Agriculture

The Agricultural and Food Law Consortium will host a webinar will provide an overview of legal issues surrounding genetically engineered and genetically modified products in aquaculture, as well as an overview of GMO regulatory issues, including labeling. The presentations will discuss the AquAdvantage salmon case study and recent legal developments.The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 17, 12noon – 3pm (EST).
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The leader of the Wisconsin Farmers Union is praising the Madison-based Family Dairies USA for being pro-active and working with farmers to limit the milk that comes in, rather than dumping it or selling it for below-market prices after the fact. WFU President Darin Von Ruden said he also commends the cooperative for asking all of their members to shoulder a little of the burden of managing over-supply.
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About $1 million in invoices were paid to Des Moines and Washington, DC, law firms until March, and the supervisors claim not to know who gave them the money. That’s stunning. The Agribusiness Association of Iowa organized a fund that paid those bills, but it reportedly refuses to tell the counties who the donors were. The supervisors believe that they cannot look a gift horse in the mouth to see who planted the bit. We have just learned that the supervisors, not AAI, severed their relationship in April because we wanted to know who those donors were. [node:read-more:link]

No one is saying that farmers are headed for a repeat of the 1980s, when high interest rates, inflation and huge debt forced thousands of producers out of business. But the tougher agriculture market and weakened farm economy of the past few years is steadily taking its toll, and cracks are beginning to show.University of Minnesota Extension researchers reported recently that more than 30 percent of Minnesota crop and livestock producers lost money in 2016. [node:read-more:link]

The first of at least a half dozen trials began Monday in state court in Minneapolis, as farmers and grain handlers try to prove Syngenta rushed its Viptera genetically engineered corn, and then a second insect-resistant GMO seed, to market before obtaining import approval from China. The subsequent rejection of U.S. corn shipments ended up depressing corn prices for five years as China continued to buy from other countries, the farmers say. Syngenta denies any wrongdoing. [node:read-more:link]

According to Kansas dairy farmers, a glut of milk and fewer sales to other countries have them concerned about their future. An oversupply of milk happens every spring, but dairy farmer Orville Miller said this year is even worse."It's absolutely stressful," said Miller. "When you get up in the morning and work hard all day and know you're losing money, that's tough on the mind after awhile."Miller said the price of milk is down about 40% from two to three years ago, and more product needs to be sold."The export market is not as good as it typically is," said Miller. [node:read-more:link]

Since the beginning of the year, there have been a number of significant legal developments in the agricultural sector. Many of these issues will continue to play out over the next year and will impact agriculture throughout the country. Notably, there were important developments involving the WOTUS Rule, the Des Moines Waterworks lawsuit, and the Endangered Species Act. [node:read-more:link]

Make no mistake about it: Animal rights groups are intensifying their push to get every major purchaser of chicken to source only slower-growing broiler breeds that are raised according to Global Animal Partnership (GAP) standards. [node:read-more:link]

A new Voice of the Farmer Report examines the state of modern day farming through a combination of interviews with farmers and analysis of millions of acres of real farm yield as well as thousands of farmer seed and chemical invoices and price records. The survey finds issues including farm profits, industry consolidation, farm consolidation, and health care, along with technology needs, are all top-of-mind for farmers and ranchers. [node:read-more:link]

The controversial laboratory tool known as CRISPR may have found a whole new world to conquer. Already the favored method of editing genes, CRISPR could soon become a low-cost diagnostic tool that could be used practically anywhere to determine if someone has an infectious disease such as Zika or dengue.  In essence they have taken the virus-recognition properties of the bacterial CRISPR system and turned it into a technique for telling if someone's blood, urine, saliva or other bodily fluid contains genetic markers of a pathogen. [node:read-more:link]