Few topics in agriculture are as controversial in the public eye as GMOs. For more than two years, the labeling of GMO ingredients on food packaging has been a hot topic. As consumers continue to buy more non-GMO products, one major food company has become a champion of the need for labeling: Campbell Soup Company.   “We decided to embrace it,” says Kelly Johnston, the company’s vice president of government affairs, who spoke from the mainstage at the 2017 Top Producer Seminar. [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.” [node:read-more:link]

A $10 million commercial biotech plant laboratory in Middleton, Wisconsin, first opened in 1982 with the help of University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists, will soon become part of UW–Madison following a donation from Monsanto Co. The facility, a labyrinth of greenhouses and laboratories where some of plant biotechnology’s first critical steps were taken, was officially donated to UW–Madison’s University Research Park by Monsanto last month (December 2016) to become the hub of the new Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center (WCIC). [node:read-more:link]

Later this year the nation’s first “integrated” wind and solar hybrid project will begin producing power outside a small city in northwest Minnesota. Developed by Juhl Energy, Inc., the Red Lake Falls Project combines two 2.3 megawatt (MW) General Electric 116-meter rotor turbines with a 1 MW solar photovoltaic installation. Dan Juhl, the company’s founder, said it will be the first project in the country to use wind integrated solar energy (WiSE) allowing turbines and panels to share a converter, which transforms electrical direct-current voltage for use on the grid. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is noting that farmers have, since a change more than three years ago that lowered the rate at which farmland assessments can rise, saved a total of $36.6 million on property taxes. The shift lowered the maximum allowed rate of increase from 10 percent to 2 percent per year. The idea was to help keep property and school taxes bearable for the state’s farmers who may be land rich but cash poor. Here are the details along with a regional breakdown and a bushel full of happy quotes: Governor Andrew M. [node:read-more:link]

Dale McClellan rebuilt his grandfather’s bankrupt milk processing company into a leading business and became a champion for agriculture.  McClellan, who had grown up milking cows, was just 23 when the company — and his family — went broke.“I was young and just trying to survive, but I had a burning passion to get back into processing because I didn’t feel it was our fault that we got out,” McClellan recalls. “They bled him to death through pricing, but that happened to every family milk plant in the United States. National brands squished them. [node:read-more:link]

On February 14, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance prohibiting retail stores from selling commercially bred dogs and cats.  Stores are instead encouraged to partner with animal shelters and rescue groups to display adoptable animals. But the new law, which also prohibits the sale of puppies and kittens under eight weeks old, doesn’t make it illegal to breed companion animals. [node:read-more:link]

Minnesota Farm Bureau leaders and other agricultural groups are working with state legislators to tweak the new buffer law. Lawmakers have held hearings where they heard from officials from the Board of Soil and Water Resources and Department of Natural Resources. State Farm Bureau  Associate Director of Public Policy Cole Rupprecht says the buffer maps released by DNR need to be adjusted. He says another area of the law that that needs modification deals with the alternative farming practices listed in the statute. [node:read-more:link]

Humans have dramatically increased the spatial and seasonal extent of wildfires across the US in recent decades and ignited more than 840,000 blazes in the spring, fall and winter seasons over a 21-year period, according to new research. [node:read-more:link]