Agriculture News
The Unexpected Side Effects of Trump’s Trade War
The Atlantic | Posted on March 25, 2019Farm income is down, and equipment prices are sky-high. Like farmers around the country, Boyd is in the crosshairs of the trade war, caught between the 25 percent tariffs that the United States has imposed on imported raw materials such as steel and aluminum and the retaliatory tariffs that China and other countries have imposed on major American agricultural exports, especially soybeans. The trade war almost couldn’t have come at a worse time for the agricultural industry: Farm debt is on the rise, farm income is in a three-year trough, and the American Farm Bureau Federation’s chief economist said last month that many farmers are dependent on off-farm income to keep their operations running. But farmers can’t push pause on their crops to try to wait out the trade war—they’re at the beck and call of the planting and harvesting seasons.
CA Animal Welfare Act Could Impact Farm Practices Nationwide
Texas Agricultural Law | Posted on March 25, 2019On its face, Proposition 12 applies only to California businesses selling pork, veal, and eggs. However, in practice, it has the potential to impact farmers and ranchers producing beef, pork and eggs nationwide. If a farmer in Texas, for example, does not adopt these practices, then he or she will be unable to sell his or her products in California. These types of ballot initiatives could certainly be expanded to additional products and could have major impacts on the farm level, requiring producers to invest in new or different facilities in order to continue producing the products. This is an issue of which everyone involved in production agriculture should be aware.
Goat thefts plague California agricultural region
Capital Press | Posted on March 25, 2019A rash of goat thefts is plaguing California's San Joaquin Valley. The Fresno County sheriff's agricultural task force says there have been seven reports of goats being stolen between Jan. 9 and March 7.In all, 61 goats worth $27,000 have been taken from private properties south.
Farmers still facing same challenges three decades later
Wisconson State Farmer | Posted on March 25, 2019The above selected quotes from my column over the past 28 years imply that the dairy farm situation seems to have not changed all that much: Too much milk, farms leaving dairying and those that remain producing even more milk. Of course, there were the good times for dairying when the producer price rose for a period of time before again sinking—it is often claimed that dairying has a 3-4 year cycle of ups and downs. Looking at the Class III milk prices since 1980, I found highs after a period of lows: in 1983 ($12.49); 1989 ($12.37); 1998 ($14.20); 2006 ($15.39); 2007 ($18.04): $2011 ($18.37); 2014 ($22.34) and 2017 ($16.17) and a $1.50/cwt lower since."Why don’t they get out of business if the economics are so bad?" my city friends sometimes ask. Well, many have—from 32,500 dairy farms n 1991 to 8,100 today. That’s a lot.
Piles of pigs: Swine fever outbreaks go unreported in rural China
Reuters | Posted on March 25, 2019When pigs on the Xinda Husbandry Co. Ltd breeding farm in northern China began dying in growing numbers in early January, it looked increasingly likely that the farm had been struck by the much feared African swine fever, an incurable disease that has spread rapidly across the country since last year.But after taking samples from some pigs, local officials in the Xushui district of Baoding city, about an hour’s drive from Beijing, said their tests came back negative, said Sun Dawu, chairman of Hebei Dawu Agriculture Group, the farm owner.As hundreds of pigs began dying daily on the 20,000-head farm, the company obtained a test kit that showed some positive results for the virus. But after further lobbying by Xinda, officials just offered the company subsidies for farm buildings and other investments, said Sun.
Minnesota House aims to hit drug companies for opioid crisis
LaCrosse Tribune | Posted on March 25, 2019The Minnesota House voted to hold drug manufacturers responsible for the state's growing costs for dealing with the opioid crisis.The bill passed 94-34 after around four hours of debate that split mostly along party lines. It would support a wide range of prevention, education, intervention, treatment and recovery strategies. The state would pay for them by sharply raising its currently low annual registration fees for pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota.
