Rumors about deportation raids started to circulate around the fields again, so Catalina Sanchez and her husband began to calculate the consequences of everything they did. Cirilo Perez, 36, had to go to work because the tomato crop was getting low, and he needed to pick as much as he could as fast as he could. Sanchez’s medical checkup would have to wait — going to a clinic was too risky. What they fretted most about was what to do with their daughter Miriam — a natural-born citizen in the third grade — who they worried would come home one day to an empty trailer. [node:read-more:link]

For every one American man aged 25 to 55 looking for work, there are three who have dropped out of the labor force. If Americans were working at the same rates they were when this century started, over 10 million more people would have jobs. As Eberstadt puts it, “The plain fact is that 21st-century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.” That means there’s an army of Americans semi-attached to their communities, who struggle to contribute, to realize their capacities and find their dignity. [node:read-more:link]

From work to income to health to social mobility, the year 2000 marked the beginning of what has become a distressing era for the United States.  From peak to trough, the collapse in work rates for U.S. adults between 2008 and 2010 was roughly twice the amplitude of what had previously been the country’s worst postwar recession, back in the early 1980s. In that previous steep recession, it took America five years to re-attain the adult work rates recorded at the start of 1980. This time, the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Dear Mr. President:
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Speaking at the 93rd Annual USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington, Va., a trio of farm economists offered a somewhat gloomy picture of the farm economy for the year ahead, although one not unlike the trends observed in recent years. Net farm income is projected to drop almost $6 billion in 2017, tumbling primarily on decreases in the crop sector to a $62.3 billion total. The drop is a decrease of about 8.7 percent, the fourth consecutive year of declines after record highs were observed in 2013. If realized, the projected figure would be the lowest since 2002. [node:read-more:link]

America’s first ever solar-wind hybrid power generation project is set to harness innovative technology supplied by GE Renewables.Expected to enter commercial operation in August, the 4.6MW community based project in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, is being developed by Juhl Energy. [node:read-more:link]

Nebraska taxpayers, farmers, ranchers, teachers and others ratcheted up the pressure for reducing property taxes.Sixteen organizations representing thousands of state residents announced they have joined forces as Nebraskans United for Property Tax Reform and Education.Leaders said the new coalition represents an expansion of efforts to reduce the state’s reliance on property taxes, while providing adequate and sustainable education funding. The coalition includes the Farm Bureau and the Nebraska Farmers Union — two groups that often differ on agricultural issues. [node:read-more:link]

A new study looking at dairy consumption and its relationship with metabolic health has delivered some promising results for the dairy industry. The study examined the impact of dairy foods on markers of fatness and metabolic health.   Cheese consumption was not associated with body fatness or LDL cholesterol. [node:read-more:link]

San Bernardino County could pay $48 million for the property of one of the few remaining Chino dairy farmers after the family complained in a lawsuit that most of their spread, located under a landing pattern for Chino Airport, had been turned into a no-build zone without compensation. The lawsuit, which went into private arbitration, claimed that the county had, bit by bit over the past 25 years, turned most of the 58 acres of dairy land owned since the 1960s by Jim and Annie Nyenhuis into a runway protection zone. [node:read-more:link]

Kansas farmers and ranchers mired in a tough agricultural economy shared their concerns about the farm bill with two top ag legislators Thursday in Manhattan. [node:read-more:link]