Featured

Kansas rancher Greg Gardiner got into some of his scorched pastures for the first time Wednesday and surveyed what he likened to a battle zone: carcasses of dead cattle everywhere. "It's pretty much a catastrophe," Gardiner said as he looked out on his ranch near Ashland, charred by wildfires that have burned through hundreds of acres in four states. "It's as bad as a mind can make it."Gardiner cries when he talks about how thankful he is that none of his family members were lost in wildfires that that have led to the deaths of six people. [node:read-more:link]

China leads the U.S. by a large margin in government funding of food and ag research and development.  China began pouring money into agricultural R&D at the same time that U.S. funding from federal and state sources stagnated and, about a decade ago, began to decline.  According to three USDA economists, China surpassed the U.S. in public funding in 2009 and had a 2-to-1 advantage in 2013. They say reduced U.S. spending “may have negative implications for agricultural productivity” when dealing with new pests and diseases and with climate change. [node:read-more:link]

Highly pathogenic H7 avian influenza has been detected in a Tyson breeder flock in Tennessee. In a follow-up on the avian influenza situation in Tennessee, USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) has confirmed the full subtype for the highly pathogenic H7 avian influenza reported in Lincoln County, TN. The virus has been identified as North American wild bird lineage H7N9 HPAI based upon full genome sequence analysis of the samples at the NVSL. [node:read-more:link]

2014 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey-Details about agricultural land for 25 States, 6 regions, and the contiguous United States.USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and Economic Research Service (ERS) jointly conducted the 2014 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey to shed light on the 911 million acres of agricultural land—held by both operator and non-operator landlords—in the contiguous 48 States. [node:read-more:link]

Wildfires across the country had consumed more than 1 million acres, taking at least 7 lives. The Oklahoma Forestry Service told CNN the fires burned 400,000 acres, and prompted Gov. Mary Fallin to declare a state of emergency for 22 counties.Officials in four other states said that 400,000 acres were destroyed in Kansas, 325,000 in the Texas Panhandle and 30,000 in Colorado -- not to mention the 6,000 acres burning in the Florida swamps near Naples that resulted in mandatory evacuations. [node:read-more:link]

Destructive wildfires broke out in the Plains on Monday and grew quickly in size, forcing thousands to evacuate and contributing to the deaths of six people.  The fires were fanned by strong winds on the western side of the same storm system that spawned an outbreak of severe storms in the Midwest. [node:read-more:link]

Dr. Johansson noted that, “Farm income has fallen dramatically since 2013, falling almost 30 percent in real terms. That is the largest 4-year drop in farm income in 40 years, when real farm income fell more than 45 percent between 1973 and 1977.  We have seen record production in major commodities over the past few years, and as a result prices are down significantly.  Baseline projections show flat farm income throughout the 10-year forecast period.” With respect to farmland values, Dr. [node:read-more:link]

Recently, SARL was a signee with 200 rural support groups on a letter to President Trump regarding rebuilding the infrastructure of rural America.  In the wake of the Rural Infrastructure Coalition’s letter to President Trump, the organizer's led by Farm Credit, want to develop a Rural Infrastructure “Repository” (i.e. [node:read-more:link]

Mandatory country-of-origin-labeling bills for beef and ground beef made it out of committees in Pierre and Cheyenne, but got no further in the farm and ranch friendly South Dakota and Wyoming Legislatures. Senate Bill 135 went down in the South Dakota Senate on Feb. 25. It would have required grocery stores in the Rushmore State to disclosure the country of origin of beef and ground beef. House Bill 198 died in the Wyoming House on Feb. [node:read-more:link]

When it came to helping craft a complex, landmark package of bills to revamp the state’s energy policy and map out the future of electric power in Michigan, Sen. Mike Nofs tried to at least keep one part of the legislative work simple and unchanging — the measure’s overarching goals.  “We wanted to control our destiny, regardless of the policies being set at the federal level,” he says. [node:read-more:link]