Agriculture News
FarmStart Program Approves 175th Investment to Support Beginning Farmers
Farm Credit East | Posted on September 28, 2016FarmStart, an innovative Northeast program to help young people get started in farming, is pleased to announce the approval of its 175th investment. Since the first investment approved in August of 2006, FarmStart has invested more than $7.5 million with 175 participants throughout New York, New Jersey and New England. The program’s 175th investment was to Brookby Dairy, LLC in Dover Plains, N.Y. Owner William Vincent comes from a sixth generation family farm, and after graduating from college returned home to take over the farm which had been inactive for close to 30 years. After two years running the farm, Will had the opportunity to expand on 750 acres of leased land, but didn’t have the necessary capital. FarmStart, LLP was initiated by Farm Credit East and CoBank as part of Farm Credit’s long-term commitment of helping young individuals get started in farming. Yankee Farm Credit joined the program in 2011. The program invests working capital of up to $75,000 to help beginning northeast farm businesses and cooperatives become operational. Each FarmStart participant is required to complete a business plan and monthly cash flow which serves as a roadmap for their startup business. A FarmStart advisor works with each participant to help the new business stay on track toward achieving their business objectives.
...And Then There Were Four?
DTN | Posted on September 27, 2016The five company executives were literally elbow to elbow, but they all fit at the narrow table where they sat facing a stern semi-circle of U.S. senators. They were in D.C. representing five of the "Big Six" agricultural companies and testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in defense of the two massive mergers and a key corporate purchase underway. Squeezed in next to them were four other representatives from the American Antitrust Institute, the American Farm Bureau, the National Corn Growers Association and the National Farmers Union. A number of senators remarked on how tightly the Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow AgroSciences executives were squeezed in. "I don't think I've been at a hearing of the Judiciary committee where there have been this many witnesses at one table," marveled Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, at one point. From my perch at the press table, he was incredulous about the wrong thing. Together, those five men in one room represented the majority of the global seed and agro-chemical industry. If BASF (who, from the outside, must look like the only girl at the dance without a date these days) had been there, the picture would be pretty much complete. Soon -- if the Department of Justice gives Dow and DuPont the go-ahead to merge and approves Bayer's purchase of Monsanto -- just four executives (and their stockholders) will have great control of that industry.
Nebraskans cheer court rolling back OSHA fertilizer regulations
Lincoln Journal Star | Posted on September 27, 2016Nebraska farm leaders hailed a ruling from D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected efforts by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to apply stricter handling rules to retailers of anhydrous ammonia without first going through a formal rule-making process.Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson called it a “mark on the win column for Nebraska farmers and fertilizer suppliers.” “Nebraska Farm Bureau and others have challenged the flawed logic OSHA used to justify additional regulations on fertilizer suppliers which ultimately would drive up fertilizer costs for Nebraska farmers and could possibly limit access to anhydrous ammonia fertilizer product,” Nelson said in a news release. OSHA began to tighten anhydrous ammonia handling requirements for retail facilities that were exempt following an April 2013 explosion of 40 to 60 tons of fertilizer at a plant in West Texas. Caused by a fire, the explosion killed 15 people, injured 160 and damaged or destroyed 160 buildings. When OSHA dropped the retail sales exemption, it didn’t first request public comment, which the Agricultural Retailers Association and the Fertilizer Institute used as a lever for their lawsuit seeking to roll back the regulations. The ruling orders OSHA to reinstate the exemption for retailers because the federal agency failed to provide notice and offer comment periods as required by law. Experts say going through the rule making process could take years.
Farmers say, ‘No apologies,’ as well drilling hits record levels in San Joaquin Valley
Sacbee.com | Posted on September 27, 2016Drive through rural Tulare County and you’ll hear it soon enough, a roar from one of the hundreds of agricultural pumps pulling water from beneath the soil to keep the nut and fruit orchards and vast fields of corn and alfalfa lush and green under the scorching San Joaquin Valley sun. Well water is keeping agriculture alive in Tulare County – and much of the rest of the San Joaquin Valley – through five years of California’s historic drought. Largely cut off from the supplies normally delivered via canals by the federal and state water projects, farmers have been drilling hundreds of feet into the ground to bring up the water they need to turn a profit. Two years after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill designed to limit groundwater pumping, new wells are going in faster and deeper than ever. Farmers dug about 2,500 wells in the San Joaquin Valley last year alone, the highest number on record. That was five times the annual average for the previous 30 years, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of state and local data.
