A Delaware state court has awarded summary judgment to John Deere & Co. in an asbestos action, finding that the plaintiff had failed to present sufficient evidence to support his assertion that he was injured by asbestos fibers in the defendant’s product. [node:read-more:link]
The federal government says an Arizona farm has kept temporary Mexican workers in squalid conditions and paid some of them only a fraction of what they are owed. The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against G Farms in El Mirage, located just northwest of Phoenix, last week. A judge was scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday.The department says that G Farms housed about 70 workers here on a visa in a dangerous and unsanitary encampment composed of school buses, semitrailers, a cargo container and an open-air shed. [node:read-more:link]
hen discussing countries that have undergone astonishing economic transformations -- as, most notably, China has over the past few decades -- observers usually credit success to industrialization. After all, that’s the visible consequence of rapid growth: Where sleepy fishing villages once lay, ports and factories and high-speed rail networks spring up. The people who lived in those villages are in turn far more productive, working in those factories and shipping goods to the rest of the world through those ports. [node:read-more:link]
The agricultural company Southern Gardens Citrus in Clewiston, Florida, applied to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in February for permission to use an engineered version of the citrus tristeza virus (CTV) to attack the bacterium behind citrus greening. This disease has slashed US orange production in half over the past decade, and threatens to destroy the US$3.3-billion industry entirely. [node:read-more:link]
A shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans sailed late last year from Ukraine to Turkey to California. Along the way, it underwent a remarkable transformation.The cargo began as ordinary soybeans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Like ordinary soybeans, they were fumigated with a pesticide. They were priced like ordinary soybeans, too.But by the time the 600-foot cargo ship carrying them to Stockton, Calif., arrived in December, the soybeans had been labeled “organic,” according to receipts, invoices and other shipping records. [node:read-more:link]
Bowing to public uproar and deeply skeptical council members, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has scrapped proposals for a far-reaching set of animal regulations that would have decidedly cramped the style of cats, dogs and chickens in the nation’s capital. Bowser included the rules in legislation attached to her proposal for next year’s budget. But the mayor’s office had not reckoned with the public reaction to measures that included a ban on backyard chickens, a requirement that all cats be licensed and a provision that seemed to outlaw leaving dog feces in a private yard for more than 24 hours. [node:read-more:link]
A federal judge rejected an attempt by attorneys to pry more information out of a retired EPA scientist embroiled in a bitter battle between Monsanto Co. and thousands of cancer victims. The judge also criticized lawyers at a recent hearing for mounting a public relations campaign against the agrichemical giant.U.S. [node:read-more:link]
Approximately 225 independent milk producers in the Mideast marketing order have until Nov. 30 to find a new home for their milk. The dairymen received letters from Dairy Farmers of America’s Dairy Marketing Services, dated May 15, informing them that the cooperative will no longer market the independent producers’ milk. The farmers will receive a six-month notice of termination. The farmers will have the option of joining DFA or finding another market by Nov. 30, 2017. [node:read-more:link]
Over the past month, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection focused on finding a short-term solution for the dozens of Wisconsin dairy farm families who suddenly lost their milk market. Thankfully on May 1, 99 percent of the milk had found a new home, at least temporarily. While we will continue to assist farmers through the Wisconsin Farm Center, it is now time for us as an industry to keep the conversation going and look long-term. [node:read-more:link]
In a recent study, researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture found the overall health of honey bees improved in the presence of agricultural production, despite the increased exposure to agricultural pesticides. [node:read-more:link]
