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. The research team was able to identify and functionally characterize C2c2, an RNA-guided enzyme capable of targeting and degrading RNA. Their findings revealed that C2c2—the first naturally occurring CRISPR system that targets only RNA to have been identified and initially discovered by this collaborative group in October 2015—helps protect bacteria against viral infection. The scientists were able to demonstrate that C2c2 can be programmed to cleave particular RNA sequences in bacterial cells, making it a valuable addition to the molecular biology toolbox.
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.
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. If states move forward with their own labeling laws using varying standards and definitions, this legal patchwork will force farmers to implement costly new procedures and equipment. Retailers will have to alter ingredients and distribution chains or face financial penalties.
These costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers, with the biggest burdens falling to those who can afford them least. As our global population grows, we should be celebrating producers’ ability to make safe, affordable foods available to more people while preserving our finite resources. Laws such as Vermont’s seek to vilify the very technology making these advancements possible.
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. Warmer weather will usher in more insect and fungi infestations, which, in turn, will result in increased use of pesticides and fungicides. And, as the representatives from European stakeholder agencies reported, climate change is likely to increase the prevalence of mycotoxins – affecting animal and human health, feed and food quality, and global trade.
Fair Oaks Farms demonstrates that American consumers can accept large-scale agriculture if they can see it for themselves.
Remember the happy cows in California advertisments with individual Holsteins on lush green hillsides? This imagery created an unreal expectation in the minds of consumers about how these animals were raised. What animal agriculture really needs to share with consumers are the real stories of how cows, pigs and poultry are raised on modern, large-scale farms. Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana has chosen to tackle the biosecurity and public relations challenges of welcoming a half-million visitors each year to tour its 37,000-cow dairy, 3,000-sow farrow-to-wean farm and, coming in 2017, half-million cage-free laying hen farm.
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.
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. He said he’d like to see fixes to an immigration system that causes his crops to rot unharvested. But he has little hope that will happen in this political climate.
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. Since the revision of the seventh edition in 2000, the industry has undergone tremendous change, initiating the need for an eighth edition.
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. He and his team had worked years on the software, so getting constructive feedback before launching was helpful, he said. "It's like building QuickBooks from scratch," Cook said. "You're not going to do it overnight." Sitting at his kitchen table, Cook pulled up the BoviSync site on a Microsoft tablet. Through an array of graphs, he can see how much milk each cow produces over an extended period. The software allows nearby dairy farms to share their statistics (neighbor farms are rarely in direct competition) to compare if a production drop is isolated or a seasonal trend.
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.
In the end, the court ruled U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service had improperly denied him benefits for converting a wetland. Judge Ralph Erickson, in Fargo said there was "insufficient evidence from which a fact-finder could conclude" that Peterson's scraping of field drains led to an increase in production of crops or "had the effect of making the production of an agricultural commodity possible."