Agriculture

A U.S. magistrate judge recommended that the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana grant R-CALF USA’s request for a preliminary injunction in a case involving the beef checkoff.  The injunction would stop USDA from continuing to allow the Montana State Beef Council to use checkoff dollars to fund its advertising campaigns unless a cattle producer provides prior affirmative consent that his/her checkoff dollars may be retained by the council for that purpose.The ruling relates to a lawsuit R-CALF filed against the national beef checkoff program in May. [node:read-more:link]

Biosecurity and defense against HPAI: This was a point of success in 2016 – only one turkey flock had an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza – but keeping flocks healthy is a continuing priority in 2017. “One positive outcome of the HPAI outbreak in 2015 is that the industry has increased its focus on biosecurity and that remains in place,” Simmons said. International trade and exports: Another industry success in 2016 was the reopening of the chicken trade with South Africa. [node:read-more:link]

Scientists have found a superbug — hidden 1,000 feet underground in a cave — which is resistant to 70 percent of antibiotics and can totally inactivate many of them. But here's the kicker. This bacterium has been isolated from people, society — and drugs — for 4 million years, scientists report Thursday in the journal Nature Communications. That means it hasn't been exposed to human drugs in a clinic or on a farm that uses them. But it has the machinery to knock out these drugs. And that machinery has been around for millions of years. [node:read-more:link]

Patricia Aguilar began working at DeRuyter Brothers Dairy in central Washington nearly three years ago. She worked at the dairy's milking parlor, which she says handles about 3000 cows three times each day, seven days a week. Aguilar was one of four dairy workers responsible for pushing and guiding the cows into the parlor, connecting the animals to milking machines, wiping them and the machinery down, and cleaning towels and milk tanks. "I worked six days a week for eight or nine hours," she explains. [node:read-more:link]

The California water bill now ready for the president's signature dramatically shifts 25 years of federal policy and culminates a long and fractious campaign born in the drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. A rough five years in the making, the $558 million bill approved by the Senate early Saturday morning steers more water to farmers, eases dam construction, and funds desalination and recycling projects. [node:read-more:link]

The Farm Credit System’s quarterly report says stress levels are still high in the ag sector of the economy. In fact, the operating report says stress levels are high in many different sectors of agriculture. Farm debt levels are still high, while cash receipts continue to decline. Interest rates remain low, but are slowly beginning to rise. That is combined with commodity prices that will remain low thanks to record or near-record production in corn, soybeans, and wheat. All of these factors are putting downward pressure on farmland prices. [node:read-more:link]

After a few years of significant challenge, the outlook for U.S. milk producers is beginning to improve, according to a new report from CoBank. Despite projected supply increases, milk prices are poised for modest improvement in the years ahead thanks to new export opportunities and gains in processing and production efficiency. “We’re seeing dairy farm expansions, meaning producers are hopeful that prices will increase from today’s levels,” says Ben Laine, senior economist at CoBank. “These dairies are banking on the future and on global growth. [node:read-more:link]

Colorado company Carbon Cycle Energy will break ground Thursday on a $100 million biogas plant near Warsaw that will produce about 2.4 million dekatherms of natural-gas quality methane a year. A million dekatherms a year are contracted to Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) for use at its Buck, Dan River, H.F. Lee and Sutton combined-cycle natural gas plants. That is enough to produce about 125,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, the equivalent of the power needed to supply about 10,000 homes. Because the plant produces methane from waste, it is carbon-neutral. [node:read-more:link]

A law that would have settled disputes between growers and farmworkers over lost wages could come unraveled, after two fruit growers persuaded a federal court to review whether it is constitutional. Gerawan Farming Inc. and Fowler Packing Co. contend that state legislators deliberately crafted provisions in Assembly Bill 1513, signed last year by Gov. Brown, to exclude them from protections afforded to companies that agree to compensate “piece work” laborers for their time spent on breaks, training, and other nonproductive activities. [node:read-more:link]

Poultry owners big and small in the U.K. have been ordered to keep their birds indoors, or take other appropriate steps, to keep them separate from wild birds. The measure is simply precautionary -- a response to the increased risk from avian influenza viruses circulating in several European countries.The H5N8 virus detected in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, among others, has not spread to the U.K., but it easily could via wild birds, and the U.K., Scottish and Welsh governments are taking no chances. [node:read-more:link]