Agriculture

U.S. baby boomers increased their spending on pet food nearly 32 percent in 2017, after their spending fell the year before; and perhaps even more positive for the future of the pet food market, Generation X pet owners’ spending climbed 12.4 percent last year, and millennials’ rose 5.2 percent. In addition to these numbers, a disparate set of data on veterinarian-pet owner conversations about pet food and nutrition provide a snapshot of the market’s status and future heading into 2019. [node:read-more:link]

In mid-November, a protest was held outside of a hog farm in Utah as part of the Animal Liberation Western Convergence. Again, the group called for “just one pig” to be released to them. In rural Iowa last week, a car started following a truckload of pigs being moved from one farm to another. When the truck stopped, the car’s driver got out and began to beg for one of the pigs to be released to her. Over the weekend, a large group of protesters went to a dairy farm in California where they attempted to steal a calf earlier this year. [node:read-more:link]

“We knew what we wanted. We wanted to milk about 100 cows, we wanted to have registered Holsteins and we wanted to be able to run the business as a business, but run it by ourselves. We wanted to be big enough that we could have employees, that we could get involved in the things our kids are involved in, but manage it without employees,” she said. [node:read-more:link]

When I returned this fall to sit down with farmers, ranchers, dairymen and other rural Kansas leaders I asked what, if anything, is being done to stabilize the state. Rather than talk solutions, however, a different theme quickly emerged: In conversation after conversation, the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer was top of mind. [node:read-more:link]

A new federal report about climate change should be a wake-up call to Iowa, a state with an economy heavily dependent on agriculture. It should also be a wake-up call to the 90 percent of registered Republicans here who see truth-telling as an essential trait in an American president, according to a new Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.  There are truths revealed by science. This country needs a president who believes them.Which brings us to this report, compiled by 13 federal agencies. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. meat industry is gigantic, with roughly $200 billion a year in sales and growing. But the industry faces emerging threats on two fronts: plant-based meat substitutes and actual meat grown in labs. Plant-based meat substitutes are a lot more, well, meaty than they used to be. They sear on the grill and even "bleed." They look, taste and feel in the mouth a lot like meat. Of course, taking the animals out of the meat business is not good news for people who raise meat animals for a living. [node:read-more:link]

Craig Dunnum didn’t read the recently released National Climate Assessment which predicts the nation’s farm commodity contribution to the economy—$136.7 billion in 2016, already low due to falling prices—will be increasingly vulnerable to droughts, floods, pests, and disease. Instead, he lived it.The fourth-generation farmer in south-central Wisconsin has been through four 100-year floods in the past eight years. This year was the worst ever, with 20 inches of rain in 10 days. Two dams broke, flooding the small farming community nearby with eight feet of water. [node:read-more:link]

A group of food companies, livestock producers, trade associations and retailers has released what they call a comprehensive framework to strengthen oversight of the use of antibiotics in food animals. The goal is to more carefully manage the use of medically important antibiotics to slow down the emergence of resistant bacteria and maintain the effectiveness of the drugs. [node:read-more:link]

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) is enacting the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Response plan, following a preliminary positive detection of CWD in white-tailed deer in Hardeman County and Fayette County. The response plan involves a coordinated effort between TWRA, Tennessee Department of Agriculture, and other partners. “Hunters are our biggest ally in managing chronic wasting disease in Tennessee if it is confirmed here,” said Dr. Dan Grove, Wildlife Veterinarian, University of Tennessee Extension. [node:read-more:link]

America’s cheese hoard continues to balloon to unprecedented levels, as producers fear the mountain could grow further and put even more dairy farmers out of business. About 1.4 billion pounds of American, cheddar and other kinds of cheese is socked away at cold-storage warehouses across the country, the biggest stockpile since federal record-keeping began a century ago.Driving the glut are cheese makers who ramped up production before trade tensions abroad tamped down demand for many of their products. Shifting tastes at home have further changed the outlook for traditional cheese makers. [node:read-more:link]