Agriculture News
How U.S. Soybeans Can Skirt Trade-War Tariffs to End Up in China
Bloomberg | Posted on August 30, 2018U.S. soybeans can still make it to China without paying the 25 percent tariff -- they just have to take a 5,500-mile (8,850-kilometer) diversion via Argentina. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how the trade would happen. An unusual flood of U.S. beans to Argentina could be processed by that nation’s huge crushing industry and sent to China as soy meal. Argentina is the world’s biggest exporter of meal, made from the crushed oilseed and used as animal feed.Beans from the U.S. are going to Argentina after one of the worst droughts in decades crippled production on the Argentine Pampas. Processors such as Cargill Inc. and Bunge Ltd. are cranking up purchases of foreign supplies to make up for the shortfall.
Labor shortage, wage inflation compound agriculture industry struggles
National Hog Farmer | Posted on August 30, 2018As the U.S. economy continues to grow and unemployment dwindles, labor scarcity and wage inflation threaten the rural economy and put additional stress on profitability of the agriculture industry at a time of depressed commodity prices. Manual laborers are chasing higher wages offered in industries like transportation, construction, hospitality and mining, forcing agriculture employers to increase wages at a faster rate to compete, according to a new study from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange Division. The scarcity of farm labor is also exacerbated by the shrinking number of migrant workers from Mexico. In addition to immigration controls like tightening borders and increased immigration enforcement, birthrates in Mexico are falling and populations are moving toward urban areas, leaving fewer people with agricultural backgrounds who would be interested in U.S. farm work.The CoBank study, “Help Wanted,” is broken into two sections, “Wage Inflation and Worker Scarcity,” and “U.S. Agribusiness Experience Hiring Headaches.”
How to Keep New York’s Farmland for Farmers
Modern Farmer | Posted on August 30, 2018New York is vital for farming; far from its national reputation as merely an urban center, the state has seven million acres of farmland and is one of the biggest producers of dairy and apples. It also faces many of the same issues that face farmers around the country, with perhaps the biggest being simply holding onto, or gaining new, farmland. The National Young Farmers Coalition’s new paper has some concrete suggestions for how to combat these issues. The difficulty existing farmers face keeping farmland, and the difficulty new farmers face finding farmland, are not unique to New York. But New York’s astronomical real estate prices have placed the state in an even more tenuous position than most. Land closer to New York City is preferable for farmers; the city has a thriving farmers market structure that can be invaluable to small-scale farmers. But as you get closer to the city, land values shoot up and become far out of the range of most farmers. And even the existing farmland outside the city? The NYFC’s research has found that it’s being purchased for second homes, and once farmland stops actively being farmed, it rarely goes back.But the state government has taken some interesting pains to try to keep farmland as farmland. This July, Governor Cuomo put forth a new funding roundfor what’s called the Farmland Protection Implementation Grant Program, or FPIG. The FPIG program restricts the use of farmland to farming, meaning that not just anyone can buy certain land, but it also goes a step further by including preemptive purchase rights. Essentially, this means that if farmland goes up for sale, farmers get first rights to purchase—and can use that FPIG funding to secure the land.
Dairy farm turns to GoFundMe for survival
Fox News | Posted on August 29, 2018A Wisconsin family is turning to crowdfunding to save their dairy farm, which dates all the way back to 1873.Dale Cihlar, a fourth generation dairy farmer and grandfather of nine grandkids, had reached a new low – with several prized dairy cows dying, the price of milk plummeting, and another $1,600 monthly payment for the manure storage system the county required them to install. So he and his wife Karen were pressed to take out a loan.When Dale and Karen went to take out a $35,000 loan to purchase half a herd of cows from a fellow farmer who was going out of business, they were denied time and time again because of projected milk prices. But the last banker they talked to gave Karen an idea.“The last one said to me to do what you have to do and don’t worry about what others think, so that night I did the GoFundMe page,” Karen told Fox News, adding she didn’t know what to expect but put it in God’s hands.“I am asking for help to keep [our] small family dairy farm going,” Karen wrote in her plea to save the family farm. “My husband is to[o] proud to come on here, but my gut says give it a try.” Theyhave raised more than $90,000 froma goal of $35,000
Bayer Has a $289 Million Roundup Headache
Bloomberg | Posted on August 29, 2018Last fall, as Bayer AG was completing its $66 billion mergerwith Monsanto Co., Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann visited the concrete-slab Berlin complex where company scientists develop disease-fighting drugs. At an employee town hall meeting, Baumann asked whether staffers believed environmentalists’ claims that the Monsanto weed killer Roundup causes cancer. Despite the CEO’s obvious interest in the acquisition, some raised their hands. On Aug. 10 a California court agreed, awarding a school groundskeeper dying of lymphoma $289 million on a claim that exposure to glyphosate, Roundup’s key ingredient, had contributed to his cancer. The verdict—the first in what may be thousands of cases—sent shock waves through Bayer and erased $16 billion from the company’s market value in a week. “The odds are that Bayer will suffer more losses” in litigation over Roundup, says Elizabeth Burch, a University of Georgia liability law professor. “Investors better get prepared.”
