Agriculture

There wasn't really a last straw that made Billy Euerle walk away from his Garfield dairy farm last year.Things had been bad for several years.He trudged through his days, milking Hot Chocolate and Caroline and Brooke and all the others, barely sleeping. Facing terrible milk prices and crushing debt, he struggled to find motivation. Every chore seemed to take twice as long, and his whole family was feeling the stress. To top it off, severe storms in 2017 ravaged several farm buildings."You just had to fool yourself every day that you were going to make it," said Euerle, a father of four. [node:read-more:link]

New rules overseeing the sale of Australian farmland to foreign investors will force real estate agents to show they have given local investors the chance to purchase the land first. Treasurer Scott Morrison's new 30-day advertising clause will become part of the guidelines the Foreign Investment Review Board considers when assessing the sale of farmland.Sellers will have to demonstrate they have undertaken an open and transparent process. [node:read-more:link]

Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States, a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns. But the one thing he can’t control is what he’s most dependent on — water. A little farmworker town in a far corner of Kern County called Lost Hills. This is where the biggest irrigated farmer in the world — the one whose mad plantings of almonds and pistachios have triggered California’s nut rush — keeps on growing, no matter drought or flood. He doesn’t live in Lost Hills. He lives in Beverly Hills. [node:read-more:link]

The owners of a boarding barn in Cuba, New York are blaming tainted horse feed for the deaths of six horses there. The barn and training facility houses 31 horses. All of them will likely eventually die from being exposed to the poisonous feed. [node:read-more:link]

Avocados have rapidly become a staple in many U.S. diets, with Americans consuming on average 7 pounds a year. To satisfy that surging popularity, imports from Mexico have skyrocketed. That's made a lot of farmers rich — but it's also drawn the attention of organized crime gangs. One town in Mexico has been able to fight off the gangs and keep the peace, and wealth, at home. It's Tancitaro, a small farming town of about 30,000 in western Michoacan state. Super Bowl Sunday is a big deal here. [node:read-more:link]

A star-studded affair with tractors, drones, milk pipe puzzles, and hay bales. Welcome to the Land O’ Lakes Farm Bowl.So what exactly is the Farm Bowl? Think of it like American Ninja Warrior except with farm equipment. Or maybe MTV’s The Challenge with agricultural education instead of drunken hookups. Six NFL athletes were paired with real life farmers to compete in four different stations in what has to be the world’s most unlikely pro-am ever. Especially since the pro athletes were the amateurs in this case. [node:read-more:link]

Dicamba-related off-target crop damage complaints will be consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, according to an order issued Thursday by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). Multiple lawsuits have been filed by farmers alleging off-target dicamba damage to crops in at least 24 states from dicamba-based products manufactured by Monsanto, BASF and DuPont. [node:read-more:link]

In an effort to save Florida’s $9 billion citrus industry and speed-up work on Herbert Hoover Dike, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida on Tuesday called on Senate leaders to include additional disaster assistance for Florida in a government spending bill the chamber is expected to take up this week. [node:read-more:link]

Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) filed for bankruptcy last week, pointing fingers and laying blame squarely on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal program that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol and other biofuels. That may make for a provocative headline, but the public and PES’ 1,100 employees deserve to know the truth: PES has no one else to blame but itself. PES operates one of the nation’s oldest refineries, which is handicapped by hopelessly antiquated technology. [node:read-more:link]

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released a memorandum produced by his energy policy staff who analyzed recent claims made by opponents of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), including Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), which attributed its recent bankruptcy filing in part to the RFS. [node:read-more:link]