farmers

Many farmers in California’s Central Valley, where 70 percent of the farmworkers are in the U.S. without documentation, voted for Donald Trump. But as Trump takes a hard line on immigration in his first few weeks in office, some farm owners are worried he won’t make any exemptions for agriculture, says the New York Times.

A post-election surge in producer optimism pushed the Ag Economy Barometer to a record high for the second consecutive month, says Purdue University, which conducts a survey of farmers and produces the monthly report.

The Agriculture Department faces a vexing problem: Its crop reports can move markets but fewer and fewer farmers are taking part in the surveys that assure the USDA estimates are accurate. "From response rates of 80-85 percent in the early 1990s, rates have fallen below 60 percent in some cases," write USDA chief economist Robert Johansson and Mississippi State University economist Keith Coble.

In California, federal fisheries regulators are mulling two new plans to save the state’s endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and Delta smelt—plans that could mean serious water shortages for farmers. While this year saw ample rain and snowfall in the northern half of the state, regulators warn that the precipitation wasn’t enough to make up for several years of historic drought.

Traditional studies may be underestimating the impact of climate change on agriculture, because they don’t take into account “farmers’ reactions to climate shocks,” says a new study in Nature Climate Change.

Legislators in New York state are hopeful of victory in the near term to require farmers to pay overtime wages to agricultural laborers, said the New York Times.

That's the headline on a feature story about prize-winning Modern Farmer, the "rurban" digital magazine, in Capital New York.

Farm groups, seed companies and equipment manufacturers met in Kansas City to discuss common rules for gathering, use and ownership of Big Data without reaching a conclusion, says Reuters.

"For decades, farmers across the country have been dying by suicide at higher rates than the general population" -- nearly double the U.S. average, says Newsweek.

Last week, the Ag Insider reported AgSec Vilsack's comments on working with a nonprofit group on a potential mentoring project for beginning farmers.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service says it "will provide close to $3 million in technical and financial assistance for interested farmers and ranchers to help improve the health of bees, which play an...

The Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State Univ releases a report on crop insurance selection by growers.

1. Environmental Working Group produces a GMO-free food guide. In a nutshell, it says, buy organic or verified GMO-free foods and steer away from food made with corn, soybeans, sugar and vegetable oils because most of the US supply comes from biotech crops.