The ongoing spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) continues to take its toll in France and two Asian nations as new incarnations of the virus continue to pop up. In France, the agriculture ministry said all 600,000 ducks in a prime region for the production of foie gras will be culled [node:read-more:link]
John Deere & Co. (DE) appears to have relied on “disciplined cost management” to plow through what has been considered the roughest period in the farming since the Depression. Friday, some analysts say they hope to see that the deep double-digit dips in revenues and profits, choked by low commodity prices and weak farm incomes, have slowed down. [node:read-more:link]
Monsanto has been served with a second lawsuit over the off-label dicamba drift damage that occurred in 10 states in 2016. The new case, a class action suit filed in U.S. District Court in Missouri, has two farmers from that state as lead plaintiffs. The lawsuit was filed by Randles and Splittgerber, LLP, a Missouri-based legal firm that also sued Monsanto over dicamba drift in November 2016 on behalf of Bader Farms, a Missouri fruit and row-crop operation. [node:read-more:link]
Natalina Sents, a recent Iowa State graduate in ag business, has been crisscrossing the country as part of a yearlong project sharing farmers’ stories on a blog, whyifarm.com. The project, funded by Beck’s Hybrids seed. “I have talked to some very strong men, whose families have not seen them cry for a very long time, if ever,” she said. [node:read-more:link]
Expanded immigration enforcement and potential trade renegotiation are casting a shadow over Kansas City area residents and businesses. Both topics surfaced Wednesday during an agricultural trade forum at Union Station. Talk focused mostly on trade and President Donald Trump’s calls to renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement that covers the United States, Canada and Mexico. “For all those who are thinking about renegotiating NAFTA, our request is do no harm first and foremost,” said Neil Herrington, executive director of the Americas for the U.S. [node:read-more:link]
There are many challenges to farming for a living: It's often grueling work that relies on unpredictable factors such as weather and global market prices. But one aspect that's often ignored is the cost of health care. A University of Vermont researcher found that nationally, most farmers cited health care costs as a top concern. Shoshanah Inwood is a rural sociologist at UVM. She has been studying the aging and shrinking farm population, and what components are needed to build a prosperous farm economy. [node:read-more:link]
Farmland values continued to wane in the fourth quarter, according to the Tenth District Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions. On average, nonirrigated and irrigated farmland values dropped 6 percent, and ranchland values fell 7 percent from the same period last year (Chart 1). These downgrades were the largest since the Great Recession of 2007-09 but were relatively small compared to declines in the 1980s. The largest changes in District states occurred in Kansas and Nebraska (Table 1). [node:read-more:link]
Mr. Adee (pronounced Ay-Dee) is America’s largest beekeeper, and this is his busy season. Some 92,000 hives had to be deployed before those buds burst into blossom so that his bees could get to the crucial work of pollination. But it is notable that he has a business at all. For the last decade, a mysterious plague has killed billions of bees every year. Pollination services, as the bees’ work is known in the industry, has risen this year to between $180 to $200 a hive from an average of $154 a hive in 2006, Mr. Curtis said. [node:read-more:link]
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Animal Agriculture Alliance (Alliance) aren’t often on the same side of the paddock. (Shocking, right?) So I was especially struck while reading the Alliance’s list of its top five ways to fight back against animal rights activists. [node:read-more:link]
Delivering needed assistance to Minnesota’s 74,000 farmers, Governor Mark Dayton signed the bipartisan $35 million Rural Finance Authority legislation (H.F. 14) into law. The new funding will allow the Authority to continue offering eligible Minnesota farmers affordable financing and terms and conditions not offered by other traditional lenders. Without the investment, many Minnesota farmers would face a credit crunch caused by several years of low commodity prices and rising expenses. [node:read-more:link]
