Agriculture News
'They’re the lifeblood': O'Neill raid highlights importance of growing immigrant workforce to agriculture
Omaha World Herald | Posted on August 13, 2018The immigration enforcement action last week in this north-central Nebraska ranching community of 3,700 illuminated how important immigrant workers have become in Nebraska, particularly to the state’s largest industry, agriculture. More than 130 workers were snared in the operation, which was focused on a group that allegedly conspired to exploit, and profit from, the immigrant laborers.The raid left a shortage of workers at a local hydroponic tomato greenhouse, where 250,000 pounds of tomatoes are picked and packed each week, and at one of the state’s largest cattle feedlots, where reportedly 70,000 cattle a day are watered and fed.In rural Holt County, where the unemployment rate is 2.6 percent, the struggle to find people in a tight labor market to fill the often hard, dirty and low-paying jobs like feeding cattle or picking tomatoes has people turning to immigrants.“Labor is tough,” said rancher Kirk Shane, as he directed traffic at the Holt County Fair in Chambers. “I remember when we could hire kids for the summer. Now you can’t get them — they’re either too busy with sports or you can’t rely on them.”The “now hiring” signs outside of the O’Neill Ventures tomato greenhouse have been posted there for several weeks, and now they carry even more urgency after perhaps two-thirds of the company’s workforce was hauled away.
Bayer shares fall 10 percent after Monsanto's Roundup cancer trial
Reuters | Posted on August 13, 2018Bayer shares plunged more than 10 percent on Monday after a California jury ordered the German company’s newly acquired Monsanto subsidiary to pay $289 million for not warning of cancer risks posed by its main weed killer. The case against Monsanto, bought by Bayer this year for $63 billion, is the first of more than 5,000 similar lawsuits over the company’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, including its Roundup brand, across the United States.Monsanto said on Friday that it would appeal against the verdict which is the latest episode in a long-running debate over claims that exposure to Roundup can cause cancer.“The jury’s verdict is at odds with the weight of scientific evidence, decades of real world experience and the conclusions of regulators around the world that all confirm glyphosate is safe and does not cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Bayer said in a statement, referring to the plaintiff’s type of cancer.
Milking cows on an industrial scale arrives in western Minnesota, and some farmers shudder
Minnesota Star Tribune | Posted on August 13, 2018The milking carousel at the Louriston Dairy turns 22 hours a day and milks more cows in half an hour than most dairies do all day. Cows step onto the slow-moving merry-go-round in single file. A worker sprays disinfectant on each cow’s udder, another wipes the teats clean with a paper towel, and another secures suction cups onto the teats for milking during a seven-minute trip around the room. Gleaming silver tanks in the next room fill with flash-cooled milk as 106 cows are milked at once.The farm 18 miles west of Willmar is home to 9,500 cows, 40 times larger than the average U.S. dairy operation. It is part of a fast-growing network of giant farms built and run by Riverview LLP, a Morris, Minn.-based firm that is a game-changer for the Minnesota dairy industry. The company owns 92,000 milk cows — more than all the farmers in Illinois or Virginia — and 60,000 of them are in western Minnesota, where it has nine dairies and is building more.“We are really bullish on the dairy industry, especially in the Upper Midwest,” said Brad Fehr, one of the company’s founders.But farmers at smaller dairy operations are aghast. How, they ask, can a company build such huge operations when milk prices yield meager profits and many of their neighbors are leaving the business?
China says U.S. farmers may never regain market share lost in trade war
Politico | Posted on August 13, 2018China can easily find other countries to buy agricultural goods from instead of the U.S., its vice agriculture minister said, warning that American farmers could permanently lose their share of the Chinese market as a result of the trade war. “Many countries have the willingness and they totally have the capacity to take over the market share the U.S. is enjoying in China. If other countries become reliable suppliers for China, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to regain the market,” Han Jun told official Xinhua news agency in an interview. He also warned that American farmers could lose the position in the Chinese market they have spent several decades building up. Han said they may not be able to make up the losses brought by retaliatory tariffs, even with the White House’s planned $12 billion aid package for farmers caught in the dispute.He said Beijing had imposed duties on 90 percent of the agricultural goods the country imports from the United States since the trade war kicked off at the start of last month, with limited impact on China.China has been buying more soybeans from other countries and promoting alternatives to soybeans to feed livestock, as well as pushing farmers to plant more domestic crops. Before the trade war erupted, China was on track to import 300 million tons of soybeans from the United States this year.The country imported about $24.1 billion of agricultural products from the United States last year, accounting for 19 percent of its total farm imports worth some $125.86 billion, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Trump's trade aid plan could breach WTO farm subsidy limit
Politico | Posted on August 10, 2018President Donald Trump’s $12 billion plan to compensate farmers for financial losses stemming from his decision to impose tariffs on imports could push U.S. trade-distorting farm subsidies to their highest level since the late 1990s and potentially exceed WTO limits, former U.S. agriculture officials said.The highly controversial trade aid package creates a policy contradiction as the U.S. gears up for trade talks with the European Union. The administration is preparing to pay out additional subsidies to American agricultural producers at the same time it says it is embarking on talks with the EU to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and non-tariff barriers across the Atlantic, though the two sides disagree on whether agriculture will be part of those negotiations.And on a practical level, the Trump administration's aid plan could lead some farmers to get paid twice for losses, if they signed up for federal price support and insurance programs, the former officials said.“I think it's very, very likely that there will be some double-dipping on these losses,” said Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist.
