Agriculture

America’s 60,000 pig farmers continue to do what’s right on the farm for people, pigs and the planet when it comes to demonstrating their commitment to antibiotic stewardship. That’s why last week’s findings in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals came as no surprise, but as a validation of the hard work U.S. pig farmers have put in to reduce the overall need for antibiotics while still protecting the health and welfare of the pigs under their care. [node:read-more:link]

Feral swine do more than $1.5 billion a year in damage around the country, and scientists are taking what could be a big step toward controlling them. They are field-testing poison baits made from a preservative that's used to cure bacon and sausage.The tests will cover two major habitats where feral hogs are common during seasons when they're most likely to go for bait, said Kurt VerCauteren, feral swine project leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. Tests will start early in 2018 in dry west Texas and continue in humid central Alabama around midsummer. [node:read-more:link]

On Cargill’s new FedByTrade website, the Houfek family tells how selling meat to foreign countries has supported two generations working at the company’s packing plant in Schuyler, Neb. Four hundred miles north, in Hopkins, Brian Donovan, an operations manager in Cargill’s salt division, stands ready to explain how providing de-icing and water conditioning products to Canadians keeps dozens of U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Radio interference from a farm's massive metal crop-watering structure is causing havoc for air traffic in the sky over Georgia, federal authorities said in a lawsuit filed this week. The irrigation structure is on a south Georgia farm where the Federal Aviation Administration has a radio transmitter to relay signals that keep aircraft on course, according to the federal lawsuit.Interference caused by the 1,200-foot-long (370-meter-long) structure forced the FAA to shut down its transmitter in February, affecting operations of nine airports. [node:read-more:link]

Canadian auto parts maker Linamar Corp said on Thursday it agreed to buy privately held MacDon Group of Cos for C$1.2 billion ($937 million), to strengthen its presence in the agricultural equipment market. [node:read-more:link]

This study assesses the potential economic and environmental impacts that would arise if restrictions on glyphosate use resulted in the world no longer planting genetically modified herbicide tolerant (GM HT) crops. ‘First round’ impacts are the loss of farm level and aggregate impacts associated with the widespread use of GM HT crops (tolerant to glyphosate). There would be an annual loss of global farm income gains of $6.76 billion and lower levels of global soybean, corn and canola production equal to 18.6 million tonnes, 3.1 million tonnes and 1.44 million tonnes respectively. [node:read-more:link]

CRISPR-Cas9 tools have recently created a buzz in the global healthcare industry, with the development of numerous applications-focused solutions—and intensifying patenting disputes. The invention of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tools is one of the greatest scientific revolutions of this generation. Despite major controversies around patenting rights and ethical challenges, CRISPR-Cas9 tools have gained popularity with the scientific community and life science companies, primarily due to their ability to accurately cut the DNA sequence. [node:read-more:link]

America’s Dairyland is undergoing a bit of a revolution, and it has nothing to do with the words on Wisconsin’s license plate or even the size of farms.It’s about the cows — specifically who’s minding the animals in the barn.Increasingly, the folks caring for the cows, monitoring their health and managing the herd are women, according to agriculture educators in west-central Wisconsin. [node:read-more:link]

Two professors from San Diego State University claim in a new book that farmers’ markets in urban areas are weed-like “white spaces” responsible for oppression. Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J Bosco are part of an anthology released this month titled “Just Green Enough.” The work, published by Routledge, claims there is a correlation between the “whiteness of farmers’ markets” and gentrification. “Farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized,” the SDSU professors write, the education watchdog Campus Reform reported. [node:read-more:link]

It's been a long battle, but cotton farmers will finally get the opportunity to sign up cottonseed in an emergency disaster bill Congress is expected to pass before leaving town for the holidays. [node:read-more:link]