DFA reports a $1.1 billion drop in dairy sales during 2018
Edairy News | Posted on March 25, 2019uring Dairy Farmers of America’s (DFA) annual meeting in Kansas City, Mo., the cooperative reported that net sales fell by $1.1 billion, a decrease of 7.5% from 2017. For 2018, net sales were totaled at $13.6 billion. The previous year net sales equaled $14.7 billion. According to DFA, the decrease is largely attributed to lower milk prices. The all U.S. milk price was 8.2% lower than the previous year averaging $16.20/cwt paid in 2018 compared with $17.65/cwt in 2017. Milk prices for 2018 were also $0.10/cwt lower compared to 2016 when it averaged $16.30/cwt.Net income for the cooperative was reported at $108.5 million for 2018. The cooperative saw net income drop $18.9 million from 2017 when income was reported at $127.4 million.
The Fight to Tame a Swelling River With Dams That May Be Outmatched by Climate Change
The New York Times | Posted on March 25, 2019There were no good choices for John Remus, yet he had to choose. Should he try to hold back the surging Missouri River but risk destroying a major dam, potentially releasing a 45-foot wall of water? Or should he relieve the pressure by opening the spillway, purposely adding to the flooding of towns, homes and farmland for hundreds of miles.Mr. Remus controls an extraordinary machine — the dams built decades ago to tame a river system that drains parts of 10 states and two Canadian provinces. But it was designed for a different era, a time before climate change and the extreme weather it can bring. And early last Thursday, the Niobrara River smashed through the nearly century-old Spencer Dam while pushing huge chunks of ice downriver. By the end of the day, the Niobrara and other tributaries had filled the reservoir behind the Gavins Point Dam, near Yankton, South Dakota, and Mr. Remus faced his decision.Gavins Point is relatively small, not designed to hold back that kind of inflow. But losing the dam would be catastrophic.To save Gavins Point, he ordered its spillways opened. At its peak, 100,000 cubic feet of water per second, the same as Niagara Falls, poured into a river already surging toward record heights.“Scientists say that, in the Missouri Basin, we’ll be spending more time at each end of the spectrum — longer and more severe floods, longer and more severe droughts,” Mr. Remus said. And this year, he had “nothing but bad options.”
Climate change has already started disrupting life in the Great Lakes region — and it's only going to get worse
Chicago Tribune | Posted on March 25, 2019Thursday's report said extreme precipitation could rise 10 to 40 percent in southern Wisconsin, the feeder system to many Illinois waterways. In Machesney Park, ducks swam past mailboxes nearly at eye level. Displaced residents returned to survey their homes with chest-high waders. On a dead-end street in nearby Roscoe, flooding isolated more than a dozen houses and high school students resorted to kayaking to the mainland.In addition to those who sustained flood damage to their homes, perhaps the greatest setback will be to Illinois farmers.The soggy conditions will likely delay planting, again. Dillon, the Machesney Park resident, lives across the river from a plot of farmland he said has been barren for the last five years due to persistent flooding."You used to be able to raise corn in that field," Dillon said. "In the last five years, I don’t know if he’s had a crop in there or not. It’s always flooded. It’s too wet to plant, too wet to harvest."
Great Lakes feeling effects of rapid climate warming
AP News | Posted on March 25, 2019The Great Lakes region is warming faster than the rest of the U.S., a trend likely to bring more extreme storms while also degrading water quality, worsening erosion and posing tougher challenges for farming, scientists reported. The annual mean air temperature in the region, which includes portions of the U.S. Midwest , Northeast and southern Canada, rose 1.6 degrees (0.9 Celsius) from 1901-60 and 1985-2016, according to the report commissioned by the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center. During the same periods, the mean temperature for the remainder of the contiguous U.S. rose 1.2 degrees (0.7 Celsius). The Great Lakes hold about one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water and are so large that they influence regional weather. They keep nearby lands cooler in summer and warmer in winter than those farther inland, while their humidity fuels “lake-effect” snowfall and summer rains. In addition to providing drinking water for millions of people, they are the backbone of an economy built on manufacturing, agriculture and tourism.A warming climate will add to stresses the lakes have suffered from industrial pollution and development, particularly overflows from urban sewer systems that carry harmful bacteria, said the report produced by 18 scientists, most from Midwestern universities as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.