Agriculture

A new training tool is available for agriculturalists who want to learn more about the Veterinary Feed Directive, a  federal directive that regulates the medications put into animals’ feed. The VFD went into affect Jan. 1. The tool, Module 29: Veterinary Feed Directive, was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's National Veterinary Accreditation Program, working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine and Iowa State's Center for Food Security and Public Health. [node:read-more:link]

Global agricultural trader Bunge Ltd said on Monday it will build its first new U.S. soybean processing plant in 15 years in Indiana or Ohio to serve growing domestic and export demand for soy products. The plant is expected to be on line by the end of 2019, St. Louis County-based Bunge North America said in a statement. [node:read-more:link]

Scientists have demonstrated that they can use a crop spray to silence genes in plants, rendering the plants resistant to a virus for several weeks.  A team at the University of Queensland in Australia has developed a technique that allows it to deposit RNA onto the leaves of crops. The spray makes use of microscopic sheets of clay, into which RNA is loaded. As the sheets stick to the leaf of a plant and gradually break down, the RNA is taken up by the plants and then interferes with a gene inside to stop it from functioning. [node:read-more:link]

Seven MIT graduate students studying food and water security issues presented their research and preliminary findings on issues such as these during the MIT Water and Food Security Student Symposium. Hosted by the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab, the event brought together professors and students to discuss food and water challenges and opportunities to address these through research. [node:read-more:link]

Vermont is known for its picturesque pastures, red barns and grazing cows. But that scenery is getting harder to find.  A state that once had thousands of dairy farms now has just over 800 and another one is about to close. This weekend a farm in Weathersfield is saying goodbye to its cows forever.

David Fuller has owned a dairy farm in Weathersfield since 1977.

"Since I was a kid I've had cows and I just like them," said Fuller. 

And over the past 40 years, he's sold over 50 million pounds of milk.  [node:read-more:link]

The mini-farm in the cafeteria at Philip’s Academy is a significant piece of technology. In fact, it is a key to the story, and it figures in the larger picture of vertical farming worldwide and of indoor agriculture in general. If the current movement to grow more food locally, in urban settings, and by high-tech indoor methods follows the path that some predict for it, the mini-farm in the school cafeteria may one day have its own historical plaque. [node:read-more:link]

Farmers operate a business and they have many of the same questions that most businesses have about the year 2017. They do have a few more things to consider than many other kinds of businesses.

Two of the big questions they think about for next year are the export market and the weather. [node:read-more:link]

After lying largely dormant for the last few years, US trade policy is now back in the spotlight. In particular, concerns have been raised about our trade relations with Mexico and China, who together are the market for almost one-third of total U.S. agricultural exports. Given this recent scrutiny, I thought it would be useful to review the current state of trade in US agriculture. [node:read-more:link]

Welcome to what could be the future of the world’s produce supply. And unlike today’s messy farms, it won’t require soil, sunlight, or nearly as much water. (Add in a couple quarts of coffee, and that’s basically the environment in which NextDraft grows.) The New Yorker’s Ian Frazier with a very interesting look at the folks who are growing crops in the city: The Vertical Farm.  If you can raise crops indoors in the city, then you can go fishing in a barn in Iowa. From MoJo: A Fish Out of Water. Can farmers in Iowa help save the world’s seafood supply?

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Here’s something that I think is really cool that’s happening in the veterinary community right now. It’s a group called WisCARES. We realized there were all these people that had pets, but that had trouble accessing the veterinary care they needed. There were reasons why they were having difficulty getting that care, from homelessness to poverty. Under the leadership of Dr. William Gilles, the organization has taken off and is now part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. [node:read-more:link]