Inbreeding and disease are factors in decline of yellow-banded bumblebee
Science Daily | Posted on August 29, 2018By sequencing the genome of the yellow-banded bumblebee, researchers have found that inbreeding and disease are likely culprits in their rapid decline in North America. This is believed to be the first time the genome of an at-risk bumblebee has been sequenced and it allows researchers to take a deeper look into the potential reason for their diminishing numbers. What they found surprised them.By sequencing the genome of the yellow-banded bumblebee, York University researchers have found that inbreeding and disease are likely culprits in their rapid decline in North America.
Repeated natural disasters pummel Hawaii’s farms, affecting macadamia nuts, taro, papaya, flower harvests
The Washington Post | Posted on August 29, 2018Historic, torrential April rains on the island of Kauai wiped out much of Hawaii’s taro crops — the main ingredient in poi and a staple carb of the island diet. The next month, one of the state’s most active volcanoes spewed ash and lava throughout the eastern end of the Big Island, decimating more than 50 percent of the state’s papaya production and tropical flower industry.Then came Hurricane Lane.As Hawaii begins to recover from the tropical cyclone that dumped more than three feet of rain onto the Big Island last week, farmers here are just starting to assess the damage to their crops. Lane landed yet another blow to Hawaii’s agriculture industry after an already difficult year of reckoning with Mother Nature. Flooding, excess moisture and pounding rains could hurt macadamia nut, coffee and flower harvests for farmers on the east side of the island, which bore the brunt of the storm.
Drought conditions create feed shortage in parts of US
Watt Ag Net | Posted on August 29, 2018Dry conditions are making it challenging for producers to feed cattle in parts of the United States. In addition to already stressful conditions, farmers are concerned about what they will feed cattle this winter as drought conditions in some areas haven’t allowed for normal hay growth, limiting stockpiles that are used to get cows, bulls and yearlings through the winter when forage is scarce.The U.S. Drought Monitor map shows that nearly all of Missouri is experiencing drought, with several counties in the northwestern part of the state facing "exceptional" conditions. Other parts of the state were close to the same classification. Soil moisture is listed as short or very short in many parts of the state.Almost half of Missouri's corn crop was listed as poor or very poor, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) progress report.Parts of Kansas are struggling too, as mother nature has provided less-than-ideal conditions for the wheat crop.In Texas, Lazy Two Cattle Company told MyStatesman that, in a normal year, it would have already harvested about 1,200 bales of hay by now. Due to drought, this hasn’t happened.
Saskatchewan farmers are the real victims of the Global Transportation Hub land deal
CBC Canada | Posted on August 29, 2018Shipping agri-food products out of an intermodal facility in containers offered our province a final, decisive chance to access a massive, increasingly diverse overseas market for food. The scandal jeopardizes the entire GTH project. The government said as much. "No matter what happens to it, [the GTH] will be under such intense public scrutiny it would be difficult for a private business or private tenant to want to become a partner to move into that. So we need to look for something else," Justice Minister Don Morgan said. Containerization allows farmers to do something for which they have yearned for 90 years: to find their own markets, work directly with small- and medium-sized overseas importers and set their own prices. Saskatchewan is an agricultural export province and we are fiercely proud of it. Let's use some easy-to-find numbers. In 2016, we exported $14.4 billion of agri-food products, up 32.1 per cent over the 10-year average, government promotional literature tells us. Sounds like an occasion for another round of high-fives. A successful intermodal hub would give farmers 40 cash crops, not two or three. A cluster of processors at the GTH expelling, extruding, compacting, pelletizing, isolating, filtering, sorting and testing raw agricultural commodities would create high-value products and by-by-products, some of which don't currently exist. Co-located co-packers, shippers and logistics companies would bottle, label, box, palletize and containerize. Ordering, stuffing and shipping a container would take a farmer days, not weeks, which is the current dismal state of affairs. But such a scenario depends on one thing: firm commitment to containerization and intermodal traffic from our government. Let's be realistic, Saskatchewan: This is our last chance, and we are screwing it up.
Swiss government urges voters to reject more state help for farmers
Reuters | Posted on August 29, 2018The Swiss government urged voters to reject more help for farmers and other proposals for agriculture in a referendum next month, saying they would send food prices rocketing and hurt the economy.Switzerland will two hold referendums on Sept. 23 - one on giving more state support to farmers and another on introducing more sustainable and animal-friendly agricultural practices.