Agriculture News
R-CALF wins a legal round against beef checkoff
Meatingplace (registration required) | Posted on December 15, 2016A U.S. magistrate judge recommended that the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana grant R-CALF USA’s request for a preliminary injunction in a case involving the beef checkoff. The injunction would stop USDA from continuing to allow the Montana State Beef Council to use checkoff dollars to fund its advertising campaigns unless a cattle producer provides prior affirmative consent that his/her checkoff dollars may be retained by the council for that purpose.The ruling relates to a lawsuit R-CALF filed against the national beef checkoff program in May.
9 challenges facing US poultry producers in 2017
Watt Ag Net | Posted on December 15, 2016Biosecurity and defense against HPAI: This was a point of success in 2016 – only one turkey flock had an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza – but keeping flocks healthy is a continuing priority in 2017. “One positive outcome of the HPAI outbreak in 2015 is that the industry has increased its focus on biosecurity and that remains in place,” Simmons said. International trade and exports: Another industry success in 2016 was the reopening of the chicken trade with South Africa. Simmons acknowledged the work of USA Poultry & Egg Export Council and others in this and how crucial trade is to the continued success of the U.S. poultry industry.GIPSA regulations: “While the fight is not anywhere near over, the industry has been successful in preventing new GIPSA regulations. That can certainly limit marketing options, add layers of bureaucracy, and have a negative effect on animal welfare and open floodgates to litigation,” he said.OSHA Regional Emphasis Program: The continued use by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the Regional Emphasis Program to conduct wall-to-wall inspections in U.S. poultry processing facilities remains a major industry challenge.New Poultry Slaughter Modernization System: One of the key pieces of regulation the industry navigated is the New Poultry Slaughter Modernization System, which included the first ever food safety standard for chicken parts.
Million year old bugs show antibiotic resistance
NPR | Posted on December 15, 2016Scientists have found a superbug — hidden 1,000 feet underground in a cave — which is resistant to 70 percent of antibiotics and can totally inactivate many of them. But here's the kicker. This bacterium has been isolated from people, society — and drugs — for 4 million years, scientists report Thursday in the journal Nature Communications. That means it hasn't been exposed to human drugs in a clinic or on a farm that uses them. But it has the machinery to knock out these drugs. And that machinery has been around for millions of years. Because, Barton says, the bacterium is helping scientists understand where antibiotic resistance comes from and, hopefully, new ways to stop it. And the bacterium — called Paenibacillus (pronounced "penny-bacillus") — isn't pathogenic. It won't hurt you. It's just capable of evading many, many antibiotics.So how on Earth did this underground bacteria become resistance to human antibiotics? Don't bacteria develop resistance after being exposed to the drugs in people and animals?"That's kind of the old model," Barton says. "When we originally went into this cave in 2012, we found that the microbes there were resistant to every natural antibiotic that we use in hospitals."It changed our understanding because it means antibiotic resistance didn't evolve in the clinic through our use. The resistance is hardwired," she says.
Washington State Dairy Workers Challenge Their Exemption From Overtime Pay
NPR | Posted on December 15, 2016Patricia Aguilar began working at DeRuyter Brothers Dairy in central Washington nearly three years ago. She worked at the dairy's milking parlor, which she says handles about 3000 cows three times each day, seven days a week. Aguilar was one of four dairy workers responsible for pushing and guiding the cows into the parlor, connecting the animals to milking machines, wiping them and the machinery down, and cleaning towels and milk tanks. "I worked six days a week for eight or nine hours," she explains. "They said we would get breaks but we didn't have even a full lunch break, just 15 or 25 minutes," says Aguilar. With its close encounters with large animals and machinery, dairy work is hard and dangerous. Injuries – including fatal injuries – are not uncommon. Aguilar describes being kicked in the hand and chest by cows. One time, says Martinez, "a cow stepped on my hand and I had to literally pull my hand out from under the hoof." Both were paid about $12 per hour. Both say they weren't paid as they should have been for their brief break times and there was no overtime pay – a norm in this industry that runs 24/7. That's because U.S. federal law excludes people who work in agriculture – on farms and in dairies – from the right to overtime pay. It also excludes them from the right to organize or unionize, and under certain circumstances, the right to be paid the minimum wage.Now, Aguilar and Martinez are challenging this labor law exemption in Washington by filing a class-action lawsuiton behalf of all agricultural workers in the state.
