USDA’s trade aid package is a disappointment to corn farmers, according to Kansas Corn Growers Association President Ken McCauley, White Cloud. McCauley commented on the one-cent-per-bushel allocation for corn in the Market Facilitation Program announced by USDA today.“I can’t say ‘thanks for nothing’ but one cent per bushel is close to nothing, In fact, this payment only applies to half of your crop so in reality, that’s a half-cent per bushel at this point. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. soybeans can still make it to China without paying the 25 percent tariff -- they just have to take a 5,500-mile (8,850-kilometer) diversion via Argentina. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how the trade would happen. An unusual flood of U.S. beans to Argentina could be processed by that nation’s huge crushing industry and sent to China as soy meal. Argentina is the world’s biggest exporter of meal, made from the crushed oilseed and used as animal feed.Beans from the U.S. are going to Argentina after one of the worst droughts in decades crippled production on the Argentine Pampas. [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]

New York is vital for farming; far from its national reputation as merely an urban center, the state has seven million acres of farmland and is one of the biggest producers of dairy and apples. It also faces many of the same issues that face farmers around the country, with perhaps the biggest being simply holding onto, or gaining new, farmland. The National Young Farmers Coalition’s new paper has some concrete suggestions for how to combat these issues.  The difficulty existing farmers face keeping farmland, and the difficulty new farmers face finding farmland, are not unique to New York. [node:read-more:link]

Smoke from wildfires clogged the sky across the U.S. West, blotting out mountains and city skylines from Oregon to Colorado, delaying flights and forcing authorities to tell even healthy adults in the Seattle area to stay indoors. As large cities dealt with unhealthy air for a second summer in a row, experts warned that it could become more common as the American West faces larger and more destructive wildfires because of heat and drought blamed on climate change. [node:read-more:link]

Before the current farm bill expires on September 30, House and Senate conferees will sit down and try to put the finishing touches on a new, thousand-page bill that speaks to all aspects of the nation’s agriculture policy, from farm subsidies to crop insurance to conservation programs. [node:read-more:link]

A Wisconsin family is turning to crowdfunding to save their dairy farm, which dates all the way back to 1873.Dale Cihlar, a fourth generation dairy farmer and grandfather of nine grandkids, had reached a new low – with several prized dairy cows dying, the price of milk plummeting, and another $1,600 monthly payment for the manure storage system the county required them to install. [node:read-more:link]

Last fall, as Bayer AG was completing its $66 billion mergerwith Monsanto Co., Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann visited the concrete-slab Berlin complex where company scientists develop disease-fighting drugs. At an employee town hall meeting, Baumann asked whether staffers believed environmentalists’ claims that the Monsanto weed killer Roundup causes cancer. Despite the CEO’s obvious interest in the acquisition, some raised their hands. On Aug. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announces today the deregulation of Nuseed Americas’ canola variety genetically engineered (GE) to contain in its seed increased levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is an omega-3 fatty acid. [node:read-more:link]

By sequencing the genome of the yellow-banded bumblebee, researchers have found that inbreeding and disease are likely culprits in their rapid decline in North America. This is believed to be the first time the genome of an at-risk bumblebee has been sequenced and it allows researchers to take a deeper look into the potential reason for their diminishing numbers. What they found surprised them.By sequencing the genome of the yellow-banded bumblebee, York University researchers have found that inbreeding and disease are likely culprits in their rapid decline in North America. [node:read-more:link]