Agriculture News
Dicamba Moves Beyond Bean Fields and Into the Public Eye
DTN | Posted on July 25, 2018Images of cupped soybean fields have come to symbolize the dicamba injury crisis underway in farm country in the U.S. But what happens when chemicals like dicamba move beyond the soybean fields of commercial farmers onto the property of rural homeowners, business owners and organic and specialty crop farmers? In South Dakota, a vegetable farm that was destroyed by dicamba in a matter of weeks last year was hit again this June by another cocktail of herbicides, including dicamba.An elderly Illinois homeowner has watched her carefully landscaped yard wither for two years in a row from dicamba injury.A resort owner in Tennessee is fighting to save his gardens, plants, trees and a nearby historic state park after the second consecutive year of dicamba damage.Over the course of two months, DTN conducted dozens of interviews on non-soybean dicamba injury and found that injured property owners like these face an uphill battle to justice. State departments of forestry, natural resources and agriculture pass responsibility for non-soybean dicamba injury back and forth between each other, like a hot potato. State regulators are struggling to keep up with the pace of complaints, leading to long delays and unresolved investigations. Even state investigations that find a pesticide applicator at fault can only fine the applicator -- not compensate the victim. Laboratories are still learning how to test for dicamba residue effectively, and at what levels. Unless an applicator was flagrantly off label, insurance companies maintain that they are not responsible when dicamba volatilizes and moves off-target. The companies who manufacture the new dicamba herbicides insist that volatility is rare and dicamba injury unusual.At the end of the day, most of the property owners interviewed face serious financial losses that they will never recover. Some wonder if they will ever be able to grow vegetables or trees in their patch of cou
What agriculture needs now is more labor
The Hill | Posted on July 25, 2018Those of us living and working in rural and small town America have a message for our city cousins. We need workers and we need them now. Whether we’re making maple syrup in Vermont, picking apples in Washington, harvesting grapes in California, milking cows in Wisconsin, processing peaches in Georgia, feeding pigs in Iowa, packing pickles in Michigan or trail-driving in Colorado, we need access to a dependable source of ag labor. We’ve become increasingly dependent over the years on migrant labor, legal and illegal, to help run our farms, ranches, processing plants and service industries. Therein lies agriculture’s labor woes. Sourcing legal migrant labor is getting harder and harder for America’s food producers. Why don’t we hire local workers from the community? We wish we could. Our neighbors don’t want to work under farm conditions for the prevailing pay scale. In fact, we are required to advertise and offer jobs to local residents before we can qualify to hire temporary migrant workers under the Labor Department’s H-2A program. Agriculture employers have not experienced much success hiring local labor for many years. Unfortunately, most domestic workers don’t show up for the job, or when they do, they tend quit within a few days. Jobs in agriculture are physically demanding, conducted in all seasons and are often transitory.
Testimony time extended for Minnesota ban on fall fertilizer rule
Park Rapids Enterprise | Posted on July 25, 2018A Minnesota administrative law judge extended the time the state will receive public comments on a controversial proposal to regulate fall use of some crop fertilizers. The rule was instituted by the Dayton administration, limiting the use of nitrogen fertilizer each fall in many parts of the state. Farmers, while saying they seldom use the fertilizer in the fall anyway, objected to the rule because they had little say in its original drafting.
Farm Bureau Response to Navarro’s ‘Rounding Error’ Statement
Farm Bureau | Posted on July 25, 2018The following statement may be attributed to American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall: “White House trade advisor Peter Navarro’s recent comments that the damage this trade war is doing to certain sectors of the U.S. economy, of which we all know includes agriculture, is little more than a ‘rounding error’ are out of touch with the pain our farmers and ranchers are experiencing. Making farmers and ranchers pawns in this chess game is extremely risky for our nation’s agriculture economy and food security.“Prices for all of our export-sensitive farm goods have tanked since May, when this tariff game started. Farm income was already off by half compared to four years ago, with debt levels rising—hardly a strong position for agriculture going into this trade war. This situation will only worsen as combines roll between now and the fall election season. The nation’s farmers and ranchers support the broader goal of strengthening our overall economy and trade balance, but not at the risk of long-term, irreparable harm to our ag exports and the jobs they create.
Canadian agriculture ministers briefed on trade-war contingency plan
CTV News | Posted on July 25, 2018Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay emphasized the importance of the provinces working together as an escalating trade war with the United States puts some farmers on edge. The minister said his provincial and territorial counterparts discussed trade negotiations and the contingency plan during their conference that wrapped up Friday in Vancouver.There's already a safety net in place through the $3-billion Canadian Agricultural Partnership launched earlier this year to help farmers manage risks and deal with problems, MacAulay said. MacAulay also announced a renewed $55-million AgriRisk Initiatives Program, which he said will help protect farmers against business risks they face.B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said she was satisfied with the federal plan and said the provinces are united in the context of the trade war.“We stand as one voice, as Canada, in a situation like this,” she said.
