Agriculture News
Growing Ohio promotes food, agriculture industry
Sidney Daily News | Posted on January 3, 2017The Ohio Department of Agriculture recently unveiled the 2017 edition of Growing Ohio, a magazine and web program that promotes and educates how the food and agriculture community contributes to Ohio’s economic well-being. Stories highlight Ohio’s food producers, the local community and farm families. Articles focus on the state’s thriving and diverse agritourism; how women are growing their influence in the traditionally male-dominated agriculture industry; innovative agriculture education efforts through virtual field trips; and Ohio’s booming greenhouse industry. Find more innovative and engaging content about Ohio’s food and agriculture at OHagriculture.com. Growing Ohio is part of FarmFlavor.com, a national food and farming website that profiles America’s hardworking farmers and ranchers, and connects consumers to the country’s vital agriculture industry. The website includes recipes, data-based facts about U.S. agriculture and overviews of the farmers who produce our food, fuel and fiber.
Farming programs helps veterans learn to farm
Washington Times | Posted on January 3, 2017Damon Helton had one problem when he bought a 160-acre farm in Lonsdale four years ago - he didn’t know the first thing about farming. Three years out of the military, the retired Army Ranger was still transitioning back to civilian life. He had a well-paying sales job, but it took him away from his wife and children too often. So he bought the Farm at Barefoot Bend in Garland County. “Then, it was like ‘Holy crap, what did we just do?’” he said. Fortunately for Helton, he discovered resources that catered to someone like him - a veteran looking to start a farm. More precisely, he found the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s Armed to Farm Program, the state Agriculture Department Homegrown By Heroes program and the Farmer Veteran Coalition.
Spread by trade and climate, bugs butcher America's forests
Fox News | Posted on January 3, 2017In a towering forest of centuries-old eastern hemlocks, it's easy to miss one of the tree's nemeses. No larger than a speck of pepper, the Hemlock woolly adelgid spends its life on the underside of needles sucking sap, eventually killing the tree. The bug is one in an expanding army of insects draining the life out of forests from New England to the West Coast. Aided by global trade, a warming climate and drought-weakened trees, the invaders have become one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in the United States. Scientists say they already are driving some tree species toward extinction and are causing billions of dollars a year in damage — and the situation is expected to worsen. "They are one of the few things that can actually eliminate a forest tree species in pretty short order — within years," said Harvard University ecologist David Orwig as he walked past dead hemlocks scattered across the university's 5.8-square-mile research forest in Petersham. This scourge is projected to put 63 percent of the country's forest at risk through 2027 and carries a cost of several billion dollars annually in dead tree removal, declining property values and timber industry losses, according to a peer-reviewed study this year in Ecological Applications. That examination, by more than a dozen experts, found that hundreds of pests have invaded the nation's forests, and that the emerald ash borer alone has the potential to cause $12.7 billion in damage by 2020. Insect pests, some native and others from as far away as Asia, can undermine forest ecosystems. For example, scientists say, several species of hemlock and almost 20 species of ash could nearly go extinct in the coming decades. Such destruction would do away with a critical sponge to capture greenhouse gas emissions, shelter for birds and insects and food sources for bears and other animals. Dead forests also can increase the danger of catastrophic wildfires.
New Wood Technology May Offer Hope for Struggling Timber
ABC News | Posted on January 3, 2017John Redfield watches with pride as his son moves a laser-guided precision saw the size of a semi-truck wheel into place over a massive panel of wood. Redfield's fingers are scarred from a lifetime of cutting wood and now, after decades of decline in the logging business, he has new hope that his son, too, can make a career shaping the timber felled in southern Oregon's forests. That's because Redfield and his son work at D.R. Johnson Lumber Co., one of two U.S. timber mills making a new wood product that's the buzz of the construction industry. It's called cross-laminated timber, or CLT, and it's made like it sounds: rafts of 2-by-4 beams aligned in perpendicular layers, then glued — or laminated — together like a giant sandwich. The resulting panels are lighter and less energy-intensive than concrete and steel and much faster to assemble on-site than regular timber, proponents say. Because the grain in each layer is at a right angle to the one below and above it, there's a counter-tension built into the panels that supporters say makes them strong enough to build even the tallest skyscrapers.
U.S. scrambles to clear egg exports to bird flu-hit Korea
Reuters | Posted on January 3, 2017U.S. officials are urgently seeking an agreement with South Korea that would allow imports of American eggs so farmers can cash in on a shortage caused by the Asian country's worst-ever outbreak of bird flu. The two sides are negotiating over terms of potential shipments after South Korea lifted a ban on imports of U.S. table eggs that it imposed when the United States grappled with its own bout of bird flu last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If an agreement is reached, U.S. shipments could bring some relief to South Koreans who have faced soaring egg prices and rationing since the outbreak there began last month. The egg shipments also would help U.S. farmers cope with an oversupply that is depressing prices. The opportunity to profit by filling South Korea's shortfall with U.S. eggs has sent brokers and traders into overdrive.
