Agriculture

Bayer CropScience has decided to drop any further attempts to challenge cancellation of its registration for the insecticide flubendiamide, which it had sold under the trade name Belt.

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The governments of Canada and Manitoba will invest more than $366,000 in organic grain research at the University of Manitoba. This new initiative will be funded through Growing Forward 2 (GF2), a five-year (2013-18) policy framework for Canada’s agricultural and agri-food sector. GF2 is a $3 billion dollar investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments and the foundation for government agricultural programs and services. [node:read-more:link]

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. farmers have been granted class action status for their lawsuits against seed company Syngenta over sales of biotech corn seeds not approved for import by China. A judge in the U.S. District Court of Kansas certified a nationwide class and statewide classes in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. At least 440,000 farmers sued after grain shipments containing traces of Syngenta’s Agrisure Viptera corn were rejected by China, which had not approved the variety for import before it was launched. [node:read-more:link]

Atrazine, simazine and propazine are currently under EPA registration review, which is required for all pesticides every 15 years to update and modernize the science and risk assessments.  As part of the review process, on June 2, 2016 EPA released its draft ecological risk assessments, which drew conclusions based on a number of scientific errors and flawed interpretations.  The future of some essential crop protection tools are at stake.  It is important for our industry to weigh in with EPA to ensure they are following sound science and accurate data prior to making any final decisions. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. farm economy weakened further in the third quarter despite an upward revision to farm income projections. Following a brief rebound in crop prices in the second quarter, profit margins for crop producers deteriorated in August and September. Profit margins also remained poor in the cattle and dairy sectors. [node:read-more:link]

The Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization (PAACO) announced on Sept. 19 that it will offer the first in a series of training courses to certify auditors to conduct the Common Swine Industry Audit (CSIA).   The first two sessions are scheduled for Oct. 25-27 and Dec. 6-8 at the Univ. of Minnesota Southern Research Outreach center in Waseca, Minnesota. [node:read-more:link]

For all the international furor over genetically modified food, or GMOs, the biotech industry has really only managed to put a few foreign genes into food crops. The first of these genes — actually, a small family of similar genes — came from a kind of bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Those genes make plants poisonous to certain insect pests. These genes are a pillar of the entire industry. But that pillar is wobbling. Three of the four Bt genes that are supposed to fend off one particularly important pest, the corn rootworm, are showing signs of failure. [node:read-more:link]

Ground zero in the fight against Zika is now at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington. NIH scientists are testing a vaccine that could prevent people from acquiring the virus. Trials of a similar vaccine successfully immunized monkeys. Good news, right? Apparently not. Earlier this month, at another NIH facility just 3 miles away, a different group of scientists gathered to debate whether it's appropriate to conduct medical research — like the kind that's delivered this promising Zika vaccine — in primates at all. The NIH workshop on Sept. [node:read-more:link]

I was stunned to see the headline on ABC Eyewitness news website “Feds warn people to stop kissing chickens or they'll risk illness.”  Silly me, I thought that would be obvious, but then today kissing pets seems to be a generally accepted behavior. And chickens are becoming a common pet and not just in the backyard. I follow an organization of people with backyard chickens and am continually amazed at the posts regarding the chickens in the family home. [node:read-more:link]

DuPont Pioneer and the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) announced that Pioneer will award $175,000 in grants to agriscience educators to fund training and classroom resources that will help them implement advanced agriculture curriculum. Grant recipients are teachers who are implementing Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) in their classrooms. CASE is a multi-year approach to agriscience education with rigorous educator training requirements and hands-on, inquiry focused learning activities. [node:read-more:link]