6 key takeaways from antimicrobial resistance survey
Watt Ag Net | Posted on July 25, 2018The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) surveyed WHO member states about how they are tackling antimicrobial resistance. Some key findings in the report:Only 64 countries report that they follow FAO-OIE-WHO recommendations to limit the use of critically important antimicrobials for growth promotion in animal production. Only 3 countries from WHO’s African Region and 7 countries from the WHO Region of the Americas have taken this important step to reduce the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.67 countries report at least having legislation in place to control all aspects of production, licensing and distribution of antimicrobials for use in animals. But 56 either said that they had no national policy or legislation regarding the quality, safety and efficacy of antimicrobial products used in animal and plant health, and their distribution, sale or use, or that they were unable to report whether they have these policies in place.Among the top 10 chicken-, pork- and cattle-producing countries that responded to the AMR survey, 9 out of 10 have at minimum developed a national action plan. Of those top 10, only China and the U.S. are in the highest tier (Level 5) of national action plan for all three species. Brazil is in Level 2 for all three species.78 countries have regulations in place to prevent environmental contamination generally, but only 10 of them report having comprehensive systems to ensure regulatory compliance for all waste management, including regulations that limit the discharge of antimicrobial residues into the environment. 100 countries now have national action plans for AMR in place and a further 51 countries have plans under development, but more needs to be done to ensure that they are implemented.53 countries report that they have a multisectoral working group that is fully functional, although a further 77 have established such a group.
Judge holds the line on paper trail in chicken price-fixing suit
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on July 25, 2018A federal judge on denied poultry buyers’ motion to make Tyson Foods, Koch Foods and Mountaire Farms fork over at least 21,000 email attachments in the discovery process of a lawsuit accusing the producers and others of colluding to fix prices.
2.5 billion pounds of meat piles up in U.S. as production grows, exports slow
Wall Street Journal | Posted on July 24, 2018Meat is piling up in U.S. cold-storage warehouses, fueled by a surge in supplies and trade disputes that are eroding demand. Federal data, coming as early as Monday, are expected to show a record level of beef, pork, poultry and turkey being stockpiled in U.S. facilities, rising above 2.5 billion pounds, agricultural analysts said. U.S. consumers’ appetite for meat is growing, but not fast enough to keep up with record production of hogs and chickens. That leaves the U.S. meat industry increasingly reliant on exports, but Mexico and China—among the largest foreign buyers of U.S. meat—have both set tariffs on U.S. pork products in response to U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and other goods. U.S. hams, chops and livers have become sharply more expensive in those markets, which is starting to slow sales, industry officials said. The combination of trade risk and expanding meat supplies could result in “one of the biggest corrections we’ve seen in the industry in several years,” said Christine McCracken, protein analyst at Rabobank, one of the world’s largest agricultural lenders.
Trump praises tariffs as 'the greatest' ahead of meeting with European Commission chief
Politico | Posted on July 24, 2018President Donald Trump defended his trade policy Tuesday morning, declaring that “tariffs are the greatest” because they allow him to fight back against nations that engage in trade practices unfair to the U.S. “Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs,” the president wrote on Twitter. “It’s as simple as that - and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the “piggy bank” that’s being robbed. All will be Great!” Trump has paid special attention to international trade in recent months as part of his effort to rebalance trade relationships around the globe with terms that are more favorable for the U.S. Controversially, much of Trump’s efforts thus far have focused on allies, with the president imposing or threatening to impose import taxes on longtime allies and partners, including Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the European Union. Tariff talk directed at allies has apparently strained Trump’s relationships with some world leaders, leading to tense international meetings this summer at the G-7 summit in Canada and the NATO summit in Brussels. Trump's tariffs have not been without downside for the U.S., with reciprocal tariffs already hurting the market for American agricultural goods and the threat of a full-on trade war looming. The president, seemingly eager to offer reassurances to his broad base of support within the agricultural community, has insisted that farmers will ultimately be better off as a result of his trade policies.
Ernst stikes back at Trump advisor comment that trade losses are "rounding error"
Ernst Senate Website | Posted on July 20, 2018Even as the Trump administration’s trade war with China starts to bite farm country, producers aren’t getting a lot of sympathy from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro, speaking from the White House lawn , said the trade losses due to China’s new tariffs amount to a “rounding error.” Some soybean growers already are expected to go out of business later this year due to the depressed prices that resulted from China’s 25 percent retaliatory tariff. Senator Ernst released the following statement, with regard to White House trade advisor Peter Navarro telling CNBC that theeconomic impact of a trade war is a mere “rounding error,” and that the administration is playing a broader “chess board”: “Mr. Navarro, America’s farmers are caught in the crosshairs of this game of ‘chess.’ Offhand comments like the ones that Mr. Navarro made in his interview with CNBC today disregard the people whose livelihoods depend on global trade. In Iowa alone, more than 456,000 jobs are supported by trade, and these new tariffs are threatening $977 million in state exports. That is no ‘rounding error.’ Those are real people – Iowans – who are waiting for terms to be negotiated, for new deals to be finalized. We need to lessen the pressure on these hard-working farmers, and let them sell their goods.