Agriculture

For a 17th straight month, the Rural Mainstreet Index remained below growth neutral. • Almost one-third of bank CEOs indicated that soaring loan defaults represented the greatest Rural Mainstreet banking threat for 2017. • Almost nine often bankersreported thatlow agriculture commodity represented the biggest threat to the rural economic for 2017. • Eighty percent of bankers expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the first half of 2017. [node:read-more:link]

HumaneWatch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom, released a video rebutting Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle’s assertions on antibiotic use in animal agriculture. The video addresses Pacelle’s claim that overuse of antibiotics on farms is a public health menace, pointing to recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show nearly one-third of antibiotics prescribed to humans are unnecessary. [node:read-more:link]

Washington tree fruit growers are asking legislators to set rules for paying piece-rate workers, effectively intervening in pending federal lawsuits spawned by a 2015 state Supreme Court decision. The ruling in Lopez v. Sakuma required growers to pay piece-rate workers separately for 10-minute rest breaks. The decision upset longstanding practice, left unresolved key questions and exposed growers to more lawsuits. The suits seek back pay for rest breaks for up to three years. [node:read-more:link]

In the opening weeks of the Trump administration, the state of animal welfare—as with so much other policy—is in upheaval. On February 9, the administration froze the implementation of the just-passed Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP)—the only comprehensive federal law that regulates the welfare of animals raised for food.  The freeze comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) removing Animal Welfare Act inspection reports from its website. [node:read-more:link]

The Georgia Premium Poultry Price Index (GPPPI) will not be published due to a lack of available data, the Georgia Department of Agriculture said. The GPPPI was the department’s answer to the suspended Georgia Dock poultry price discovery system, which had come under scrutiny due to how high its prices have been compared with other pricing indexes amid federal litigation accusing the industry of price fixing. [node:read-more:link]

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley should be commended for his efforts to keep California’s Proposition 2 egg law from burdening Missouri egg farmers and egg consumers. At the same time, he should be chastised for trying to make it a partisan issue.  Hawley’s office last week issued a press release that announced he would challenge the law -- that requires that eggs produced and sold in the state are laid by hens that have adequate room to stand up, sit down, turn around and extend their limbs without touching another bird or the sides of the cage -- “all the way to the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

"On or about February 10, 2016, in the above named judicial district, the crime of FARM ANIMAL CRUELTY, in violation of HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 25990, a misdemeanor, was committed by Robert Allen Hohberg, Hohberg's Poultry Ranches and Hohberg Properties, L.P., who unlawfully confined a covered animal, on a farm, for all or the majority of any day, in a manner that prevents such animal from lying down, standing up, and fully extending her limbs and turning around freely, to wit, egg laying hens, cage #B54." This criminal count and 55 others are now being faced by a California egg farm [node:read-more:link]

After a federal court shot down the efforts of individual counties, advocates of more regulation have only the Legislature to turn to. A week ago, two legislative committees approved a slew of bills aimed at banning certain pesticides, funding studies and requiring large agricultural companies to disclose when and where they apply the chemicals. But activists pushing for more regulation of large farms aren’t celebrating yet. Some lawmakers on other committees aren’t planning to call hearings for the bills or say that they haven’t made up their minds. [node:read-more:link]

Marshall, along with representatives and members of the American Seed Trade Association, are working with gene editing to edit out and edit in traits and qualities in plants and beyond. Long-form, CRISPR is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Cas9 is a nuclease that is used with another element to “cut” a cell’s genome and allow the editing, consisting of the addition of or deletion of specific genes. [node:read-more:link]

Between 2008 and 2013, Iowa landowners received $6.3 million in tax credits for donating $19.4 million in land or conservation easements. In all, they gave away 9,200 acres. Even with those donations, Iowa ranks second-to-last nationally in the amount of publicly owned land, experts say.  But that's still too much for the tax credit's opponents. The state's largest agriculture group contends that the land donations shrink local property taxes and idle acreage in a state where competition for farmland is intense. [node:read-more:link]