Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary Sonny Perdue are making available an additional $45 million to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and its partners to address the ongoing virulent Newcastle disease (vND) outbreak in southern California. This funding will allow APHIS and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to strengthen their joint efforts to stop the spread of this disease and prevent it from affecting additional commercial flocks. vND has been confirmed in more than 435 backyard flocks since May 2018. [node:read-more:link]

Flood damages in the Midwest are now estimated at nearly $3 billion. In Nebraska, the damages to agriculture are nearing the $1 billion mark. Iowa officials are reporting agricultural losses of approximately $214 million. Several other states have also experienced severe flooding, including Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and South Dakota. Threats of additional flooding of the Missouri River are on the horizon, as above normal snowpack in the north melts and moves downstream. [node:read-more:link]

The Iowa Senate has passed a bill, Senate File 548, that would prevent an organization from buying land using a state loan program for water quality and flood mitigation projects. Some Senate Republicans said Wednesday the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation has been using the low-interest loan program called the State Revolving Fund to buy land and then donate it to government conservation agencies. [node:read-more:link]

A federal district court has granted a temporary injunction on the City of Toledo’s recent action that gives Lake Erie its own legal rights. [node:read-more:link]

As farm income has fallen over the past few years, farm equity has also fallen, but it is only down about 5 percent from the peak in 2014, stabilized by high land values…with low commodity prices, farmers have increasingly tapped into their real estate equity to provide operating funds. Today, total debt is approaching record levels in real terms, and real estate debt has reached a record high in 2018.Farm real estate debt is expected to reach $263.7 billion in 2019, a 5.1-percent annual increase in nominal terms and a 3.3-percent rise in inflation-adjusted dollars. [node:read-more:link]

Minnesota dairy farmers Amanda and Derek Zigan are still paying for a bold bet they made when dairy prices were flying high. The couple built a new barn equipped with state-of-the-art milking equipment, hoping to reduce their dependence on hired help, lower their vet bills and keep their cows healthier and more productive. Back in 2014, a local paper dubbed them Todd County, Minnesota’s first robotic farm.Then the bottom fell out of the dairy market. [node:read-more:link]

Something unusual is going on in the fledgling but fast-growing lab-grown meat industry. A technology that was developed to displace meat and end animal farming has, in the last couple of years, received a boost from an unlikely source: meat companies. Take Tyson Foods, the world’s second-largest processor and seller of beef, chicken, and pork. If you’ve ever eaten a hamburger or a chicken nugget in the United States, that cow or chicken was reasonably likely to have been slaughtered at a Tyson Foods processing plant. [node:read-more:link]

Outbreaks of African Swine Fever have taken a toll on China’s pork industry, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the US Dept. of Agriculture said in its China Livestock and Products Semi-Annual report. As of March 11, China has reported 115 outbreaks of ASF to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The outbreaks have occurred in every significant pork production region in China. [node:read-more:link]

That key question for agriculture remains unanswered: whether nutrient losses from farm fields collected and channeled through a manmade system of drainage are excluded as agricultural stormwater runoff or whether they are discharges of pollutants, subject to regulation and permitting under the CWA.  The Ninth Circuit decision from Hawai’i Wildlife Fundprovides for concern if the Supreme Court affirms the reasoning of the courts of appeal in the Hawai’i and South Carolina cases, decisively bringing indirect discharges under the purview of the CWA.  In light of this potential line o [node:read-more:link]

I won't mince words: Those photos of the floods in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa make me sick. The images bring to life what the flood's statistics, though impressive, leave abstract. It's one thing to be told that $400 million of cattle and other livestock have been killed, that agriculture losses are approaching $1 billion, that 13 bridges have been washed away and 200 miles of highway will need repair in Nebraska alone. But statistics can be mind-numbing. Seeing is believing. [node:read-more:link]