Ohio State researchers team up to fight algae blooms
Columbus Dispatch | Posted on January 3, 2017Scientific research has always been more of an individual endeavor. But during the past decade, research aimed at tackling real-world problems has become a team sport that pulls players from a spectrum of lab benches. At Ohio State University, one such interdisciplinary collaboration has spent five years trying to find a solution for the harmful algae blooms that annually plague lakes and rivers in the state’s western water basin. By uniting biologists with ecologists, political scientists and economists, the team did more than test a single hypothesis. Researchers pinpointed strategies for curbing toxic algae and also were able to demonstrate that Ohio farmers and taxpayers are willing to do their part. The project’s results were announced last week. It is one of many focused on toxic algae, a growing threat to Lake Erie’s $1.7 billion tourism industry and the ability to provide safe drinking water for 11 million people. Earlier this year, the United States and Canada struck a binational agreement to cut phosphorus discharge into Lake Erie by 40 percent. So OSU researchers began by testing different paths to hitting that benchmark for reducing phosphorus, the nutrient that ultimately feeds massive blankets of toxic algae. Using watershed models, they narrowed the solutions to three farming practices: applying fertilizer below soil surface; making use of cover crops to reduce runoff; and planting buffer strips, stretches of noncrop plants that surround fields. Through extensive surveying, researchers discovered that 39 percent of farmers in the Lake Erie watershed already were using subsurface fertilization, 22 percent were growing cover crops and another 35 percent planted buffer strips. Still, each of those numbers falls at least 20 percent short of where it needs to be to hit that 40 percent reduction benchmark.
California report backs governor’s plan for giant water tunnels
Capital Press | Posted on December 31, 2016Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to build two giant tunnels to send Northern California water southward moved a step closer Thursday to final state and federal decisions, with the state’s release of a 90,000-page environmental review supporting the $15.7 billion project. Brown’s administration is pushing for final federal and state approval of the 35-mile-long, 40-foot-wide tunnels, touted to ensure more reliable water deliveries to city and farm water agencies in Central and Southern California. The state’s environmental report concludes the tunnels, while taking 5 percent more water from the Sacramento River, would be the least disruptive of all possible options for water deliveries from California’s largest river.
Women earn nearly half the doctorates in ag sciences, but gaining limited stature
University of Florida | Posted on December 29, 2016Despite earning 44 percent of the doctorates in agricultural sciences, women hold just 23 percent of the tenure-track faculty positions at U.S. land-grant institutions, according to a new study led by a research team at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Although the 23 percent is nearly double the 12 percent reported in 2005, females hold very few administrative positions in agricultural academia, the study shows. They also hold fewer significant roles on the editorial boards of scholarly journals in their field, serve on relatively few agricultural industry boards and hold fewer significant positions in global peer groups.
Make a resolution to educate our non-farm cousins about how we produce their food
Michigan State University Extension | Posted on December 29, 2016As farmers, you can become a resource for your friends and relatives. People are more likely to trust those they know, and in particular, those who are involved in an area that they want to learn something about. Your cousins and friends may look to you as part of their tribe and a resource for facts about food production. There are a number of reasons why individuals may have concerns or questions about food production. Often, they have read something about various animal products from a health standpoint, read a label on a food container, or seen or heard about a documentary or book that suggests agriculture is having a huge impact on the environment. They may have friends who tell them that something is bad for them or for the environment or that eating animal products is cruel to animals.It is important to note that if your friends or relatives say they don’t eat meat or dairy products; you should not immediately tell them that they should or why they should. First, ask why they do not, or why they have concerns about consuming animal or dairy products so you can address those aspects directly.
Washington Berry Grower fined for illegal water use
Columbia Basin Herald | Posted on December 29, 2016The Washington State Department of Ecology says it's fining a Whatcom County berry grower more than $100,000 for years of illegal water use. Officials say that since 2011, Ecology staff have tried to work with Gurjant "George" Sandhu to bring him into compliance with water laws. But they say he continued to irrigate his 220-acre raspberry farm the past two years without water rights for much of the property, and that he failed to submit water-use records for a 120-acre blueberry farm.Ecology said his actions hurt water flows in the Nooksack River, which hosts protected salmon and trout, and that other water rights holders had repeatedly complained about him using more water than his allocated amount.