Agriculture News
Pet food data: US spending up, pet owners turn to vets
Pet Food Industry | Posted on December 20, 2018U.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.
Stand firm against activist demands
Meating Place (free registration required) | Posted on December 20, 2018In 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. They brought a blanket and a bottle and shared their intention to get the farm to give them a calf.All of these incidents have a few things in common – the involvement of activist group Direct Action Everywhere and the call for animals to be released. DXE has started consistently demanding for animals to be released to them from farms, emboldened by an officer who let them take one chicken in an October protest and a farm who gave 100 animals to the group in November.While it may be tempting to try to get the group to leave by allowing them to take an animal, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that we do not give in to their demands. Giving this group an animal significantly weakens our attempts to convey why their actions are unacceptable. DXE members have appeared on camera saying “how can they press charges against us for taking animals when they gave us one?” Allowing them to take animals gives the impression that what they are doing is justified – at least in their eyes.
Wisconsin farmer shares story of starting their dairy
Edairy News | Posted on December 20, 2018“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. While working on an area farm, the couple began building up their own herd, making an agreement with the farmer that allowed them to keep the cows on his farm.“We signed an agreement with the farmer we were working with where we paid for the cows, the semen and any embryo transfer work we were doing,” Edelburg said. “We were able to get the bull calves and the heifer calves, selling the bull calves as wet calves and raising the heifers. The farmer paid for the feed and got the milk. It was an excellent way for them to get extra cows and extra milk and we were able to start gaining equity and cows.They bought their farm, Front Page Holsteins, in the spring of 2008, which included a 120-stall free-stall barn, 38 acres and a small parlor they are still using today. They also bought out the farm’s registered Holsteins and used a land contract to allow them to secure land for feed. Today they have about 122 cows, 160 heifers and youngstock and run about 400 acres of corn and alfalfa, 320 of which are rented.Edelburg said one of the biggest challenges they faced getting started was financing. At the time they bought the farm, their equity was about 7 percent. She said most commercial lenders wouldn’t look at providing a loan for equity less than 40 percent, although she said it varies depending on the institution. They turned to the Farm Service Agency.
Kansas farmers are running out of water.
The New Food Economy | Posted on December 20, 2018When 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. Kansas’s most important natural resource is running dry, imperiling the state’s economy and the approach to farming that helps drive it.A 2013 study published by The National Academy of Sciences found that the Ogallala has already been drained of 30 percent of its water. Citing that study, among others, the nonprofit Kansas Leadership Center issued a report: “Running out of water. Running out of time.” It described an “irreversible depletion” of the Ogallala’s reserves. While the report’s list of the 150 largest users of Ogallala water users includes some municipalities, it is dominated by agricultural and food processing users, which means that, while western Kansas farmers are largely to blame for the Ogallala’s decline, they also are the most at risk from its demise.Kansas agriculture, then, faces an existential choice: It can cut back water use voluntarily now and face a decline in farm productivity, or it can continue to ignore the problem and face far more dire consequences as the water runs out. Water is a state issue, so all he can do is suggest conservation options. Nebraska, for instance, has instituted maximum water withdrawals for its farmers. Colorado is offering to buy back water rights, a way to pay farmers to dry farm. But Kansas hasn’t tried anything as sweeping, or as binding. “
Iowa will pay steep price if Trump continues to disregard climate change
Des Moines Register | Posted on December 20, 2018A 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. It concludes that without major change, the effects of global warming, including extreme heat and heavy downpours, will pose increasing challenges to “the quality and quantity of U.S. crop yields, livestock health, price stability and rural livelihoods.” Corn and soybeans may not pollinate. The planting season could get even shorter. Soil erosion will be exacerbated. Nutrient runoff and algal blooms will further contaminate Iowa’s waterways. New diseases could be spread by insects and pests. The availability of food and water could be compromised. The grim forecast is part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a study mandated by Congress and completed every four years.
Meat's expanding its horizons, giving the livestock industry pause
Harvest Public Media | Posted on December 20, 2018The 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. The meat industry is focused on shaping the regulatory environment for its new plant-based and lab-grown competitors, taking into account lessons learned from the rise of plant-based milks.After more than a decade of fast growth, plant-based milks have now captured about 13 percent of the liquid milk market, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to animal protein.But the plant-based milk success story is a cautionary tale for the meat industry.
Farmers know climate change is real.
Civil Eats | Posted on December 19, 2018Craig 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. Corn and hay fields were wiped out; cattle were killed. “Farmers around here are generally of Scandinavian descent,” he says. “We don’t ask for help, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”Two decades ago, Dunnum, like many farmers, scoffed at global warming. “I didn’t take [climate change] seriously,” he recalls. Now, he says “Everybody buys into the fact that things have changed, we’re just not sure what we can do about it.”
Coalition sets new standards for antibiotic stewardship for animals
Meating Place (free registration required) | Posted on December 18, 2018A 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. The new framework defines effective stewardship, outlines its core components and describes the essential characteristics of effective stewardship programs, including specific performance measures, the group said in a news release.
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency enacts Chronic Wasting Disease plan
Clarksville On-Line | Posted on December 18, 2018The 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. “Besides submitting deer from the to-be-defined CWD Zone, the most important thing everyone needs to do is follow the regulations for moving harvested deer.Currently, 25 states and three Canadian provinces have documented CWD. Last week, Mississippi announced a preliminary CWD positive hunter-harvested deer in Marshall County which became the closest to Tennessee and the fourth overall this year in Mississippi. Other confirmed cases have previously been made in the border states of Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia.
America Can’t Move Its Cheese
The Wall Street Journal | Posted on December 18, 2018America’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. Many are paying to store their excess cheese in hopes demand and prices will improve.“There’s a whole ton of aged product laying around,” said Nate Donnay, director of Dairy Market Insight.Cheese, which has a limited shelf-life, is less valuable once it spends weeks in cold-storage, and producers are concerned that the glut and price drop that has come with it could eat into profits. Spot market prices for 40-pound blocks of cheddar fell around 25% this year from 2014 prices, while 500-pound barrels typically used for processed cheese declined 28%.Cheese exports have suffered since Mexico and China, major dairy buyers, instituted retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese and whey. Cheese shipments to Mexico in September were down more than 10% annually, according to the U.S. Dairy Export Council trade group, and shipments to China were down 63% annually.That leaves U.S. dairy producers relying more on a domestic market where tastes are changing.