Images of cupped soybean fields have come to symbolize the dicamba injury crisis underway in farm country in the U.S. But what happens when chemicals like dicamba move beyond the soybean fields of commercial farmers onto the property of rural homeowners, business owners and organic and specialty crop farmers? [node:read-more:link]
Those of us living and working in rural and small town America have a message for our city cousins. We need workers and we need them now. Whether we’re making maple syrup in Vermont, picking apples in Washington, harvesting grapes in California, milking cows in Wisconsin, processing peaches in Georgia, feeding pigs in Iowa, packing pickles in Michigan or trail-driving in Colorado, we need access to a dependable source of ag labor. We’ve become increasingly dependent over the years on migrant labor, legal and illegal, to help run our farms, ranches, processing plants and service industries. [node:read-more:link]
A Minnesota administrative law judge extended the time the state will receive public comments on a controversial proposal to regulate fall use of some crop fertilizers. The rule was instituted by the Dayton administration, limiting the use of nitrogen fertilizer each fall in many parts of the state. Farmers, while saying they seldom use the fertilizer in the fall anyway, objected to the rule because they had little say in its original drafting. [node:read-more:link]
The following statement may be attributed to American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall: “White House trade advisor Peter Navarro’s recent comments that the damage this trade war is doing to certain sectors of the U.S. economy, of which we all know includes agriculture, is little more than a ‘rounding error’ are out of touch with the pain our farmers and ranchers are experiencing. [node:read-more:link]
Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay emphasized the importance of the provinces working together as an escalating trade war with the United States puts some farmers on edge. The minister said his provincial and territorial counterparts discussed trade negotiations and the contingency plan during their conference that wrapped up Friday in Vancouver.There's already a safety net in place through the $3-billion Canadian Agricultural Partnership launched earlier this year to help farmers manage risks and deal with problems, MacAulay said. [node:read-more:link]
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) surveyed WHO member states about how they are tackling antimicrobial resistance. Some key findings in the report:Only 64 countries report that they follow FAO-OIE-WHO recommendations to limit the use of critically important antimicrobials for growth promotion in animal production. [node:read-more:link]
A federal judge on denied poultry buyers’ motion to make Tyson Foods, Koch Foods and Mountaire Farms fork over at least 21,000 email attachments in the discovery process of a lawsuit accusing the producers and others of colluding to fix prices. [node:read-more:link]
Meat is piling up in U.S. cold-storage warehouses, fueled by a surge in supplies and trade disputes that are eroding demand. Federal data, coming as early as Monday, are expected to show a record level of beef, pork, poultry and turkey being stockpiled in U.S. facilities, rising above 2.5 billion pounds, agricultural analysts said. U.S. consumers’ appetite for meat is growing, but not fast enough to keep up with record production of hogs and chickens. That leaves the U.S. meat industry increasingly reliant on exports, but Mexico and China—among the largest foreign buyers of U.S. [node:read-more:link]
President Donald Trump defended his trade policy Tuesday morning, declaring that “tariffs are the greatest” because they allow him to fight back against nations that engage in trade practices unfair to the U.S. “Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs,” the president wrote on Twitter. “It’s as simple as that - and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the “piggy bank” that’s being robbed. [node:read-more:link]
Even as the Trump administration’s trade war with China starts to bite farm country, producers aren’t getting a lot of sympathy from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro, speaking from the White House lawn , said the trade losses due to China’s new tariffs amount to a “rounding error.” Some soybean growers already are expected to go out of business later this year due to the depressed prices that resulted from China’s 25 percent retaliatory tariff. [node:read-more:link]
