Peterson challenges USDA on land stewardship offers
Almost as soon as the USDA offered to admit land in need of high-priority stewardship practices into the long-term Conservation Reserve Program, the House Agriculture chairman threatened on Thursday to void the offer. “I am going to stop it somehow or other,” chairman Collin Peterson told two USDA officials.
U.S. vote on the new NAFTA could slip to late 2020, says Grassley
Sec. Perdue is open to carbon markets for farmers, Pingree says
Three USDA nominations advance to Senate floor
In Farm Belt, objections mount to ‘endless tariff war’
An uneven record of tracking pesticide exposure in Midwest
Around 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied to U.S. crops annually, said Harvest Public Media on Monday, in an investigation that found uneven tracking in the Midwest of incidents when farmworkers are exposed to the crop chemicals.
Cleaning up a toxic legacy in Vietnam
Fifty years after the war in Vietnam ended, the nation is still dealing with the toxic legacy of Agent Orange, one of the herbicides sprayed throughout the countryside that directly exposed generations of Vietnamese to dioxin, "the most toxic substance ever created by humans," writes George Black in FERN's latest story, produced in collaboration with Yale Environment 360. <strong> No paywall </strong>
As trade war lengthens, Trump orders another bailout for farmers
For the second time in 14 months, President Trump announced a multibillion-dollar government intervention to prop up the farm sector, a prominent casualty of the Sino-U.S. trade war. The first bailout, announced in April 2018, has sent around $8.3 billion in cash to growers so far; the new rescue will buy "agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance," the president said on social media.
Sharply lower farm-gate prices forecast for U.S. crops
Farmers growing the three major U.S. crops — corn, soybeans and wheat — can expect a sizable decline in the average sales price for this year's harvest instead of the mild upturn that was forecast in late February, said the USDA. In its first projection of the fall harvest, the USDA said season-average prices for the three crops would be 8 to 10 percent lower than anticipated at its Outlook Forum.
Relocation at hand, USDA research agency staff votes to unionize
Employees of the Economic Research Service voted in a landslide to unionize on Thursday in balloting that was an unofficial referendum on Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s plan to move the agency out of Washington in the coming months. A vote on unionization is set for June at the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, also slated for relocation.
Don’t look for farm bailout by Congress, warns Peterson
On Thursday, hours before the second-largest U.S. farm group said producers “are in desperate need of a lifeboat to keep them afloat,” the House Agriculture chairman said that fiscal constraints would preclude Congress from a multibillion-dollar bailout for farmers.
The greatest ag risk, say some bankers, is an adverse trade outcome
Farm income weakened in much of the Midwest and Plains during the opening months of this year, said reports from regional Federal Reserve banks on Thursday, with ag bankers telling the St. Louis Fed that an adverse trade outcome is clearly the most significant threat to agriculture in 2019. On Friday, the Trump administration increased the tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
China warns of ‘countermeasures’ if U.S. tariffs rise
On Wednesday, the Trump administration turned a weekend threat into a promise of sharply higher tariffs on Chinese products and Beijing declared it would take the “necessary countermeasures” — all on the day before ministerial-level talks to resolve the Sino-U.S. trade war were set to resume.
While EPA ponders, California will ban insecticide chlorpyrifos
California environmental regulators announced on Wednesday that the state will prohibit use of the insecticide chlorpyrifos, a process that could take two years to complete. Even as California acted, the U.S. EPA was facing a court-imposed deadline of mid-July to decide on a federal ban of the pesticide.
Think tank proposes ‘farmer protection bureau’ to battle ag consolidation
In Missouri, lawmakers are poised to eliminate local regulation of CAFOs
Communities in Missouri have been fighting the expansion of large-scale livestock operations in the state for years. But a controversial pair of bills moving through the state legislature would make community oversight of those farms even harder. The bills would eliminate local ordinances that regulate industrial animal farms in the state, or make it impossible to enforce those ordinances. The bills mirror trends in other states where legislators have moved to undermine local control of large-scale livestock farms.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
As the oceans warm, the seafood we eat will have to change
Americans eat only a small number of sea creatures of seafood—namely salmon, shrimp and tilapia. But the world’s warming oceans are shifting undersea ecosystems in a way that will force us to expand our minds and palates, reports Ben Goldfarb in FERN's latest story, published with EatingWell.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Farmer sentiment darkens as China hopes fade
Anti-hunger group suggests ways to reverse a plunge in WIC enrollment
Participation in the Women Infants and Children program has plummeted by 25 percent this decade, reaching the point that only 3 of every 5 eligible people apply for the supplemental food and health care referrals offered to low-income pregnant women, new mothers and their offspring up to age 5. In a report issued today, the anti-hunger Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) spelled out dozens of ways for government agencies, grocers, schools and nutrition activists could remove barriers and maximize enrollment.
Corn and soybean planting is half of normal due to wet spring
Wet weather is holding corn and soybean planting far behind usual rates for the first week in May, the USDA said Monday. Economist Scott Irwin of the University of Illinois said on social media that half of the corn crop must be planted in the next two weeks to avoid the large yield losses that accompany later-than-optimal seeding.