Agriculture

When Kansas farmer Tom Giessel drove over a deer carcass and punctured a tire on his combine during harvest this fall, he did not have the time or cash to fix it. He borrowed his neighbor’s tractor to finish. U.S. farmers are cutting costs any way they can to compete against cheaper producers in Argentina and Brazil. Four years of global oversupply have pushed down grain prices, reduced agricultural revenues and put more expensive producers under financial pressure.In response, U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized a one-sided strategy in Nafta negotiations after U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he wasn’t prepared to make concessions to reach a deal. “A negotiation where a one party takes a winner-takes-all approach is a negotiation that may find some difficulties in reaching a conclusion,” Freeland said Thursday during a press conference in Toronto, without specifying which party she was referring to. She later added Canada understands the value of opening new export markets in China and elsewhere. [node:read-more:link]

Boulder County commissioners have scrapped a plan for a sustainable agriculture research program that would help it transition away from the use of GMOs after the hunt to find someone to run the program became mired in controversy. County open space staff placed the blame for the failure squarely on area farmers who fiercely opposed the county's RFP process, alleging it was unethical and biased toward organic farming. Last year, the county decided it would begin phasing out GMO crops on its open space farms and issued a request for proposals to create a transition program. [node:read-more:link]

A group of Hispanic ranchers has been dealt a blow in their yearslong feud with the federal government over grazing rights on land in New Mexico that has been used by their families for centuries.Attorneys for the ranchers argued that the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Judge Tonya Parker of the 116th District Court in Dallas has dismissed a lawsuit brought against the State Fair of Texas by the Austin law firm Riggs & Ray, P.C., which appeared to be acting to further the political agenda of a party that does not want the State Fair at Fair Park in Dallas. The lawsuit alleged that the State Fair is a “governmental body” subject to the Texas Public Information Act. [node:read-more:link]

Much of the Midwest is dominated by farming: rows and rows of soybeans and corn, with bare soil between the rows. But before farming took over, the dominant ecosystem was prairie. [node:read-more:link]

A coalition of 66 ag-based organizations have joined together to focus on expanding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) research, education, and extension budget. In an effort to further the U.S. ag industry the coalition is working toward doubling the budget to $6 billion during the five-year life of the 2018 Farm Bill. The coalition submitted its request in a letter to U.S. House and U.S. [node:read-more:link]

According to a survey done by the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF), farmers and ranchers are having an increasingly hard time finding, and hiring, people who are willing and qualified to work in the Ag industry. The survey conducted this summer showed that 55-percent of responding farmers had experienced employee shortages. [node:read-more:link]

New research from the University of Delaware concludes that food labels such as “organic” and “fair trade” can stigmatize foods produced with conventional processes even when there is no scientific evidence that they cause harm or that products are compositionally different. Such process claims often are not based on science and can cause consumers to misinterpret these labels and misalign their personal preferences and food purchases, the researchers said. [node:read-more:link]

Lon Frahm may represent the future of farming. Inside a two-story office building overshadowed by 80-foot steel grain bins, he points to a map showing the patchwork of square and circular fields that make up his operation. It covers nearly 10% of the county’s cropland, and when he climbs into his Cessna Skylane to check crops from the air, he can fly 30 miles before reaching the end of his land. At 30,600 acres, his farm is among the country’s vastest, and it yields enough corn and wheat each year to fill 4,500 semitrailer trucks. Big operations like Mr. [node:read-more:link]