Since over half of Pennsylvania lies within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, farmers and forest landowners play a major role in helping to clean up the Bay by installing water quality conservation practices that assist the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania meet its Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) goals in the watershed. [node:read-more:link]
Indiana could be headed for another drought this summer, according to the Indiana State Climate Office. Some northern Indiana counties already are abnormally dry. It depends on the strength of a developing La Niña weather pattern. Stronger La Niña conditions in summer typically result in hotter and/or drier Midwest summers, such as what happened during the historic drought in the summer of 2012. [node:read-more:link]
Nitrogen fertilizer is a major input in corn production and anhydrous ammonia is a widely used nitrogen fertilizer. In recent years, questions exist whether ammonia prices have decreased enough to reflect the decreases in corn and natural gas prices. Over time, anhydrous ammonia prices and corn prices are positively correlated. A major input in ammonia production is natural gas. As a result, natural gas prices also are positively correlated with anhydrous ammonia prices. [node:read-more:link]
Monsanto, the patented seed and pesticide agriculture behemoth, was under scrutiny due to their failed offer to buy Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural chemicals and seed company. Now Monsanto itself is the target of a buyout. German drug corporation Bayer has offered Monsanto stock holders a $122 per share. Big business history reads a little like the spiritual hymn “Them Dry Bones.” From the toe bone all the way up to the head bone, everything is connected. Take Monsanto for instance. [node:read-more:link]
Highest concentrations found in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois. Drought periods followed by rainfall caused nitrate levels to increase to the highest ever measured in some Midwest streams during a 2013 study. The USGS and the Environmental Protection Agency collaborated in 2013 to sample 100 small streams across parts of 11 states in the Midwest. Scientists tested for a broad range of water-quality and habitat characteristics and assessed organisms living in the stream, including algae, invertebrates and fish. The study did not look at treated drinking water. [node:read-more:link]
American farmers who expanded production using rented land during the commodity boom a few years ago are now struggling to repay loans. A crop glut has eroded prices and sent profit to a 14-year low, but rents have barely budged and debt levels are the highest in more than three decades, government data show. Bankers are cutting back on loans that aren’t secured by land, so more farmers are tapping into a U.S. Department of Agriculture program designed to be the lender of last resort. [node:read-more:link]
Farmer advocacy groups have planned several meetings to help farmers with possible contracts to grow chickens for a plant proposed by Costco Wholesale in the Fremont area of eastern Nebraska. Opponents of the plant say chicken producers in the nation's Southeast have been getting bad deals from poultry processors there. A representative of the Costco project told the World-Herald in May the Nebraska contracts would be different.
The U.S. meat and poultry industry accounts for $1.02 trillion in total economic output or 5.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according a new economic impact analysis conducted by John Dunham & Associates for the North American Meat Institute (NAMI). The meat and poultry industry is responsible for 5.4 million jobs and $257 billion in wages, the report found. An estimated 527,019 people have jobs in production and packing, importing operations, sales, packaging and direct distribution of meat and poultry products. [node:read-more:link]
A state agency has a different view of Wheatfield’s ban on biosolids than a court does. Supervisor Robert B. Cliffe on Tuesday released a letter from Thursday by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, declaring that the law unreasonably restricts farmers in using legal fertilizer. The letter ordered the town to confirm within 30 days that it will not enforce its law against Milleville Brothers Farms, a large farming operation that owns land in Wheatfield and several other Niagara County towns. [node:read-more:link]
Solitary mason bees specializing on sunflower pollen were not attacked by a common brood-parasitic wasp, which lays eggs in the nests, where its larvae kill bee eggs and eat their pollen provisions. [node:read-more:link]
