Agriculture News
USDA emergency funds reallocated to address Virulent Newcastle Disease in Chickens
Watt Ag Net | Posted on March 28, 2019The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary Sonny Perdue are making available an additional $45 million to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and its partners to address the ongoing virulent Newcastle disease (vND) outbreak in southern California. This funding will allow APHIS and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to strengthen their joint efforts to stop the spread of this disease and prevent it from affecting additional commercial flocks. vND has been confirmed in more than 435 backyard flocks since May 2018. It was also confirmed in four commercial flocks in December 2018 and January 2019.
Midwest Flood Damages Top $3 Billion
Red River Farm Network | Posted on March 28, 2019Flood damages in the Midwest are now estimated at nearly $3 billion. In Nebraska, the damages to agriculture are nearing the $1 billion mark. Iowa officials are reporting agricultural losses of approximately $214 million. Several other states have also experienced severe flooding, including Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and South Dakota. Threats of additional flooding of the Missouri River are on the horizon, as above normal snowpack in the north melts and moves downstream.
Iowa Senate bill could block group from using state loans to buy land for conservation, flood efforts
KCRG | Posted on March 28, 2019The Iowa Senate has passed a bill, Senate File 548, that would prevent an organization from buying land using a state loan program for water quality and flood mitigation projects. Some Senate Republicans said Wednesday the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation has been using the low-interest loan program called the State Revolving Fund to buy land and then donate it to government conservation agencies. They argue that is not the intent of the loan program, which is to fund projects to improve water quality and enhance flood mitigation projects.“The money in that fund has a lot of good uses and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation does good work," said Sen. Ken Rozenboom (R-Mahaska) who introduced the bill. "Land acquisition was not one of those uses.”
Federal judge issues injunction on Lake Erie Bill of Rights
Farm and Dairy | Posted on March 28, 2019A federal district court has granted a temporary injunction on the City of Toledo’s recent action that gives Lake Erie its own legal rights. Known as the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the measure was approved by Toledo voters March 13, amendning the city charter in a way that gave the lake and its waters the right to “exist, flourish and naturally evolve.”Supporters saw the bill of rights as a way of protecting the lake from farm nutrient runoff and harmful algal blooms, that result from too much phosphorus entering the lake and its tributaries. But farmers, and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, have warned that the definitions are too loose, and that giving a lake its own legal standing through one city’s laws, is likely unconstitutional.
Farmland Values and Debt: Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska
Farm Policy News | Posted on March 28, 2019As farm income has fallen over the past few years, farm equity has also fallen, but it is only down about 5 percent from the peak in 2014, stabilized by high land values…with low commodity prices, farmers have increasingly tapped into their real estate equity to provide operating funds. Today, total debt is approaching record levels in real terms, and real estate debt has reached a record high in 2018.Farm real estate debt is expected to reach $263.7 billion in 2019, a 5.1-percent annual increase in nominal terms and a 3.3-percent rise in inflation-adjusted dollars. Farm real estate debt accounts for 61.8 percent of total farm debt. Farm nonreal estate debt is expected to increase 1.9 percent in nominal terms to $163.0 billion in 2019.
