Agriculture News
OSU receives record-breaking $50 million commitment
Veterinary Practice News | Posted on January 30, 2018Oregon State University (OSU) has received what it calls a “transformative” donation that will change its college of veterinary medicine’s ability to provide life-saving care, education for future veterinarians, and critical animal and human health research. The record $50 million gift is a record-breaker for OSU, and the university will name its college of veterinary medicine in recognition of the donor: Gary Carlson, MD, a 1974 alumnus who is a partner at Dermatology Associates of Westlake Village, Calif.
Farmers 'sent death threats by vegan activists'
BBC | Posted on January 30, 2018Farmers are receiving death threats from "militant" animal welfare activists, the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme has been told. Reporter Amber Haque has spent time with farmers and vegan group The Save Movement, which says it has a non-violent approach to campaigning.
Science Over Fiction: GMOs for Public Good
Devex | Posted on January 30, 2018Today, as technology is becoming more accessible and less expensive, smaller labs and researchers are able to produce GMOs at a reduced costs — with the seed produced available for public good, not profit. And this allows them to respond to small, localized food production issues such as bananas in Uganda and papaya in Hawaii. For the development sector — where the impact of lost local crops can mean loss of income, increased poverty and loss of culture — does “public good” GMO change the debate?
Australia set to reform how it regulates genetic engineering
ABC News | Posted on January 30, 2018The changes will enable agricultural scientists to breed higher yielding crops faster and cheaper, or ones resistant to drought and disease. Australia's gene technology regulator Raj Bhula has proposed reducing regulations around gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, following a 12 month technical review into the current regulations.The most radical change put forward by the regulator is that some of the more efficient and newer genetic technologies, known as gene editing, would not be considered "genetic modification"."With gene editing you don't always have to use genetic material from another organism, it is just editing the [existing] material within the organism," Dr Bhula said."All of our regulatory frameworks and laws have been established based on people putting unrelated genetic material into another organism."Whereas this process is just manipulation within the organism and not introducing anything foreign."
Canada’s dairy farmers say they’ve had enough and won’t give up any more ground in NAFTA renegotiations
edairynews | Posted on January 30, 2018Canada’s dairy industry says it shouldn’t bear any additional hardship in NAFTA talks after having been forced to give up so much in past trade deals. If the United States wants increased access to Canada, it should rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership that granted a 3.25 per cent quota that was expected to be filled mainly by the U.S., said Dairy Farmers of Ontario CEO Graham Lloyd.“The TPP is the vehicle that they should be going to,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “They shouldn’t be looking for NAFTA to gain access to the dairy market.”Lloyd said giving the Americans any more access to Canada won’t make a dent in the massive daily overproduction in three large milk producing states, but would cause serious harm to the Canadian dairy farmer.
Brazil share of China soy import market hits 53% in 2017
AgriCensus | Posted on January 30, 2018Brazil’s share of the lucrative and expanding soybean market in China grew to above 53% in 2017, as better quality beans and a huge Brazilian crop sent buyers away from the US. According to Chinese customs data, Brazil's exports to China rose 33% on the year to almost 51 million mt.That is out of a total of 95.5 million mt and compares with US exports of 32.8 million mt, down 3.8%, and Argentinian exports of 6.5 million mt.
Poultry plants have jobs to fill, but workers are scarce
Gainesville Times | Posted on January 29, 2018On the floors of a poultry processing plant in Murrayville, workers speak 13 different languages. Fieldale Farms President Tom Hensley said he estimates about 50 or so refugees and other immigrants come to Murrayville from the metro Atlanta area daily to work in the plant.“They come up in 15-passenger vans full, so there’d be five or six vans every day coming from Clarkston up to Murrayville and going back from Murrayville to Clarkston every day,” he said. But Hensley could use 200 more people right away at the company’s locations in Gainesville, Murrayville and Cornelia. It’s a tough job market statewide for poultry employers trying to find workers, Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles said.
NY Farm Bureau declares victory in farmworker lawsuit
Messenger Post Media | Posted on January 29, 2018A judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought collective bargaining rights for farmworkers, satisfying a request from New York Farm Bureau. The lawsuit challenged a more than century-old law that exempts farm workers from the right to organize. Filed in May by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), a not-for-profit focused on defending civil liberties and civil rights, the lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to declare the exclusion unconstitutional.“The Court’s decision is a major victory for New York’s family farms,” Farm Bureau stated in a release announcing the Jan. 3 decision by state Supreme Court Justice Richard McNally Jr.NY Farm Bureau argued in state Supreme Court in Albany last July “that our system of government requires that the legislature change state law, not the courts,” stated Farm Bureau. “The Court agreed.” In his decision, McNally wrote, ”...the plaintiffs and the State have not demonstrated that the Labor Law statues are racially discriminatory or that farm workers are a suspect class entitled to constitutional protections. Any changes to the SERA (State Employee Relations Act) should emanate with the New York State Legislature ...”
Does air coming from hog confinements contain manure?
Des Moines Register | Posted on January 29, 2018The air leaving Iowa hog confinements contains manure and should be illegal under state law, according to a petition filed with the state. Four northeast Iowa residents want the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to regulate the release of manure through the air in the same way it regulates the release of liquid manure. The state requires that manure be retained until it's applied as fertilizer to farm fields, the petition says. "We contend the 24/7/365 discharge through air vents or blowers contain excreta/waste/manure," according to the petition filed by Bob Watson and Dick Janson, both of Decorah, Larry Stone of Elkader, and Lew Klimesh of Waucoma. The petition argues that farmers are not containing all their manure in between fertilizer applications, said Dan Andersen, an Iowa State University agricultural and biosystems engineering assistant professor.
Canada's dairy farmers say they've given enough in past trade deals
CTV News | Posted on January 29, 2018Canada's dairy industry says it has given up enough in past trade deals and shouldn't bear any additional hardship in NAFTA renegotiations. The head of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario says the U.S. should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it wants increased access to Canada. Graham Lloyd says giving the Americans any more access to Canada won't solve massive overproduction but would cause serious harm to the Canadian dairy farmer. He says Canada should have recalibrated the amount of foreign access permitted under TPP when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the trade deal. The remaining 3.25 per cent quota means that dairy from Australia and New Zealand will displace American product.