Cargill has developed an industry-first robotic cattle driver aimed at improving animal welfare and employee safety. The robots are designed to move cattle from pens to the harvest area, reducing stress to the animals by minimizing their proximity to human activity. [node:read-more:link]
“China has the world’s biggest appetite for pork. It’s such a beloved staple that the written Chinese character for ‘home’ depicts a pig inside a house. U.S. producers banked on that business being around for years. “That’s changed. As a result of the Trump administration’s clash with Beijing over trade, China’s tariffs on U.S. pork have climbed as high as70%, making U.S. imports more expensive. At the same time, an outbreak of African swine fever in China has increased demand for imported pork. [node:read-more:link]
More than 60,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored on the shores of four of the five Great Lakes — in some cases, mere yards from the waterline — in still-growing stockpiles. \“It’s actually the most dangerous waste produced by any industry in the history of the Earth,” said Gordon Edwards, president of the nonprofit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.The spent nuclear fuel is partly from 15 current or former U.S. nuclear power plants, including four in Michigan, that have generated it over the past 50 years or more. [node:read-more:link]
Beyond the boarded-up buildings and patchwork fences that others view as eyesores, Huron Mayor Rey Leon sees potential in this tiny central California farm town that has been mired in poverty for decades.Leon, 45, was a reluctant and unlikely leader for one of the state’s poorest cities. [node:read-more:link]
The state of Arizona has canceled a vaccine education program after receiving complaints from parents who don't immunize their school-age children. [node:read-more:link]
Marijuana sales in Colorado exceeded $1 billion as of August of this year, with tax revenue from those sales coming in at $200 million, according to a report from the Colorado Department of Revenue and its Marijuana Enforcement Division. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. government is taking steps to develop offshore wind farms off both coasts. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced this week the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an offshore wind auction Dec. [node:read-more:link]
Diversifying working lands -- including farmland, rangeland and forests -- may be key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change, says a new review article. These changes could extend the habitat of critters like bats, but also much larger creatures like bears, elk and other wildlife, outside the boundaries of protected areas, while creating more sustainable, and potentially more productive, working lands. [node:read-more:link]
A University of Nebraska Extension policy specialist foresees a large gap in the farm safety net for crop producers in 2019. Nebraska crop producers, for example, have received 500 to 600 million dollars in total payments on each of the 2014 through 2016 crops. [node:read-more:link]
A team of researchers from the University of Missouri (MU), Kansas State University (KSU), and biotechnology company, Genus plc, have successfully produced a litter of pigs genetically resistant to a deadly porcine virus through gene editing. Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), a coronavirus, is highly contagious and commonly infects pig intestines. The team edited the gene responsible for making the ANPEP enzyme, resulting in a litter of seven pigs with a null gene that did not produce the enzyme. [node:read-more:link]
