Agriculture

While the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system has been “burning up the charts”, so to speak, with its extraordinary versatility and potential for treating a host of diseases, until now its editing capabilities have been limited to DNA. Whereas DNA editing makes permanent changes to the genome of a cell, a CRISPR-based RNA-targeting approach would allow investigators to make temporary changes that can be tuned up or down, and with greater specificity and functionality than existing methods for RNA interference. [node:read-more:link]

After Brazilian farmers watched a drought drop 2015/16 soybean yields, the second-corn harvest (safrinha) faces big yield losses due to adverse weather.  While it will turn to the U.S. for some corn imports, Brazil's end users will look to Argentina to fill in the major supply gaps, marketwatchers have recently said. [node:read-more:link]

Rejecting scientific advancements in agriculture may be in fashion, but this fad poses great dangers to the affordability and accessibility of food domestically and worldwide.  In three weeks, the second-smallest state by population is set to create chaos in the U.S. food supply chain. Vermont’s mandatory labeling law for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) takes effect on July 1, with Maine and Connecticut planning to follow suit. [node:read-more:link]

Lectures at the 2016 World Mycotoxin Forum (WMF) addressed aspects of the event’s theme, “Mycotoxins in a changing world”; however, the consensus among many speakers touched on the undeniable impact climate change has had – and will increasingly have – on mycotoxin contamination in the global food and feed supply.  In coming years, agriculture will need to deal with a varied group of issues related to climate change and its residual effects: Grain producers may need to adjust how they plant, what they plant and when. [node:read-more:link]

Fair Oaks Farms demonstrates that American consumers can accept large-scale agriculture if they can see it for themselves. [node:read-more:link]

Seven outbreaks of salmonella linked to backyard poultry flocks have caused 324 cases of illnesses in 35 states since January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One death has been reported, and 66 people have been hospitalized. Results from investigations with local health, veterinary and agriculture officials, as well as USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, found the culprit to be human contact with live poultry such as chicks and ducklings from multiple hatcheries. [node:read-more:link]

The death of meaningful U.S. immigration reform, done in by Washington partisanship and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s incendiary comments on foreigners, is leaving crops withering in the field and the farm lobby with nowhere to turn as a labor shortage intensifies. Carlos Castaneda watched one-quarter of his Napa cabbages rot in three of his California fields this spring as 37 immigrant laborers scheduled to arrive March 13 under a farmworker visa program were delayed by bureaucratic paperwork. [node:read-more:link]

The Institute for Feed Education & Research is pleased to announce its support of the recently released Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle: Eighth Revised Edition (Beef NRC) publication. IFEEDER largely funded the revision, donating $75,000 to the National Academies of Sciences.  The Beef NRC, originally published in 1944, serves as a reference to animal nutritionists, professors, and the cattle and feed industries in the development and implementation of nutritional and feeding programs for beef cattle. [node:read-more:link]

Cook learned skills for his startup from an entrepreneur development course at Fond du Lac's Emergent Technology Center. The 12-week session aims to help people bring their business ideas to fruition. Wisconsin often tracks near or at the bottom of state-by-state start-up rankings, but the center is working to change that.  Cook learned to develop back-end business planning steps to launch BoviSync. The software was largely completed when he enrolled in the course, but there are always more steps to starting a business than developing a good product, Cook said. [node:read-more:link]

Leonard Peterson wants farmers to know that if they're wrongly accused of a Swampbuster, a national law prohibiting farm program payments if farmers drain wetlands to plant crops, they might be able to win in court. Peterson was accused of violating the law in 2009, and after two unsuccessful national administrative appeals, he took the case to federal court. [node:read-more:link]