Agriculture News
FDA Report on Antibiotics Validates Work by U.S. Pig Farmers
Ag Web | Posted on December 28, 2017America’s 60,000 pig farmers continue to do what’s right on the farm for people, pigs and the planet when it comes to demonstrating their commitment to antibiotic stewardship. That’s why last week’s findings in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals came as no surprise, but as a validation of the hard work U.S. pig farmers have put in to reduce the overall need for antibiotics while still protecting the health and welfare of the pigs under their care. “This report, which still is based on sales and not actual usage, supports what we already know at the farm level—we’re using fewer antibiotics overall today because we’re committed to reducing the need for them while protecting the health and welfare of our animals,” said National Pork Board President Terry O’Neel
Feral hog poison field tests in Texas, Alabama in 2018
ABC News | Posted on December 28, 2017Feral swine do more than $1.5 billion a year in damage around the country, and scientists are taking what could be a big step toward controlling them. They are field-testing poison baits made from a preservative that's used to cure bacon and sausage.The tests will cover two major habitats where feral hogs are common during seasons when they're most likely to go for bait, said Kurt VerCauteren, feral swine project leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. Tests will start early in 2018 in dry west Texas and continue in humid central Alabama around midsummer. The bait Vercauteren is working on uses the meat preservative sodium nitrite. It can keep an animal's red blood cells from pulling in oxygen. Pigs make very low levels of an enzyme that counteracts it, so it's more deadly to them than to humans or most domestic animals. Swine that gobble up enough sodium nitrite show symptoms similar to carbon dioxide poisoning: They become uncoordinated, lose consciousness and die within 90 minutes after eating it.
Cargill turns to workforce to push back against Trump trade policies
The Cedar Rapids Gazette | Posted on December 28, 2017On Cargill’s new FedByTrade website, the Houfek family tells how selling meat to foreign countries has supported two generations working at the company’s packing plant in Schuyler, Neb. Four hundred miles north, in Hopkins, Brian Donovan, an operations manager in Cargill’s salt division, stands ready to explain how providing de-icing and water conditioning products to Canadians keeps dozens of U.S. workers on the payroll.As President Donald Trump’s disparagement of free trade agreements pushes America away from deals like the 11-nation Trans Pacific Partnership and the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, Cargill, one of the world’s largest private companies, is pushing back.The Minnesota-based shipping and agriculture giant has enlisted its 155,000-person workforce in a political trade war. It just launched FedByTrade, where its employees, customers and communities can tell stories of regular Americans who depend on international trade for their livelihoods.
FAA: Farm equipment radio interference threatens air traffic
Minneapolis Star Tribune | Posted on December 28, 2017Radio interference from a farm's massive metal crop-watering structure is causing havoc for air traffic in the sky over Georgia, federal authorities said in a lawsuit filed this week. The irrigation structure is on a south Georgia farm where the Federal Aviation Administration has a radio transmitter to relay signals that keep aircraft on course, according to the federal lawsuit.Interference caused by the 1,200-foot-long (370-meter-long) structure forced the FAA to shut down its transmitter in February, affecting operations of nine airports. The proximity of Robins Air Force Base makes the situation even more serious, the government said in its complaint.
Canada's Linamar to buy agriculture equipment maker MacDon for C$1.2 billion
Reuters | Posted on December 28, 2017Canadian auto parts maker Linamar Corp said on Thursday it agreed to buy privately held MacDon Group of Cos for C$1.2 billion ($937 million), to strengthen its presence in the agricultural equipment market.
The contribution of glyphosate to agriculture and potential impact of restrictions on use at the global level
Taylor Francis Online | Posted on December 28, 2017This study assesses the potential economic and environmental impacts that would arise if restrictions on glyphosate use resulted in the world no longer planting genetically modified herbicide tolerant (GM HT) crops. ‘First round’ impacts are the loss of farm level and aggregate impacts associated with the widespread use of GM HT crops (tolerant to glyphosate). There would be an annual loss of global farm income gains of $6.76 billion and lower levels of global soybean, corn and canola production equal to 18.6 million tonnes, 3.1 million tonnes and 1.44 million tonnes respectively. There would be an annual environmental loss associated with a net increase in the use of herbicides of 8.2 million kg of herbicide active ingredient (+1.7%), and a larger net negative environmental impact, as measured by the environmental impact quotient indicator of a 12.4%. Also, there would be additional carbon emissions arising from increased fuel usage and decreased soil carbon sequestration, equal to the equivalent of adding 11.77 million cars to the roads.
Gene Editing With CRISPR-Cas9: The Next Step In Human Evolution Will Be Worth $25 Billion By 2030
Forbes | Posted on December 28, 2017CRISPR-Cas9 tools have recently created a buzz in the global healthcare industry, with the development of numerous applications-focused solutions—and intensifying patenting disputes. The invention of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tools is one of the greatest scientific revolutions of this generation. Despite major controversies around patenting rights and ethical challenges, CRISPR-Cas9 tools have gained popularity with the scientific community and life science companies, primarily due to their ability to accurately cut the DNA sequence. CRISPR-Cas9 has entered commercial application in less than five years from its introduction—far earlier than expected by average technology life cycle theory.
Cows seem to react more positively to women, and that’s helping drive a rush of females into the field
The Leader Telegram | Posted on December 28, 2017America’s Dairyland is undergoing a bit of a revolution, and it has nothing to do with the words on Wisconsin’s license plate or even the size of farms.It’s about the cows — specifically who’s minding the animals in the barn.Increasingly, the folks caring for the cows, monitoring their health and managing the herd are women, according to agriculture educators in west-central Wisconsin. It’s a stereotype-busting trend that’s as dramatic as it is undeniable.The animal science management program at Chippewa Valley Technical College has seen female applicants climb from a minority four years ago to about three-quarters of the total for 2018-19, program director Adam Zwiefelhofer said.The male-female ratio also has changed noticeably over the last few years at UW-River Falls, where women this year account for 91 percent of the 650 students in animal science, the largest program in the university’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Science, said Dale Gallenberg, dean of the college
Professors claim farmers’ markets cultivate racism: ‘Habits of white people are normaliz
The Washington Times | Posted on December 28, 2017Two professors from San Diego State University claim in a new book that farmers’ markets in urban areas are weed-like “white spaces” responsible for oppression. Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J Bosco are part of an anthology released this month titled “Just Green Enough.” The work, published by Routledge, claims there is a correlation between the “whiteness of farmers’ markets” and gentrification. “Farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized,” the SDSU professors write, the education watchdog Campus Reform reported. The geology professors claim that 44 percent of San Diego’s farmers’ markets cater to “households from higher socio-economic backgrounds,” which raises property values and “[displaces] low-income residents and people of color.”
Bill Includes Language on Cottonseed, Dairy, Ag Disaster Funds
DTN | Posted on December 27, 2017It's been a long battle, but cotton farmers will finally get the opportunity to sign up cottonseed in an emergency disaster bill Congress is expected to pass before leaving town for the holidays. House Republican leaders on Tuesday released a hurricane and wildfire disaster package that would also attempt to deal with problems in the cotton and dairy programs and cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but the bill's future was uncertain.Republicans had indicated they would add the disaster package and several other measures to the continuing resolution, but Politico reported that the Republicans had abandoned plans to fund the Pentagon for the rest of the fiscal year and decided that the disaster bill would have to have a separate vote.The prospects for other add-ons -- such as funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, veterans' health care, Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies, a renewal of the cyber surveillance tools and a tax bill waiver from statutory Pay-As-You-Go rules -- are also uncertain.