Agriculture

Susan Sosnowski is a state senator, but she is also a farmer who grows vegetables and raises sheep and turkeys on 60 acres in West Kingston. So she understands the need for farmers to get legal advice on everything from contracts to licensing to estate planning, and she also understands how hard it can be for them to cover that expense.  “We often run on such thin financial margins that there isn’t extra funding to pay for attorneys,” said Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, New Shoreham, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture. [node:read-more:link]

Midwestern American agricultural practices will be showcased in China at an Iowa demonstration farm set to be built starting next year.  The farm in Hebei Province will be modeled after one operated by Rick and Martha Kimberley, who live near Maxwell, about 25 miles northeast of Des Moines. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Kimberley farmstead in 2012. Then China's vice president, he met with friends he made in Iowa in 1985 while he was a Hebei Province party official and director of the Feed Association of Shijiazhuang Prefecture. [node:read-more:link]

A team of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their collaborators have established a strong link between honey bee health and the effects of diet on bacteria that live in the guts of these important insect pollinators. In a study published in the November issue of Molecular Ecology, the team fed caged honey bees one of four diets: fresh pollen, aged pollen, fresh supplements, and aged supplements. [node:read-more:link]

A woman who illegally helped immigrants work at dairy farms in Michigan's Thumb region was sentenced Wednesday to two years and three months in federal prison. In her plea deal, Yolanda Stewart admitted that she conspired with farms for years. She said she enabled at least 10 farms, especially in Huron and Tuscola counties, to benefit from the labor of more than 100 people who were in the U.S. illegally. Defense attorney Paul Beggs said the 60-year-old Marlette woman regrets her actions. But he called it a stiff sentence for "something so many people do." "She's Hispanic. She's a U.S. [node:read-more:link]

The new report of fumonisin in corn came from Nebraska.  Previously confirmed reports of fumonisin in corn have come from: Missouri, Texas,Illinois, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Kansas [node:read-more:link]

A newly approved herbicide will allow farmers to open a new front in their war against weeds next year, but some fear fallout for their own crops from illegal spraying of related chemicals. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday approved MonsantoCo.’s XtendiMax, a powerful new formulation of the powerful weed killer known as dicamba. Farmers and the company have said the new version is needed to combat pest plants that can choke out soybean and cotton plants, and which can’t be killed by other sprays. [node:read-more:link]

In Massachusetts, the measure (inaccurately) titled “An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Farm Animals” which defined how pigs, veal calves and laying hens could be housed passed by a large margin. [node:read-more:link]

Veteran House Agriculture Committee staffer Anne Simmons has been named to serve as the panel's Democratic staff director.  Simmons currently serves as the committee's senior policy advisor. She has been on the panel's staff since 1993. Before that, she was on the staff of then-Congressman Tim Johnson of South Dakota. Simmons was raised on a corn, soybean and livestock farm near Spencer, Iowa, and graduated from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. [node:read-more:link]

Harvest 2016 isn't officially over, but already predictions of a fourth and fifth consecutive year of grim commodity prices in 2017 and 2018 are putting a damper on agricultural lenders' attitudes. Those attending the American Banker Association conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, this week described attitudes anywhere from relative calm in parts of the Corn Belt to severe distress in cotton and cattle country. [node:read-more:link]

Betting the farm on record crop, livestock and dairy prices has turned into a losing investment for an expanding share of America’s agricultural heartland. The level of debt to income is the highest in three decades, and growers are increasingly unable to make loan payments.  Four years after record U.S. crop and farmland values boosted purchases of land and equipment, a global surplus has sent prices tumbling and farm income into the longest slump since 1977. [node:read-more:link]