Bitter Harvest: Debt And The Bankrupting Of The American Family Farm
Forbes | Posted on March 28, 2019Minnesota dairy farmers Amanda and Derek Zigan are still paying for a bold bet they made when dairy prices were flying high. The couple built a new barn equipped with state-of-the-art milking equipment, hoping to reduce their dependence on hired help, lower their vet bills and keep their cows healthier and more productive. Back in 2014, a local paper dubbed them Todd County, Minnesota’s first robotic farm.Then the bottom fell out of the dairy market. The average price received by farmers for a hundred pounds of milk has fallen from about $25 in late 2014 to below $20 in early 2015 and has recently been hovering in the mid-teens. That move has left the Zigans struggling to make payments on their debt, which rose to $1.6 million after all the new capital investments.“We didn’t even have time to get our feet on the ground,” said Amanda Zigan, 32. She and her husband, a third-generation farmer, only reluctantly opted to seek relief in court. They were finally pushed to file for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection in September 2018 after she said they were unable to refinance a roughly $269,000 Farm Service Agency loan.In fact, bankruptcy filings have continued to tick up for the specialized Chapter 12 protection that’s available only to family farmers. In 2018, there were 474 new Chapter 12 filings, up from 458 in 2017 and up materially from 317 in 2014.Already this year, the upward trend is continuing, with 110 filed through 22 March compared to 100 in the same period a year earlier. Cattle-related farms – encompassing dairy and/or beef – represented the biggest group to turn to Chapter 12 last year, comprising at least 41% of the total filings
The unlikely partnership that might decide the future of meat
Vox | Posted on March 27, 2019Something unusual is going on in the fledgling but fast-growing lab-grown meat industry. A technology that was developed to displace meat and end animal farming has, in the last couple of years, received a boost from an unlikely source: meat companies. Take Tyson Foods, the world’s second-largest processor and seller of beef, chicken, and pork. If you’ve ever eaten a hamburger or a chicken nugget in the United States, that cow or chicken was reasonably likely to have been slaughtered at a Tyson Foods processing plant. This February, the company announced it was launching its own plant-based products line, manufacturing meat alternatives made out of plants.And that’s not its first foray into meat alternatives. Since 2016, Tyson has made investmentsin plant-based and lab-grown meat research and operations, putting money into the cell-based meat startups Memphis Meats and Future Meat Technologies Ltd., and in the plant-based meat startup Beyond Meat.
China to boost pork imports 33%
Meat & Poultry | Posted on March 27, 2019Outbreaks of African Swine Fever have taken a toll on China’s pork industry, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the US Dept. of Agriculture said in its China Livestock and Products Semi-Annual report. As of March 11, China has reported 115 outbreaks of ASF to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The outbreaks have occurred in every significant pork production region in China. By the end of 2019, according to FAS, China’s swineherd is forecast to shrink 13 percent to 374 million head, and pork production in the country is expected to retreat 5 percent to 51.4 million metric tons (MT). As a result, China will increase imports of pork by 33 percent to 2 million MT, FAS said in its report.“While US pork products still face retaliatory Chinese tariffs of up to 62 percent and process verification requirements, if these are removed, US producers could significantly increase exports to China,” FAS reported.
Dead Zones & Drinking Water: Updates on Waters of the U.S.,
University of Illinois Farm Doc Daily | Posted on March 27, 2019That key question for agriculture remains unanswered: whether nutrient losses from farm fields collected and channeled through a manmade system of drainage are excluded as agricultural stormwater runoff or whether they are discharges of pollutants, subject to regulation and permitting under the CWA. The Ninth Circuit decision from Hawai’i Wildlife Fundprovides for concern if the Supreme Court affirms the reasoning of the courts of appeal in the Hawai’i and South Carolina cases, decisively bringing indirect discharges under the purview of the CWA. In light of this potential line of legal precedent, the application of fertilizer would appear to be a point source discharge, as would the discharge from the end of tile lines and drainage ditches. Rainwater and runoff from a farm field may remain a nonpoint source, but the clarity of the exemption provided to agricultural stormwater discharges in the CWA may be muddied for the pressing issues concerning fertilizer applications and nutrient losses from drainage systems.
Those Sickening Midwestern Floods
DTN | Posted on March 27, 2019I won't mince words: Those photos of the floods in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa make me sick. The images bring to life what the flood's statistics, though impressive, leave abstract. It's one thing to be told that $400 million of cattle and other livestock have been killed, that agriculture losses are approaching $1 billion, that 13 bridges have been washed away and 200 miles of highway will need repair in Nebraska alone. But statistics can be mind-numbing. Seeing is believing. Having lived in Omaha for nine years, I am shaken to see places I used to frequent now underwater, to see the road I used to drive to DTN's offices on ripped up. I'm distressed to get an email from friends who farm outside Omaha saying they are trapped in the farmhouse because the roads are impassable and the bridge gone. My heart aches for the many whose lives have been shattered, all the more because I know some of them.