Agriculture

In a sign that their patience is waning, soybean leaders called for talks, not tariffs, in the Sino-U.S. trade war. “With depressed prices and unsold stocks expected to double by the 2019 harvest, soybean farmers are not willing to be collateral damage in an endless tariff war,” said Davie Stephens, a Kentucky farmer and president of the American Soybean Association. The National Farmers Union, the second-largest U.S. farm group, also said that the financially beleaguered agricultural sector needs long-term economic solutions, rather than spur of the moment bailouts from the White House. [node:read-more:link]

What, after all, is Trumpism? In 2016 Trump pretended to be a different kind of Republican, but in practice almost all of his economic agenda has been G.O.P. standard: big tax cuts for corporations and the rich while hacking away at the social safety net. The one big break from orthodoxy has been his protectionism, his eagerness to start trade wars. And all of these policies disproportionately hurt farm country.The Trump tax cut largely passes farmers by, because they aren’t corporations and few of them are rich. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. farm incomes in the Midwest and Mid-Southern states declined yet again in the first quarter of 2019 amid ongoing strain from low commodity prices, trade uncertainty and severe weather, according to banker surveys released on Thursday by the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and Kansas City. [node:read-more:link]

Loss of biodiversity stems from human activity, report says.* Wide transformation of economic systems needed-report says. Study is the work of 145 expert authors from 50 countries. Report echoes conclusions of U.N. climate change panel. [node:read-more:link]

Economists in the Agriculture Department's research branch say the Trump administration is retaliating against them for publishing reports that shed negative light on White House policies, spurring an exodus that included six of them quitting the department on a single day in late April. [node:read-more:link]

USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced that dairy producers who had coverage under the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy), which provided payments to producers when the price of milk fell below the feed costs to produce it, are eligible to receive a repayment for part of the premiums paid into the program. [node:read-more:link]

America’s biggest milk maker is running out of options as milk consumption continues to decline in the U.S. Dean Foods Co.’s sinking sales also have been hurt by big customers such as Walmart Inc.opening their own dairy plants to help guarantee their own supply. The dairy company’s sales last year of $7.8 billion were down 38% from a decade ago.Shares in Dean Foods have lost around 60% of their value this year, and the Dallas-based company’s $141 million market value is about 5% of what it was worth a decade ago. [node:read-more:link]

 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s plan to relocate the Economic Research Service outside the Beltway has triggered a brain drain of veteran economists, amid staff complaints the administration is cracking down on research that doesn’t align with White House priorities. [node:read-more:link]

Someone had shot an undercover video on his dairy.  “I’ll always remember that day, Nov. 9, 2017,” Larson recalls. “We really didn’t have any warning. By the time she emailed it to me it was already online. Boy, it was rough. The initial reaction when I first saw it, I was just gut shot. I literally didn’t eat anything for 24 hours. I just wanted to throw up.”Larson’s phone was blowing up with calls, and he couldn’t keep track of them all. There were so many that he couldn’t even get a call in to his office. [node:read-more:link]

Dobson’s work drew the attention of Barrett a few years back. In 2015, she toured the farm for the first time and asked him for advice on how to incentivize climate change–thwarting farming practices. “It just seemed like a no brainer,” Barrett said. “New York can lead on this.” The resulting pilot project, included in this year’s state budget, will test out different methods of farming in a way that promotes soil health and fights global warming.It’s true that nothing quite compares to the natural ability of trees to soak up carbon dioxide. Reforesting parts of the U.S. [node:read-more:link]