Measuring 'Best' Practices To Curb Farm Pollution
Inside Science | Posted on September 27, 2016But some scientists have been questioning whether some of the methods -- collectively known as best management practices or BMPs -- actually reduce pollution as much as estimated. "They're being put in all over the place, but no one ever checks to see how well they work," said Thomas Fisher, an environmental scientist at the Horn Point Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Fisher and his colleagues are working to change that. They are ending year three of an ambitious five-year, $1.5 million study aimed at figuring out which of the agricultural practices work best at protecting the Choptank, the largest tributary of the Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore. The research is needed. Although parts of the bay may be improving in water quality, "the Choptank is still going downhill," said Fisher. "So why is this happening? Are the BMPs not working?"
Farmworker groups ask EPA to ban Dursban, Lorsban
My Palm Beach Post | Posted on September 26, 2016A nationwide coalition of farmworker and community health groups, including the Farmworker Association of Florida, Thursday petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to immediately ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, sold under the brand names Dursban and Lorsban, because it harms workers and their families. Jeannie Economos, pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida, said a class of pesticides known as chlorphyrifos is widely used in Florida agriculture on nursery plants and vegetable crops. Economos said the EPA banned the pesticide, manufactured by Dow Chemical Co., for residential use over a decade ago after two studies in the Northeast linked it to developmental problems in children.
Urbandale to teen's bees: Buzz off
Des Moines Register | Posted on September 26, 2016Clare Heinrich became fascinated by honeybees after hearing a presentation at the 2015 Iowa State Fair. She earned a scholarship from the Iowa Honey Producers Association to take three months of classes to learn more. “I know they are important pollinators, and they are disappearing,” said Heinrich, who plans to study environmental science in college. “I wanted to know if I could do something.” The Dowling Catholic High School senior got a shipment of honeybees in April and set up a hive on the side of her parents’ home in Urbandale, where she studied the bees’ rituals of service to the colony and honey production. She even won three ribbons at this year’s state fair for her honey and hive frames. But Urbandale officials say bees are considered livestock and thus prohibited to keep on residential property. The Heinrichs must remove the hives by the end of the month or face a fine of $1,000 the first day and $750 for every day thereafter. It’s a confusing problem for cities across Iowa as more Iowans have become interested in keeping bees. In Polk County, there are 57 registered beekeeping sites. Yet city codes vary from city to city, even in neighboring suburbs. In Des Moines and West Des Moines, for example, beekeeping is allowed, but not in Urbandale and Waukee.
Where and how climate change is altering species
Science Daily | Posted on September 26, 2016New research published in the journal Nature Climate Change by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Wisconsin-Madison illuminates where and why novel species combinations are likely to emerge due to recent changes in temperature and precipitation. The study includes global maps of novelty that offer testable predictions and carry important implications for conservation and land management planning. For instance, the findings suggest that novel species associations are likely to form in the North American Great Plains and temperate forests, the Amazon, South American grasslands, Africa and boreal Asia due to recent climate change, and will likely expand as climate novelty increases. With global temperatures expected to increase by 2.5-8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century -- compared to the roughly 1.5 degrees of global warming experienced over the last century -- the authors predict the widespread reshuffling of species into new communities, as species abundances and distributions change.
New Podcasts Offer Agricultural Insights
Michigan Government | Posted on September 26, 2016The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development recently launched a new podcast series that offers insights into some of the state’s hottest topics in food and agriculture and other issues the department is addressing on behalf of Michiganders. The first round of podcasts included such topics as bovine tuberculosis, credit card skimmers, migrant labor and the federal H2A program, as well as the first international trade mission to China this year for MDARD Director Jamie Clover Adams, which laid the groundwork for an upcoming mission in November that will also include a number of Michigan producers.
Canadian dairy proposal draws wide opposition
Capital Press | Posted on September 26, 2016Dairy organizations in the U.S., the European Union, Australia and New Zealand are calling on their trade and agriculture officials to stop a new Canadian dairy policy, saying it will expand that country’s already protectionist policies on dairy trade. The organizations, including the U.S. Dairy Export Council, the International Dairy Foods Association and National Milk Producers Federation, sent a joint letter to the officials on Monday to initiate WTO dispute settlement proceedings to challenge the new policy, once its details are announced. The new policy — included in the new Agreement in Principle negotiated between Canada’s dairy farmers and milk processors — would favor the substitution of domestic dairy ingredients for imported ingredients and unfairly subsidize Canadian dairy exports, the U.S. groups contend. If ratified, the agreement would take effect Nov. 1. Opposing dairy groups believe it would contravene Canada’s World Trade Organization and North American Free Trade Agreement obligations and undermine the intent of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement involving 12 countries and the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement.