Tyson Foods was caught by surprise in September when residents of Tonganoxie and Leavenworth County, Kansas, made it clear that they did not want the company to build a broiler complex in their community. [node:read-more:link]
Last year in Nueces County, sorghum farmers raked in $10.9 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Corn farmers in Castro County took $12.6 million. In Deaf Smith County, the kingpins of cotton were paid $32.5 million, according to new farm subsidy data released last week. But as the state’s biggest farms drew lucrative paydays, the pocketbooks of small family farmers got thinner. Now, critics of federal farm subsidy programs are calling for reform of a system they say overwhelmingly favors big agribusiness. The U.S. [node:read-more:link]
As Republicans push ahead with their tax reform plan, the small farmer is again invoked. This time it’s about the estate tax. During a speech in North Dakota, President Trump declared, “We’ll also protect small businesses and family farmers here in North Dakota and across the country by ending the death tax.” He added: “Tremendous burden for the family farmer, tremendous burden. We are not going to allow the death tax or the inheritance tax or the whatever-you-want-to-call-it to crush the American Dream.” But few farmers put the elimination of this tax on the top of their wish lists. [node:read-more:link]
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is moving ahead with some reorganization moves just a few weeks after hitting the pause button so they could be discussed further. [node:read-more:link]
Nanoparticles that allow for CRISPR genome-editing in adult animals have now been developed by researchers. Using a new nanoparticle-based, nonviral delivery technique, the researchers were able to cut out a disease-causing gene in about 80 percent of liver cells, and permanently lower cholesterol in mice. [node:read-more:link]
Traditional toxicity testing underestimates the risk that pharmaceutical and personal care product pollution poses to freshwater ecosystems. Criteria that account for ecological disruption -- not just organism death -- are needed to protect surface waters, which are under pressure from a growing population and escalating synthetic chemical use. [node:read-more:link]
When a team of scientists analyzed two dozen environmental factors to understand bumblebee population declines and range contractions, they expected to find stressors like changes in land use, geography or insecticides. Instead, they found a shocker: fungicides, commonly thought to have no impact. [node:read-more:link]
The EIR outlines potential significant environmental impacts associated with the adoption and implementation of statewide cannabis cultivation licensing regulations and provides mitigation measures to reduce those impacts to less than significant. CDFA is developing regulations for statewide cannabis cultivation licensing, as well as a track-and-trace system. This system will record the movement of cannabis and cannabis products through the supply chain, from cultivation to sale. [node:read-more:link]
Opponents of the House tax-reform bill pointed to the impacts of the budget deficit that could require major cuts to farm programs under current law. [node:read-more:link]
Dicamba will likely go down as the biggest agricultural issue in 2017. This post will discuss some background information and then address several recent developments regarding the herbicide dicamba. [node:read-more:link]
