Agriculture

Before the day was through, Solorio would make the same pitch to dozens of men and women, approaching a taco truck, a restaurant and a homeless encampment. Time was short: He needed to find 100 workers to fill his ranks by April 1, when grapevines begin to grow and need constant attention. Solorio is one of a growing number of agricultural businessmen who say they face an urgent shortage of workers. The flow of labor began drying up when President Obama tightened the border. Now President Trump is promising to deport more people, raid more companies and build a wall on the southern border. [node:read-more:link]

The way farmers communicate with consumers is changing. For far too long, farmers have been apprehensive to talk about what they do, but Dr. Emily Buck, associate professor at The Ohio State University, says that approach is no longer working. “We are in an age today that consumers want to understand farming,” Buck stated. “And the way we are built we’ve just never really done that, so there’s a need for us to start telling those stories and sharing what we do on a daily basis because people don’t get a chance to see the things we see and why we do the things we do.” [node:read-more:link]

Zaro Bates operates and lives on a 5,000-square-foot farm on Staten Island, which may make her the city’s only commercial farmer-in-residence. But instead of a shingled farmhouse surrounded by acres of fields, Ms. Bates lives in a second-floor studio in a midrise apartment complex built on the site of a former naval base overlooking New York Bay. The farm itself sits in a courtyard between two buildings at Urby, a development with 571 rental apartments that opened in Stapleton last year. Ms. [node:read-more:link]

We discovered that organic farming does matter – just not in the way most people think. What’s good: Organic farms provide higher biodiversity, hosting more bees, birds and butterflies. They also have higher soil and water quality and emit fewer greenhouse gases. What’s not-so-good: Organic farming typically yields less product – about 19-25% less. Once we account for that efficiency difference and examine environmental performance per amount of food produced, the organic advantage becomes less certain (few studies have examined this question). [node:read-more:link]

Organic agriculture is often proposed as a more sustainable alternative to current conventional agriculture. We assess the current understanding of the costs and benefits of organic agriculture across multiple production, environmental, producer, and consumer dimensions. Organic agriculture shows many potential benefits (including higher biodiversity and improved soil and water quality per unit area, enhanced profitability, and higher nutritional value) as well as many potential costs including lower yields and higher consumer prices. [node:read-more:link]

South Dakota circuit court Judge Cheryle Gering of the Union County Circuit Court in Elk Point, S.D., this week advanced a potential $5.7 billion defamation lawsuit against American Broadcasting Companies Inc. (ABC) that alleges that ABC damaged Beef Products Inc. (BPI) by referring to its signature product, lean finely textured beef (LFTB), as "pink slime" in an ABC news series. The judge did dismiss claims against anchor Diane Sawyer but said ABC and reporter Jim Avila must present a defense against the allegations. [node:read-more:link]

The mighty mushroom not only is healthy on the plate, it's also gentle on the planet – according to a new study measuring the water, energy and carbon emissions required to grow and harvest fresh mushrooms in the United States. The study finds production of a pound of mushrooms requires only 1.8 gallons of water and 1.0 kilowatt hours of energy, and generates only .7 pounds of CO2 equivalent emissions. In addition, the annual average yield of mushrooms is 7.1 pounds per square foot – meaning up to 1 million pounds of mushrooms can be produced on just one acre. [node:read-more:link]

Milk Men: The Life and Times of Dairy Farmers: Simplistic notions about dairy farming melt like butter in a frying pan in Jan Haaken’s documentary “Milk Men.”  The 2016 film allows viewers into the barns, businesses, and family rooms of a range of dairy farmers in the Pacific Northwest. [node:read-more:link]

Change is never easy. But when it comes to adopting new agricultural practices, some farmers are easier to convince than others. A group of researchers at the University of Illinois wanted to know which farmers are most likely to adopt multifunctional perennial cropping systems—trees, shrubs, or grasses that simultaneously benefit the environment and generate high-value products that can be harvested for a profit.“We surveyed farmers in the Upper Sangamon River Watershed in Illinois to learn their attitudes about growing MPCs on marginal land. [node:read-more:link]

Wildfires devastated a Smithfield Foods Inc hog farm in Laverne, Oklahoma, killing at least several thousand pigs, company and local officials said on Friday.  The exact number of swine killed in the Oklahoma fire, which began on Monday, was not immediately known. Smithfield did not say how many died in the blaze, but said no workers were harmed. [node:read-more:link]