Agriculture News
DuPont earnings benefit from strength in agriculture
Des Moines Register | Posted on July 28, 2016Profit at seed and chemical giant DuPont Co. surged 8.5 percent in the second quarter as it benefited from strong demand for its agricultural and nutrition products — despite ongoing challenges in the farm sector.
Farmers abandon crops as drought grips Northeast
Detroit News | Posted on July 28, 2016At Lavoie’s Farm in New Hampshire, beans and corn haven’t broken through the ground yet and fields of strawberries are stunted. The drought that has taken hold in the Northeast is especially felt at John Lavoie’s farm in Hollis, presenting him with some tough choices. Irrigation ponds are drying up, forcing him to choose between tomatoes and berries or apple and peach trees. Lavoie decided to hold off watering the fruit trees so he could quench the tomato and berry plants before they succumb to the heat.
The dry blast in New Hampshire is being felt throughout the Northeast, from Maine to Pennsylvania, driven by a second year of below-average rainfall. Though not as dire as the West Coast drought of five-years running, the dry, hot weather has stressed farms and gardens, prompted water restrictions and bans in many towns and threatened to bring more wildfires than usual. In the hardest hit areas of western New York, Massachusetts and southern parts of New Hampshire and Maine, it’s been dryer than in a decade or more. And national weather experts predict the drought will persist at least through the end of October.
Dow-DuPont Shareholders Approve $59 Billion Merger of Equals
Bloomberg | Posted on July 28, 2016Shareholders of Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. approved the companies’ historic merger, clearing a hurdle for the deal to close this year and for a later split into three entities. Majorities of both sets of stockholders approved the 50-50 combination of the two largest U.S. chemical makers, the companies said in a joint statement Wednesday. The $59 billion all-stock transaction, a record for the industry, was announced Dec. 11.
Study: GMO Ban Would Hurt Economy And Environment
Growing Produce | Posted on July 28, 2016Food prices could rise by more than 2% and greenhouse gas emissions would increase substantially according to a paper to be presented at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting in Boston. “There are people that would like to ban GMOs,” said Wally Tyner, a Purdue University economist. “We wanted to see what the result of a ban would be when it comes to food prices and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” “Total welfare losses associated with loss of GMO technology total up to $9.75 billion. The loss of GMO traits as an intensification technology has not only economic impacts, but also environmental ones. “The full environmental analysis of GMO is not undertaken here. Rather we model the land use change owing to the loss of GMO traits and calculate the associated increase in GHG emissions. We predict a substantial increase in GHG emissions if GMO technology is banned.”
Nottingham Dollies prove cloned sheep can live long and healthy lives
Science Daily | Posted on July 28, 2016Three weeks after the scientific world marked the 20th anniversary of the birth of Dolly the sheep, new research has shown that four clones derived from the same cell line -- genomic copies of Dolly -- reached their 8th birthdays in good health.
Farmers fight for the right to repair their own tractors
Fox Newa | Posted on July 28, 2016Farmers in Nebraska, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York are staging something of a mechanical revolt. They're attempting to get legislation passed in their states that would enable them, for the first time since the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to repair their own tractors or get an independent mechanic to help. At the root of the morass is the software that helps run modern tractors and their sensors, diagnostic tools, and other high-tech elements. If farmers so much as open the metaphorical hood to check out the computers they could be violating the federal act. Mick Minchow, a Nebraska farmer for more than 40 years, is among the many who are fed up. As it currently stands, any problem with his John Deere 8235 R requires a trip to the dealer and costs him important time. What he'd like to be able to do, per the paper, is something as simple as looking up the system code to determine if it's a serious problem or something as mundane as replacing a filter.
Nebraska city selected for Costco poultry plant sued
Watt Ag Net | Posted on July 28, 2016A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Fremont in Nebraska, which is being accused of allegedly blighting farmland illegally for tax incentive financing (TIF) for a proposed poultry plant. Three members of the citizens group Nebraska Communities United (NCU) filed the suit, alleging that Nebraska law does not provide for blighting large portions of agricultural land for the use of TIF money, and that the disputed area must be urban or suburban, and not rural. The city earlier annexed and blighted nearly 1,000 acres for the proposed plant.
Study: Direct-marketers create more jobs in their own regions
Capital Press | Posted on July 28, 2016Farms that market their goods directly to consumers tend to create more jobs in their own regions than those that don’t, a university study has found. For every $1 million worth of output, farms that sell directly via farmers’ markets, produce stands, community-supported agriculture and other such outlets generated nearly 32 jobs in the Sacramento area, according to the study led by University of California-Davis researcher Shermaine Hardesty.
In contrast, non-direct marketers created only 10.5 local jobs for each $1 million in output, the study found. It’s not that more conventional producers don’t create jobs; it’s that the jobs that serve them tend to be more far-flung. Direct marketers in Hardesty’s study purchased 89 percent of their inputs within the region while the non-direct marketers purchased 45 percent of their inputs locally.
Massachusetts moves forward with livestock housing initiative
Feedstuffs | Posted on July 20, 2016Massachusetts’ highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court, gave the okay to place on this November’s ballot an initiative backed by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) that would ban the use in the state of certain farm animal housing and prohibit the sale in the state of meat and eggs from confined animals.
A farmer and a homeless and hunger advocate challenged the ballot initiative, which would outlaw the use of gestation pens for pregnant sows, pens for veal calves and so-called battery cages for laying hens. It also would prohibit products from animals housed in such ways anywhere in the country from being sold in Massachusetts.By banning interstate sales of meat and eggs from confined animals, the initiative likely would drive up the price of those products, which likely would reduce their consumption.
Will pet food fall under new US GMO labeling bill?
Pet Food Industry | Posted on July 20, 2016Pet food shoppers increasingly say they look for non-GMO claims on labels and are even willing to pay more for pet foods with such claims. What if pet foods were required to declare inclusion of GMO ingredients on their labels; would that cause some pet owners to steer clear of such products? We may soon find out, at least in the US.
The House bill calls for voluntary labeling.) But if the Senate bill does become law, it likely would also affect pet food. The new Senate bill is also receiving support from food and biotech organizations, such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), because it would override state laws such as the one that went into effect in Vermont on July 1. AFIA, GMA and other groups have complained that if GMO-labeling laws continue to happen state by state, it will create a patchwork of standards and requirements that would be very costly to comply with—and costs would ultimately be passed onto consumers.