election 2016

Farmland values tend to fall when interest rates rise, but the rate increases since the Nov. 8 presidential election “are not large enough to suggest that decreases in farmland prices need to occur,” says economist Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois. “However, farmland prices could face downward …

They may be leftists or right-wing, but anti-establishment populists in Europe "share common ground in their core constituencies, rural voters," says the New York Times. "Just as Donald J. Trump rolled up a big rural vote in his unexpected presidential victory, Europe’s populists are rising by tapping into discontent in the countryside and exploiting rural resentments against urban residents viewed as elites."

If Donald Trump pushes ahead with his promises to dismantle President Obama’s climate-change policies, he’ll face tough fights from environmental groups. But Trump has a few tactics he can use to outmaneuver the opposition, reports The New York Times.

The presidential election was decided by a fraction of a percentage point, but most voters – slightly more than 60 percent – live in politically lopsided counties where President-elect Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the vote by at least 20 points, says the Daily Yonder. "Even bigger is the percentage of rural voters who lived in a landslide county," amounting to three out of every four.

California went to Clinton, but rural areas were split, says the Sacramento Bee, with many counties in the white, rural north going to Trump. “Trump beat Clinton in 25 California counties, mostly in the Central Valley and the mountains of Northern California, places that long have been bastions of conservatism,” says the Bee.

More than 300 companies, including Monsanto and Unilever, called on President-elect Donald Trump, President Obama and Congress to continue U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, reports NPR. The international treaty commits countries to lowering global climate emissions and keeping world temperature increases below two degrees beyond the pre-industrial standard.

The head of Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, Myron Ebell, is not only a climate-change skeptic. He also has a history of discouraging pesticide regulations, writes Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, pointing to Ebell's role as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

At climate talks in Marrakesh, Morocco, leaders from France and the United Nations urged President-elect Donald Trump to rethink his promise to back out of the Paris Agreement, reports Reuters. Trump has said he wants to cancel the U.S. commitment to the treaty, which aims to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Eater, a major food-news outlet, says it won’t publish lists of immigrant-owned food establishments because it fears that any such lists could fall into the wrong hands. According to a statement on the outlet's website, Eater readers have written in asking for recommendations of immigrant-owned food businesses because they want to show their support in light of the threat of deportations under the Trump administration.

The split in Republican and Democratic support in U.S. cities versus rural America widened as Donald Trump won the presidency, says the Daily Yonder. Trump garnered 66 percent of the vote in rural counties, up by five points from fellow Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, while Democrat Hillary Clinton got a much smaller share of the rural vote, 29 percent, than President Obama's 38 percent in his 2012 re-election.

Under a Trump administration, China could become the world champion for climate change reform, says Reuters: “China worked closely with the administration of outgoing President Barack Obama to build momentum ahead of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The partnership of the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters helped get nearly 200 countries to support the pact at the historic meet in France's capital.”

News of Donald Trump’s election shocked the international climate-change proceedings taking place this week in Marrakech, Morocco. During his campaign, Trump vowed to revoke America’s participation in the Paris Agreement, a global plan to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial averages. More than 190 countries have signed the agreement, and many consider it a last hope for fighting climate change. Trump has also vowed to dismantle President Obama’s clean power plan.

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned as a supporter of corn ethanol and said he would protect farmers from over-regulation. His senior advisor, Sam Clovis, said the New York businessman does not support the idea, popular among conservative House Republicans, of splitting food stamps from the rest of the farm bill.

Rural Mexicans who rely on funds sent my their undocumented relatives in the U.S. are praying for Donald Trump to lose on Election Day, says Reuters. Trump has said he would deport illegal immigrants if he were president, cutting off a vital economic lifeline.

At least $93.4 million has been donated to candidates and political action committees in 2015 and 2016 by people, companies and groups in the agribusiness sector, says DTN in a perusal of campaign records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The most partisan members of the Republican and Democratic parties — the people who vote in primary elections — cluster in different parts of the country. Democrats live in cities and Republicans in rural areas, says the Daily Yonder.