Agriculture

It’s a favourite grievance in President Donald Trump’s Twitter blasts at his northern neighbour: “Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. Farmers … Canada has treated our Agricultural business and Farmers very poorly.”The source of Trump’s ire is the supply-management system that controls milk production in Canada and limits imports from the U.S.; America’s NAFTA negotiators want it dismantled.Even in Canada, critics view supply management as an anti-competitive tool that artificially inflates consumer prices, while other trading partners have also complained. [node:read-more:link]

Veteran farmer Ron Heck, who produces 100,000 bushels of soybeans a year on his family farm in central Iowa, likes President Trump's big-picture plans to negotiate a fair trade deal with China that would improve market access and lower export fees. And he hopes the U.S. tariffs on China will hasten that outcome. But Heck also fears that such a deal could exact a crippling cost from farmers like him. He has relied on China's sizable appetite for U.S. [node:read-more:link]

ive poultry in backyard flocks are linked to several multistate outbreaks of salmonella infections that have now sickened 212 people in 44 states, federal health officials warned.  The most recent illnesses began on June 21, with 88 of the cases reported in the last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, said in an advisory. The federal agency is working with multiple states in investigating several outbreaks of salmonella infections linked to contact with live poultry in backyard flocks, it said.  [node:read-more:link]

For a sixth straight month the overall index rose above growth neutral.  Almost one-third of bank CEOs recommended that the Federal Reserve leave short-term interest rates at their current levels for the rest of the year. More than three of five, or 78 percent, of bank CEOs reported that current trade skirmishes and rising tariffs have had a negative impact on their local economy. Approximately 75.6 percent of bankers reported negative impacts of trade rifts and tariffs on grain farmers in their area. Economic confidence plummeted among bankers for the month.
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Members of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) today praised the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their expanded $32.5 million commitment to 46 states and one territory to support the proper implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule. “NASDA Members have a long history of successfully working with farmers to grow our safe food supply,” said NASDA CEO Dr. Barbara P. Glenn. [node:read-more:link]

Gene-edited crops should be subject to the same stringent regulations as conventional genetically modified (GM) organisms, Europe’s highest court ruled on 25 July. The decision, handed down by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in Luxembourg, is a major setback for proponents of gene-edited crops, including scientists. They had hoped that organisms created usingprecise gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR–Cas9 would be exempted from existing European law that has limited the planting and sale of GM crops. [node:read-more:link]

Weekly export data from USDA point to a slowdown in pork shipments to Mexico and the effective closing of the Chinese market to U.S. products in the wake of new tariffs. [node:read-more:link]

Coalitions of farm groups are at odds over whether the House should vote this week on a bill introduced last week by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., to replace the H-2A visa program with an agricultural guestworker program, known as the H-2C program. [node:read-more:link]

It is a good time to fire up the grill domestically and a bad time to export globally. Because of the trade war, around 2.5 billion pounds of meat is just sitting in U.S. cold storage. The meat won’t spoil. It will go on sale in domestic markets, meaning cheaper hams and steaks. This will be good for restaurants and for consumers, especially anyone already stocking up for a Labor Day barbecue. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announces today the deregulation of Bayer CropScience’s cotton variety genetically (GE) engineered for resistance to the herbicides glyphosate and p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD)-Inhibitors such as isoxaflutole. [node:read-more:link]