After years of drama, farmers score a big win in California water battle
Fresno Bee | Posted on December 15, 2016The California water bill now ready for the president's signature dramatically shifts 25 years of federal policy and culminates a long and fractious campaign born in the drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. A rough five years in the making, the $558 million bill approved by the Senate early Saturday morning steers more water to farmers, eases dam construction, and funds desalination and recycling projects. Its rocky road to the White House also proved a costly master class in political persistence and adroit maneuvering.“I believe these provisions are both necessary, and will help our state,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Farm Credit System Reports Increasing Stress
Hoosier Ag Today | Posted on December 15, 2016The Farm Credit System’s quarterly report says stress levels are still high in the ag sector of the economy. In fact, the operating report says stress levels are high in many different sectors of agriculture. Farm debt levels are still high, while cash receipts continue to decline. Interest rates remain low, but are slowly beginning to rise. That is combined with commodity prices that will remain low thanks to record or near-record production in corn, soybeans, and wheat. All of these factors are putting downward pressure on farmland prices. High production numbers are also weighing down price and profit margins in the dairy and protein industries.
Milk Prices Poised for Modest Improvement
CoBank | Posted on December 15, 2016After a few years of significant challenge, the outlook for U.S. milk producers is beginning to improve, according to a new report from CoBank. Despite projected supply increases, milk prices are poised for modest improvement in the years ahead thanks to new export opportunities and gains in processing and production efficiency. “We’re seeing dairy farm expansions, meaning producers are hopeful that prices will increase from today’s levels,” says Ben Laine, senior economist at CoBank. “These dairies are banking on the future and on global growth. We believe that there is cause for cautious optimism given prospects for strengthened international demand and the industry’s long track record of innovation.” U.S. dairies will produce over 225 billion pounds of milk in 2020 – approximately 7 percent higher than today’s output, according to projections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And domestic demand for milk and milk products will remain relatively flat, given the maturity of the U.S. consumer market. Nonetheless, Laine says, the industry is poised to benefit from overseas demand in Asia, Latin America and Africa driven by population growth and increased middle class consumption.
Construction to start on $100M N.C. swine waste plant
bizjournal | Posted on December 15, 2016Colorado company Carbon Cycle Energy will break ground Thursday on a $100 million biogas plant near Warsaw that will produce about 2.4 million dekatherms of natural-gas quality methane a year. A million dekatherms a year are contracted to Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) for use at its Buck, Dan River, H.F. Lee and Sutton combined-cycle natural gas plants. That is enough to produce about 125,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, the equivalent of the power needed to supply about 10,000 homes. Because the plant produces methane from waste, it is carbon-neutral. It does not introduce any additional carbon into the environment as drilling the gas out of the ground does. Because of that, the biogas counts as a renewable energy resource. “This is a big development for biogas in North Carolina, says Duke spokesman Randy Wheeless.”It will be a major part of Duke Energy’s efforts to meet the (renewable energy requirements) for swine waste-to-power in the state.”
Back wage measure for farm workers challenged
Los Angeles Times | Posted on December 15, 2016A law that would have settled disputes between growers and farmworkers over lost wages could come unraveled, after two fruit growers persuaded a federal court to review whether it is constitutional. Gerawan Farming Inc. and Fowler Packing Co. contend that state legislators deliberately crafted provisions in Assembly Bill 1513, signed last year by Gov. Brown, to exclude them from protections afforded to companies that agree to compensate “piece work” laborers for their time spent on breaks, training, and other nonproductive activities. Those provisions denied the growers their constitutional right to equal protection under the law, they argued.A U.S. District Court rejected that claim, but on Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asked the court to reconsider. The move is unlikely to change much for growers who may have opted to repay workers by a Thursday deadline. The author of the bill, former Assemblyman Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara), touted the legislation as a grand bargain that would shield growers from penalties and lawsuits and compensate workers who had struggled for years to recoup payment for time not spent picking and packing.
Avian influenza and the risk from backyard flocks
Watt Ag Net | Posted on December 15, 2016Poultry owners big and small in the U.K. have been ordered to keep their birds indoors, or take other appropriate steps, to keep them separate from wild birds. The measure is simply precautionary -- a response to the increased risk from avian influenza viruses circulating in several European countries.The H5N8 virus detected in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, among others, has not spread to the U.K., but it easily could via wild birds, and the U.K., Scottish and Welsh governments are taking no chances. Migratory birds, it seems, have been paying little attention to Brexit and it is not disrupting their travel plans.The order, due to initially last for 30 days, has been welcomed by farming bodies. They recognize the need to protect bird health, particularly in the run-up to Christmas, which is a crucial time of year for many poultry producers.