Agriculture

Rep. Chris Collins says a trade dispute with the Canada has forced New York state farmers to dump their milk "into ditches" because they can no longer sell it across the border. "They’ve now taken something they call ultra-filtered milk. They effectively with a pricing move, our dairy farmers are no longer able to get that product into Canada," Collins said in an interview with Bloomberg. "They are now dumping milk into the ditches. [node:read-more:link]

Jesse Vanderwende has worked as a contract grower for the last 11 years. His farm in Bridgeville raises hundreds of thousands of chickens from hatchlings to full-grown birds every year. Perdue Farms provides the feed and expertise, and then processes and ships the finished product to supermarkets across the country. “If I have a question or a problem, they help you work through it,” Vanderwende said. “I never get the feeling that I’m out there fighting for myself.”Not all growers would agree. [node:read-more:link]

The Humane Society and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families seem like two groups that could, conceivably, coexist in adjoining booths at your local Earth Day festival. But these organizations have instead ended up on opposite sides in a debate over how the Environmental Protection Agency should go about regulating thousands of potentially harmful chemicals that Americans come into contact with every day. [node:read-more:link]

Hog feces particles are likely getting inside North Carolina homes that are close to a large hog operation, a university study shows. The report, presented as evidence in a federal lawsuit, may contradict claims that hog operations don't transmit pathogens to nearby properties. [node:read-more:link]

During California’s epic five-year drought, most of the state’s irrigation districts didn’t comply with a 2007 law that requires them to account for how much water they’re delivering directly to farmers, a Bee investigation has found. State regulators are largely powerless to stop them, but they don’t seem too bothered by it. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Citrus Science Council has joined with five citrus growers in Central and Southern California to challenge the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to lift a 70-year-old ban preventing Argentine lemons from being imported to the U.S.  In the lawsuit, filed Thursday with the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

I’d go so far as to say we should all be eating oatmeal for breakfast, pretty much every day. Buy the big canister of rolled oats, which makes 30 servings and is often on sale at my local market for about $3 — which means oatmeal is 10 cents a bowl. You can get the steel-cut kind if you prefer; they’re nutritionally similar, but they cost more and take longer to cook. There are other oat-based products, of course. If you don’t want to turn whole oats into breakfast, you can let General Mills do it for you in the form of Cheerios. [node:read-more:link]

Early Saturday afternoon, renewable sources produced a record 67.2 percent of the electricity on the portion of the state’s power grid controlled by the California Independent System Operator. That figure does not include large hydropower facilities, which added another 13.5 percent. Based in Folsom, the ISO runs 80 percent of the state’s grid. More than half of the renewable energy flowing across the grid at that moment on Saturday came from large solar facilities and wind farms. [node:read-more:link]

In the 1970s, at least 60 dairy farms operated in Hillsborough. Their demise in a handful of decades seems the inevitable aftermath of urban encroachment, rising land prices and consolidation making it tougher for small and mid-sized dairy farms to milk profits. Earlier this year, the extended family trust that owns the land received a multimillion dollar offer from Miami-based Lennar Homes, eager to build a thousand homes there. [node:read-more:link]

This year could be a pivotal for many Iowa farmers, battling to turn a profit as they plant 23.4 million corn and soybean acres across the state.Financial pressure is beginning to show.Iowa farmers are leaning more on debt, with production loans climbing 39 percent to $8.4 billion over the past five years, federal bank data shows.Loans 30 days or more past due have increased 180 percent to about $84 million since 2011, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [node:read-more:link]