-funded rescue package. The following year, PES invested in new infrastructure to allow the importation of cheap oil from North Dakota. While PES was able to capitalize on that investment in 2014 and 2015, the collapse in oil prices and the end of the U.S. crude export ban in late 2015 hit the refiner hard and left it hostage to the higher-priced Brent crude index. Since that time, PES has been dealing with a substantial debt burden.
Grassley Analysis Finds RFS Has Minimal Impact on Success of Refineries
Dhuck Grassley Senate pages | Posted on February 7, 2018Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released a memorandum produced by his energy policy staff who analyzed recent claims made by opponents of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), including Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), which attributed its recent bankruptcy filing in part to the RFS. The analysis finds that the biofuels blending requirement and the cost of Renewable Identification Number credits (RINs), a compliance mechanism designed for flexibility, have little to do with the success of refineries and were not significant factors in the PES bankruptcy. The Grassley analysis reached similar conclusions as those of multiple recent studies, including multiple by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy