Agriculture

SomaDetect is the grand prize winner of the fourth annual 43North competition. The New York state-sponsored contest is meant to bring economic development to western New York by awarding cash and incubator space to winners who pitch ideas from all over the world. SomaDetect’s sensor technology allows farmers to detect illness in cows or impurities in milk. The company was established in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but must operate in Buffalo for at least a year.The runner-up company, Squire, received $650,000 during Thursday night’s awards. [node:read-more:link]

At this time when farmers are suffering with low prices for corn and soybeans, the EPA is making a move that could cut the biodiesel mandate by as much as 315 million gallons. This is not good news for the biodiesel or ethanol businesses. It’s not good news for corn and soybean farmers. We thought the Renewable Fuels Standard and biofuels mandates were all settled for next year, but I guess we were wrong. [node:read-more:link]

If the current administration in the White House was successful in closing the southern border and deporting all migrant farm workers, it would be devastating to Upstate's economy according to a report prepared earlier this year by Farm Credit East. [node:read-more:link]

The Organization for Competitive Markets is continuing to push back against checkoff fees with its latest complaint filed with the Office of the Inspector General of the US Dept. of Agriculture. The group alleges that the Oklahoma Beef Council and the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association are improperly influencing a checkoff vote. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the Trump administration on Tuesday to moderate its stance in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, describing some of Washington’s demands as “poison pill proposals” that could doom the talks. Thomas Donohue, the chamber’s president and chief executive, will raise a red flag about the progress of the negotiations, according to advance excerpts of a speech he was due to make in Mexico City on Tuesday morning.The group has argued repeatedly in recent weeks that NAFTA is critical to U.S. [node:read-more:link]

he dairy state of Wisconsin, for example, has lost 20 percent of its dairy farms within the last five years. Despite the loss in total farms, Wisconsin still produced a record 30 billion pounds of milk in 2016. A similar thing is happening in most states, Utah included. The 2014 USDA Farm Bill included voluntary dairy farmer participation in the Margin Protection Program-Dairy (MPP). The purpose of this federal dairy income safety net was to protect the margins between milk prices and the cost of feeds cows eat. [node:read-more:link]

Potash Corporation plans to acquire Agrium and achieve substantial synergies through this acquisition. [node:read-more:link]

“The idea is that it would be able to let you reduce–and maybe ultimately replace–synthetic nitrogen fertilizer,” says Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Gingko Bioworks, a Boston-based genetic engineering company, which partnered with Bayer, the multinational biochem company, to launch the new, as-yet-unnamed ag-tech startup. [node:read-more:link]

The Washington dairy industry, seeking to bridge the rural-urban divide, has turned to social media’s biggest platform, Facebook, and its most-informed spokesmen, farmers. In a live video cht, Yakima County farmer Bill Warvin fielded questions about his dairy practices, including why calves are taken from their mothers at birth. “I think it’s a great question,” he said. “It seems unnatural for someone not close to animal livestock.”The video was the second of four chats planned by the Dairy Farmers of Washington, the state dairy products commission. [node:read-more:link]

very year, U.S. dairy farmers produce 3 billion more pounds of milk than the year before. For the past few years, production growth has outpaced processing capacity growth and dairy processors are struggling to keep pace, according to a new report from CoBank's Knowledge Exchange Division. As a result, "Dairy processors are faced with the challenge of handling an ever-growing milk supply, while anticipating the right product mix to meet consumer demand," said Ben Laine, senior dairy economist at CoBank. "An additional 27 billion pounds of U.S. [node:read-more:link]