Agriculture News
7th person charged in teen forced labor case at Ohio egg farm
Fox News | Posted on January 2, 2018A man accused of taking part in a scheme to smuggle teenagers into the U.S. and force them to work at an egg farm for little pay is in custody after being arrested at the Mexican border, federal prosecutors announced. The teens from Guatemala were kept as virtual slave laborers, forced to turn over most of their earnings, and had to live in run-down trailers with no heat and little food before they were rescued in 2014, investigators have said.Six others already have been convicted in the case, which prosecutors said involved luring the boys and young men with promises of enrolling them in school and finding them good jobs. The indictment said Trillium Farms paid about $6 million to Duran Ramirez and one other unnamed person.The charges against Duran Ramirez include forced labor, conspiracy and encouraging illegal entry. He is scheduled to appear in a federal court in McAllen, Texas, on Friday. An attorney for Duran Ramirez declined to comment on the case Thursday.
More schools participate in USDA Farm to School program
Meatingplace (free registration required) | Posted on January 2, 2018More schools districts – and therefore more schoolchildren – are learning about healthy eating habits, and more schools would like to be able to source meats locally, according to the latest USDA Farm to School Census. More than 5,200 school districts and 57,600 schools participated in the program in 2015, which tracks local sourcing of food fed to schoolchildren during the course of the day. The first such survey in 2013 found more than 4,300 school districts operating 40,300 schools participated in Farm to School, which was established under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, USDA said.
Opinion: Avoiding GMOs isn’t just anti-science. It’s immoral.
The Washington Post | Posted on December 28, 2017And yet a concerted, deep-pockets campaign, as relentless as it is baseless, has persuaded a high percentage of Americans and Europeans to avoid GMO products, and to pay premium prices for “non-GMO” or “organic” foods that may in some cases be less safe and less nutritious. Thank goodness the toothpaste makers of the past weren’t cowed so easily; the tubes would have said “No fluoride inside!” and we’d all have many more cavities. This is the kind of foolishness that rich societies can afford to indulge. But when they attempt to inflict their superstitions on the poor and hungry peoples of the planet, the cost shifts from affordable to dangerous and the debate from scientific to moral.
Tough times in the heartland as some farmers hit by losses weigh exiting the business
CNBC | Posted on December 28, 2017The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting that cash receipts for corn and soybean farmers will be down in 2017. Yet it's a different story for some livestock farmers, especially those who raise hogs. Also, cattle feedlots were under pressure but have recovered in the past year."If you look at the general economy and the ag economy, they generally kind of historically have run countercyclical to one another," said Curt Hudnutt, Rabobank's St. Louis-based North America's head of rural banking. "While the U.S. economy felt the recession in 2008, we were having record years in agriculture."Hudnutt said some corn farmers in the Midwest have been experiencing "below break-evens. This is really year three now. We really expect more of the same in 2018. It's not simply a matter of grain prices as it is input costs [such as seed, chemical and fertilizer supplies] are not coming down as quickly as grain prices have fallen."Overall, crop cash receipts — the income from crop sales during the 2017 — are forecast to be $189.9 billion, down 2 percent from last year. That would represent the fifth-consecutive year of lower corn receipts, and the total dollar value of the crop is expected to be the lowest number recorded since 2009, according to USDA economist Carrie Litkowski.
Agrium, PotashCorp merger will 'impact the entire industry,' including thousands of farmers: prof.
CBC News | Posted on December 28, 2017A mammoth merger between the world's largest potash producer and a major agricultural and chemical company is slated to close Jan. 1. The merger between PotashCorp and Agrium — which will combine to make Nutrien — received its final clearance. Nutrien will be the world's largest nutrient company and the third-largest natural resource company in Canada. Post-merger, approximately 20,000 people will work for the company in 18 countries, with the entire enterprise valued at $36 billion USD
EU-Japan trade deal worrisome for U.S. farm exports
Capital Press | Posted on December 28, 2017U.S. cheese exports stand to suffer from a trade deal struck between Japan and the European Union, but beef is also likely to be impacted indirectly.
EPA lowballs manure rule’s reach, farm groups say
Capital Press | Posted on December 28, 2017The Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated how many producers will have to report that their animals are releasing gas, according to farm groups. The new reporting requirement, forced by an environmental lawsuit and expected to take effect Jan. 22, will apply to hundreds of thousands of farms, not the 44,900 projected by the EPA, the groups say.“This number is woefully inadequate and vastly under-represents the universe of producers who will be impacted by these reporting requirements,” the American Farm Bureau Federation stated in comments to the EPA.
AVMA Economic Summit highlights veterinary income, job market
Veterinary Practice News | Posted on December 28, 2017According to the report, which will be released in 2018, the number of dog-owning households is the highest since the AVMA began measuring pet ownership, the number of cat owners has dropped drastically, horse and pet bird ownership are declining, and backyard poultry ownership is increasing. real veterinary income has been declining for more than seven years.Further, veterinarians are likely to experience peak income of about $125,000 annually by age 59, and those who become practice owners soon after graduation earn more than those who become owners later in their career.More than 3,000 full-time–equivalent veterinarians are needed to satisfy the work hour preferences reported by practitioners, she added.However, during her research, she found more veterinarians are reporting low compassion satisfaction, she said, and added that high educational debt and declining real income could be to blame.
Ethanol-State Senators Wait for Proposal from Cruz, Who Maintains Hold on USDA Nominee
DTN | Posted on December 28, 2017Sen. Ted Cruz has now gotten multiple meetings at the White House over the Renewable Fuels Standard but the Texas Republican still maintains his hold on Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey's undersecretary nomination at USDA. And, following a meeting Wednesday with staff from several senators at the White House's Eisenhower Executive Office Building, it seems Cruz doesn't know what exactly he wants changed with the Renewable Fuel Standard."He just keeps moving the goalpost and moving the goalpost," said a frustrated Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, on Thursday.Staff from the offices of Sens. Ernst, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Deb Fischer, R-Neb., joined White House staff Wednesday afternoon to discuss options, but staff from Cruz's office and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., did not have any proposals to offer and were not ready to negotiate.
Tallying Economic Effects of the RFS Decade
DTN | Posted on December 28, 2017Look no further than how falling commodity prices have affected rural America in recent years, and you'll get a feel for what the Renewable Fuel Standard has meant to the countryside. Back in 2005 when the first RFS was signed into law, it was challenging just to keep up on the seemingly endless number of announced plans to build corn ethanol plants. Investor groups made public announcements, followed by local, small-town meetings attended largely by farmers and community investors curious about ethanol's economic potential.Today, the farm economy continues on a decline as input costs have remained higher while corn remains priced in the $3 to $4 range. Imagine the state of things without the corn market created by ethanol.Prior to the first RFS from 1997 to 2004, average corn prices nationally averaged between $1.86 and $2.60 per bushel, according to farmdoc at the University of Illinois. From 2006 to 2016, farmdoc said the average annual corn price ranged from $1.96 to $6.67. That meant more money was injected into rural economies following the passage of the second RFS.Do the math: take away the ethanol market and rural America's challenges may be far more difficult.A nine-page analysis by the Renewable Fuels Association released this week provides a look at the numbers.