Agriculture News
Farmers Filing Chapter 12 on Rise
DTN | Posted on January 23, 2018More farmers likely will be filing Chapter 12 bankruptcy in 2018, as they continue to struggle with costs of production exceeding commodity prices, ag lender CoBank said in a new report. The CoBank report, "Forces that will shape the U.S. rural economy in 2018," said commodity price depression from surpluses around the world will make for another belt-tightening year for farmers who will continue to see working capital diminish.As a result, CoBank said, more producers are likely to turn to Chapter 12."Farmer solvency is an increasing concern in some regions," the report said."Wheat and dairy producers are among the hardest hit in this down cycle, as evidenced by an increase in Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in Kansas and Wisconsin. Chapter 12 bankruptcies, which last year reached the highest level since 2012, are expected to accelerate in 2018 in the absence of a major upward correction in farm gate prices."The number of Chapter 12 filings has been on the rise since 2014, according to CoBank. There were about 380 filings in 2014. That number spiked to just more than 500 in 2017, according to the report.
Cal-Maine: Undercover video showed ‘isolated incident’
Watt Ag Net | Posted on January 21, 2018Cal-Maine Foods has taken corrective action and has been cooperating with the investigations of state and county officials after the company was targeted by an animal rights activist in a video depicting mistreatment of hens at its egg production facility in Lake Wales, Florida. The video, which Cal-Maine said shows an “isolated incident,” has surfaced on the Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) website.According to a statement from Cal-Maine Foods, the world’s largest egg producer, each employee involved in the care and handling of hens is required to review, sign and comply with the company’s code of conduct regarding the ethical treatment of hens, which also requires employees to report any possible violations.However, the person who filmed the video, which Cal-Maine referred to as a “former employee acting as an undercover activist,” made the choice to “disregard required farm procedures as part of his intent to misrepresent our efforts to provide proper care for our hens.”“The employee’s job included identifying and addressing the type of issues shown on the video, and he failed to meet his job requirements,” the company said in a statement.
Agriculture Enters Age Of Civil Suits
Ag Web | Posted on January 20, 2018Welcome to farming’s litigious age. When physical injury occurs in agriculture, the loss often leads directly to a courtroom. While producer eyes are quick to focus on the fine print and penalties of OSHA regulations, sledgehammer civil suits approach from the blind side, capable of swallowing an operation whole. Mirroring the U.S. mainstream, agriculture has entered an era of litigation and legal wrangling. Lawsuits against farmers once were a rarity. Yet, today’s producer is often popularly perceived as a wealthy, land-rich businessman with substantial assets. As civil cases stack up in farm country, the plain truth is difficult to ignore: The factors surrounding liability can preserve a given operation or shred a legacy to the deepest roots.
Livestock air emissions deadline looms
Indiana Farm Bureau | Posted on January 20, 2018A spokesperson for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says the U.S. Coastguard national response center could crash when the livestock industry files air emissions reports later this month. Chief environmental counsel Scott Yager tells Brownfield more than 200,000 livestock producers will have 24-hours to call the Coastguard on January 22, to meet a new air emissions requirement. He says in mid-November, some farms decided to report early and caused substantial delays to actual emergencies.“They went from 150 calls a day to over a 1,000 calls a day, and that was just based on those additional farm reports. It resulted in wait times of over two hours to phone calls that required an immediate emergency response.”
USDA Announces Proposed Rule to Modernize Swine Inspection
USDA | Posted on January 20, 2018The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today announced its continued effort to modernize inspection systems through science-based approaches to food safety. USDA is proposing to amend the federal meat inspection regulations to establish a new voluntary inspection system for market hog slaughter establishments called the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS), while also requiring additional pathogen sampling for all swine slaughter establishments. The proposed rule also allows innovation and flexibility to establishments that are slaughtering market hogs. Market hogs are uniform, healthy, young animals that can be slaughtered and processed in this modernized system more efficiently and effectively with enhanced process control.For market hog establishments that opt into NSIS, the proposed rule would increase the number of offline USDA inspection tasks, while continuing 100% FSIS carcass-by-carcass inspection. These offline inspection tasks place inspectors in areas of the production process where they can perform critical tasks that have direct impact on food safety.
Dicamba Cases May Be Centralized
DTN | Posted on January 20, 2018Attorneys representing farmers from across the country who filed multiple lawsuits alleging off-target dicamba damage to their crops will try to convince a federal panel of judges next week that the cases should be heard in a single court. The seven-judge U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is slated to hear oral arguments on Jan. 25 in Miami, Florida, on a motion by attorneys representing farmers in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas and Missouri to move all the cases to one court.The question at hand will be what venue would best serve the interests of all the litigants.
Poultry Company to Pay for Well Drilling Amid Water Concerns
US News and World Report | Posted on January 20, 2018An executive with the poultry processing company in Delaware that's been cited for spraying wastewater with excessive nitrate levels onto nearby fields says Mountaire Farms is willing to pay for drilling deep wells for concerned property owners.
Gene edited crops should be exempted from GM food laws, says EU lawyer
The Guardian | Posted on January 20, 2018Gene editing technologies should be largely exempted from EU laws on GM food, although individual states can regulate them if they choose, the European court’s advocate general has said. The opinion may have far-reaching consequences for new breeding techniques that can remove specific parts of a plant’s genetic code and foster herbicide-resistant traits.Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in the technology, which could be subject to labelling, authorisation and safety checks, if the court decides it falls under the EU’s GM legislation later this year.
Grain elevators desperate for tax bill fix
Agri-Pulse | Posted on January 20, 2018Key senators are scrambling to rework a benefit for farmer cooperatives that was created by the new tax law, and the fix couldn’t come soon enough for owners of private elevators like Doug Bell. The co-op provision was meant to replace the cooperatives’ Section 199 deduction that the law repealed, but tax experts say that the new deduction is so lucrative that farmers will have a strong incentive to sell to a co-op rather than a privately owned or publicly held grain buyer. In fact, so lucrative is the co-op benefit that some private grain buyers are said to be looking at forming co-ops to take advantage of the new provision.
Low temperatures spell trouble for winter wheat
KSN | Posted on January 20, 2018The extreme cold has been frustrating for many, but for some farmers, it’s a disaster. “It’s gotten so cold that the ground is actually freezing,” said Lakin farmer Kyler Millershaski.On his western Kansas fields, he’s seeing warning signs of winter kill.“The ground is actually shrinking, so you’ve got these cracks going down. The down side is that just causes the ground to dry out more.” Four months ago, September was a rainy month, and things looked great for Millershaski’s wheat.“It never rained since we planted it, so in the last three months, we haven’t gotten any measurable moisture. I know some of Kansas saw some snow last week. We didn’t get that. We just got the cold and wind.”Cold, without a layer of snow to insulate crops.