Agriculture

Because California produces almost a fifth of the nation’s milk, the impact of the order will cause ripples in the surface of milk prices from Los Angeles to Minneapolis and from Boston to Miami. Whether those ripples grow into waves remains to be seen. California’s new Federal Order will be implemented at the same time world markets continue to churn and trade wars potentially disrupt U.S. exports.  For starters, California processors will have to learn how to move milk around the state without the millions of dollars in transportation credits California’s state order provided. [node:read-more:link]

Lancaster County residents and farmers have taken state agriculture officials up on their appeal for ideas to address Pennsylvania’s dairy crisis. They offered strong advice and plenty of ideas, such as allowing whole milk back in public schools and eliminating the minimum retail price that milk can be sold for in stores. Multiple commenters expressed strong criticism of Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board policies and the practices of large dairy cooperatives. [node:read-more:link]

A Wisconsin dairy farmer says domestic problems may be a bigger threat to his industry than Canadian trade policy. James Juedes, who owns a dairy farm that has been in his family for more than a century, said, “If we would’ve had the foresight to do what Canada did 10-15 years ago, to limit what we had for production, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” Instead of focusing on Canada, Juedes is more worried about the American dairy hurting itself by producing more milk than the U.S. can handle. [node:read-more:link]

Steven Rattner shares four charts that show US-Canadian trade is far different from what Trump has portrayed. The US actually has a trade surplus with Canada — and a substantial one with dairy product. We export roughly twice as much in dairy to Canada as we import from them — and our total dairy trade is only a small fraction of overall trade with the country last year. Canada's tariffs are actually the lowest of the major developed countries. [node:read-more:link]

Donald Trump talks a lot about America’s dairy industry. Specifically, he likes to go on about how Canada’s tariffs on milk products put our farmers at a disadvantage. This appears to be his main rhetorical justification for starting a small, but diplomatically bruising, trade skirmish with our northern neighbor, which has led to new tariffs on both sides of the border. [node:read-more:link]

This seems like a good time to talk about trade deficits. The notion that U.S. trade deficits are inherently bad is simply not true. Opposing trade deficits on the campaign trail makes for good politics, but that just shows how little most of us know about the topic. First of all, a trade deficit is not a deficit in the way most people think. A budget deficit is a real deficit, and we all understand the obligation of a government needing to pay back borrowed money. A trade deficit, however, has nothing to do with borrowing money or incurring an obligation. [node:read-more:link]

Retaliatory trade tariffs by China and Mexico now apply to 40 percent of total American pork exports, threatening the livelihoods of thousands of U.S. pig farmers, the National Pork Producers Council said Friday in response to the escalating trade war between the United States and China. The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese products officially went into effect overnight, prompting China to quickly retaliate with previously threatened penalties on an equal amount of U.S. exports, including pork, beef, soybeans and automobiles. [node:read-more:link]

In Fremont, Neb., the sky-high feed mill looming over the open fields signals a shift in a state where beef dominates. It will support a $400 million chicken complex that Costco Wholesale Corp. is building to control the quality of birds it sells in its depots nationwide. To supply the giant facility, grain farmers are converting to poultry growers, building on their plots at least four chicken houses each, with some as many as 16. Each of the 432 barns houses 42,000 birds, making for a one-time capacity of more than 18 million of them. [node:read-more:link]

“It’s just hard to believe it’s over,” Coombs said later, choking up. “As long as you was milking cows, you always thought there was a hope you'd get back to it. At this point, even if there's a Hail Mary pass, we're done.” Coombs is one of more than 100 dairy farmers across seven states who learned in March that they would lose their contract with Dean Foods, which runs a milk processing plant in Louisville that mainly served Walmart. [node:read-more:link]

Crop One Holdings, a Silicon Valley food startup, and Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC), one of the world's largest airline catering operators, plan build a 130,000-square-foot vertical farm in Dubai. Vertical farms grow crops indoors and year-round without natural sunlight or soil.The facility will be the largest of its kind, and will produce 6,000 pounds of crops daily. The greens and herbs will be used for in-flight meals at Dubai International Airport, the world's largest by international passenger traffic. [node:read-more:link]