Farm income is down, and equipment prices are sky-high. Like farmers around the country, Boyd is in the crosshairs of the trade war, caught between the 25 percent tariffs that the United States has imposed on imported raw materials such as steel and aluminum and the retaliatory tariffs that China and other countries have imposed on major American agricultural exports, especially soybeans. [node:read-more:link]
On its face, Proposition 12 applies only to California businesses selling pork, veal, and eggs. However, in practice, it has the potential to impact farmers and ranchers producing beef, pork and eggs nationwide. If a farmer in Texas, for example, does not adopt these practices, then he or she will be unable to sell his or her products in California. These types of ballot initiatives could certainly be expanded to additional products and could have major impacts on the farm level, requiring producers to invest in new or different facilities in order to continue producing the products. Th [node:read-more:link]
A rash of goat thefts is plaguing California's San Joaquin Valley. The Fresno County sheriff's agricultural task force says there have been seven reports of goats being stolen between Jan. 9 and March 7.In all, 61 goats worth $27,000 have been taken from private properties south. [node:read-more:link]
The above selected quotes from my column over the past 28 years imply that the dairy farm situation seems to have not changed all that much: Too much milk, farms leaving dairying and those that remain producing even more milk. Of course, there were the good times for dairying when the producer price rose for a period of time before again sinking—it is often claimed that dairying has a 3-4 year cycle of ups and downs. [node:read-more:link]
When pigs on the Xinda Husbandry Co. [node:read-more:link]
The Minnesota House voted to hold drug manufacturers responsible for the state's growing costs for dealing with the opioid crisis.The bill passed 94-34 after around four hours of debate that split mostly along party lines. It would support a wide range of prevention, education, intervention, treatment and recovery strategies. The state would pay for them by sharply raising its currently low annual registration fees for pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota. [node:read-more:link]
uring Dairy Farmers of America’s (DFA) annual meeting in Kansas City, Mo., the cooperative reported that net sales fell by $1.1 billion, a decrease of 7.5% from 2017. For 2018, net sales were totaled at $13.6 billion. The previous year net sales equaled $14.7 billion. According to DFA, the decrease is largely attributed to lower milk prices. The all U.S. milk price was 8.2% lower than the previous year averaging $16.20/cwt paid in 2018 compared with $17.65/cwt in 2017. [node:read-more:link]
There were no good choices for John Remus, yet he had to choose. Should he try to hold back the surging Missouri River but risk destroying a major dam, potentially releasing a 45-foot wall of water? Or should he relieve the pressure by opening the spillway, purposely adding to the flooding of towns, homes and farmland for hundreds of miles.Mr. Remus controls an extraordinary machine — the dams built decades ago to tame a river system that drains parts of 10 states and two Canadian provinces. [node:read-more:link]
Thursday's report said extreme precipitation could rise 10 to 40 percent in southern Wisconsin, the feeder system to many Illinois waterways. In Machesney Park, ducks swam past mailboxes nearly at eye level. Displaced residents returned to survey their homes with chest-high waders. [node:read-more:link]
The Great Lakes region is warming faster than the rest of the U.S., a trend likely to bring more extreme storms while also degrading water quality, worsening erosion and posing tougher challenges for farming, scientists reported. The annual mean air temperature in the region, which includes portions of the U.S. Midwest , Northeast and southern Canada, rose 1.6 degrees (0.9 Celsius) from 1901-60 and 1985-2016, according to the report commissioned by the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center. During the same periods, the mean temperature for the remainder of the contiguous U.S. [node:read-more:link]
