Cranberry farmers buried under a glut of the tart fruit are seeking permission for a radical way to dig themselves out: destroying millions of pounds of their crops. [node:read-more:link]
“Today’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on its tariff mitigation plan falls far short of addressing the losses dairy producers are experiencing due to trade retaliation resulting from the Trump Administration’s imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs. [node:read-more:link]
The challenges of rural America and Russian political interference seem on opposite spectrums of connectedness, until one stops to examine how Russia is poised to benefit from the current turbulence in global trade policy. Is the Trump administration truly crafting new trade frameworks, or is the Russian agriculture sector building its future on the bankruptcies of America's breadbasket? The current deck is undeniably stacked against U.S. [node:read-more:link]
USDA forecast net farm income for this year at $65.7 billion, up from a February projection but down $9.8 billion, or 13 percent, from 2017, when the broad measure of farmland profits increased nearly 23 percent. The department’s Economic Research Service said that in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars, net farm income is expected to drop $11.4 billion for the year, after increasing $13 billion (20.3 percent) in 2017. [node:read-more:link]
Craft beer fans seeking different flavors are accustomed to hitting the road to taste offerings from breweries both near and far from home. Special releases of new and limited-run creations are a big draw, but so too are the breweries themselves. As the craft beer industry has blossomed over the past decade, so too have options for such visits. [node:read-more:link]
Vegetarian food-maker Tofurky filed a lawsuit in Missouri on Monday seeking to defend its right to describe its products with meat terminology such as "sausage" and "hot dogs," as long as the packaging makes clear what the ingredients are. [node:read-more:link]
An Aug. 29 statement from US Dept. of Agriculture Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety, Carmen Rottenberg discredits Consumer Reports (CR) for recently publishing a story claiming that meat and poultry sold at retail outlets contain drug residues that are harmful to humans. The story claims that drugs prohibited in meat and poultry products, including a “hallucinogenic party drug,” a risky anti-inflammatory, an anemia-linked antibiotic and other banned and restricted drugs, may show up in US meat and poultry products more often than previously known. [node:read-more:link]
Nevada dispensaries sold nearly $425 million worth of recreational marijuana and pulled in nearly $70 million in tax revenue in the state’s first full year of sales, officials announced. [node:read-more:link]
A pair of proposed amendments to the Colorado Constitution, dubbed Amendments Y and Z, take aim at "the most important voting matter no one has ever heard of," according to one backer. Their target: Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is stacking the deck in favor of one political party by drawing political district maps in its favor. [node:read-more:link]
As the U.S. economy continues to grow and unemployment dwindles, labor scarcity and wage inflation threaten the rural economy and put additional stress on profitability of the agriculture industry at a time of depressed commodity prices. Manual laborers are chasing higher wages offered in industries like transportation, construction, hospitality and mining, forcing agriculture employers to increase wages at a faster rate to compete, according to a new study from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange Division. [node:read-more:link]
