Agriculture

It’s a huge job to talk about what we are doing every day on the farm, in that back 40 acres, and what everyone else is doing in this fast-paced world, with so much change happening. We are starting to finally learn how to use Twitter.  It’s hard to connect but I have to earn your trust. I have to tell the story for farmers and ranchers. I have to explain to you what we’re doing and why, and how science influenced our decision to change. [node:read-more:link]

From the Minneapolis suburbs, Cargill Inc. runs one of the biggest food empires the world has ever seen, spanning the supply chain from farm to table—shipping fertilizer to farmers, buying the crops that are grown, processing grain into feed for livestock and poultry, and producing burgers and nuggets for the world’s biggest restaurant chains and retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald’s Corp.  As consumer tastes shift, Cargill is striving to make its immense size an advantage rather than a hindrance. [node:read-more:link]

Aerial tours indicate that some hog waste lagoons were inundated by floodwaters in North Carolina but did not show any confirmed breaches or overtopping, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.  State environmental inspectors flew over farms in eastern North Carolina over the weekend to survey the impact of Hurricane Matthew.  “We are cautiously optimistic that North Carolina’s swine operations have survived the storm without experiencing the catastrophic damage we saw during Hurricane Floyd,” said Donald R. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. farmers, bogged down in one of their toughest patches in years, are looking for a little magic—in seeds. Some are returning to the old-fashioned variety, bred without genetic engineering, and back in fashion as farmers strive to save money following three straight years of falling prices for major crops like corn and soybeans.  Others, meanwhile, are joining new subscriber-based services that collect seed and other detailed crop-related data from their farmer members, who then use the data to determine which seeds and pesticides will work best on their fields and at the fairest price. [node:read-more:link]

Several leading U.S. farm groups are urging food companies to think twice about their sustainability goals, saying they may actually be causing more harm than good.  The groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, are responding specifically to Dannon's pledge to eliminate genetically modified ingredients from its yogurt products, which they noted was just the latest such promise from prominent food manufacturers and retailers in recent years.  In a letter sent today to Mariano Lozano, head of Dannon's U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Harvests are under way of what are projected to be the largest corn and soybean crops in U.S. history, which soon will hit a global market already sitting on the largest-ever grain stockpiles. Indeed, some farmers are hoping for a weather hiccup somewhere in the world to curb yields and breathe life into crop prices that recently hit multiyear lows. They may be waiting a long time. [node:read-more:link]

Small farms have unique production, distribution and marketing challenges. The good news is that we can work together to overcome! 1. Share Resources, 2. Access large markets, 3. Create New Markets, 4. Brand Recognition and 5. Production Savings [node:read-more:link]

John Deere announced its intent to license Precision Planting's high-speed planting technology, SpeedTube, to Ag Leader Technology once Deere's proposed purchase of Precision Planting is completed.  The move appears to be an initial attempt to appease the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a lawsuit in August to stop Deere's acquisition of Precision Planting. [node:read-more:link]

It's a curious feature of our culture that when we spell the word "Big" with a capital B, we often mean "bad." Big business. Big government. Big Ag. These Bigs aren't admiring adjectives. When we use Big like this, we are invoking our instinctive American fear of too much power being concentrated in too few hands.  By contrast, in our culture little is often good. We like small business. We root for the little guy. Increasingly we buy Little Food. Never heard of it? [node:read-more:link]

All 50 states have at least one (most states have multiple) statute that offers limited liability to landowners in the event someone is injured on their property, so long as certain requirements are met.  The National Agricultural Law Center has a collection of various statutes for each state in their Reading Room. All 50 states have passed some version of a recreational-use statute. Recreational-use statutes are designed to encourage private landowners to enter private property for recreational purposes. [node:read-more:link]