Giant shipload of soya beans circles off China, victim of trade war with US
The Guardian | Posted on August 10, 2018A shipment of soya beans worth more than $20m (£15.5m) has been bobbing aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean for a month, a casualty of the escalating trade war between China and the US.Lingering uncertainty over the cargo’s fate offered a timely reminder of the fallout from a dispute that intensified on Wednesday, as the US president, Donald Trump, unveiled a second round of tariffs on $16bn of Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to respond in kind.China hits back against latest US tariffs; pound hit by Brexit worries – as it happened. The Peak Pegasus, a 229 metre bulk carrier weighing 43,000 tonnes, has become the reluctant symbol of the potential consequences of this tit-for-tat trade spat. The ship, owned by JP Morgan Asset Management, was scheduled to unload about 70,000 tonnes of American soya beans in the Chinese port of Dalian on 6 July, shortly after Trump imposed a first round of tariffs on $34bn-worth of goods.
2018 is shaping up to be the fourth-hottest year. Yet we're still not prepared for global warming.
The New York Times | Posted on August 10, 2018This summer of fire and swelter looks a lot like the future that scientists have been warning about in the era of climate change, and it’s revealing in real time how unprepared much of the world remains for life on a hotter planet. The disruptions to everyday life have been far-reaching and devastating. In California, firefighters are racing to control what has become the largest fire in state history. Harvests of staple grains like wheat and corn are expected to dip this year, in some cases sharply, in countries as different as Sweden and El Salvador. In Europe, nuclear power plants have had to shut down because the river water that cools the reactors was too warm. Heat waves on four continents have brought electricity grids crashing.And dozens of heat-related deaths in Japan this summer offered a foretaste of what researchers warn could be big increases in mortality from extreme heat. A study last month in the journal PLOS Medicine projected a fivefold rise for the United States by 2080. The outlook for less wealthy countries is worse; for the Philippines, researchers forecast 12 times more deaths.
Genetics technology could lead to more crops, fresher food
San Francisco Gate | Posted on August 9, 2018J.R. Simplot has acquired gene editing licensing rights that could one day be used to help farmers produce more crops and make grocery store offerings such as strawberries, potatoes and avocados stay fresher longer. Simplot Co. announced the agreement with DowDuPont and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, developers of the nascent gene editing technology. Simplot is the first agricultural company to receive such a license.
Minn. hog producer, other Midwest ag businesses targeted in sweeping ICE raid
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on August 9, 2018Minnesota’s Christensen Farms, one of the nation’s largest pork producers, was among the nearly dozen agriculture businesses to receive warrants Wednesday from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau on allegations that they are exploiting illegal immigrants. ICE issued search warrants for worksite violations at Christensen Farms hog production properties in Appleton, Minn.; Sleepy Eye, Minn.; and Atkinson, Neb. The bureau did the same at a number of other agricultural facilities including a cattle feedlot, a cattle ranch, tomato farms and potato farms — centering mostly in O’Neill, Neb. — and rounded up a total of 133 allegedly illegal workers in the process. The multi-state operation, meanwhile, issued criminal arrest warrants for 17 people on allegations of a conspiracy to “exploit illegal alien laborers for profit, fraud, wire fraud and money laundering in Nebraska and Minnesota,” ICE officials said.
Court orders ban on widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos
The Hill | Posted on August 9, 2018The Ninth Circuit decision orders the EPA to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations for chlorpyrifos within 60 days. A federal appeals court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which former Administrator Scott Pruitt refused to do last year.The decision is a major win for environmentalists and health advocates. The EPA’s own research, as recently as 2016, linked chlorpyrifos to developmental and neurological disorders, especially in children and infants.The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the federal law governing pesticides, requires the EPA to ban the allowance of a pesticide on food if it finds any harm from exposure to it.