There are many challenges to farming for a living: It's often grueling work that relies on unpredictable factors such as weather and global market prices. But one aspect that's often ignored is the cost of health care.  A University of Vermont researcher found that nationally, most farmers cited health care costs as a top concern. Shoshanah Inwood is a rural sociologist at UVM. She has been studying the aging and shrinking farm population, and what components are needed to build a prosperous farm economy. [node:read-more:link]

President Trump is preparing executive orders aimed at curtailing Obama-era policies on climate and water pollution, according to individuals briefed on the measures.  While both directives will take time to implement, they will send an unmistakable signal that the new administration is determined to promote fossil-fuel production and economic activity even when those activities collide with some environmental safeguards. Individuals familiar with the proposals asked for anonymity to describe them in advance of their announcement, which could come as soon as this week. [node:read-more:link]

Federal authorities would be empowered to immediately deport vastly more undocumented immigrants as part of a broad crackdown being developed by the Trump administration that would significantly change the way federal agencies enforce immigration laws.  Two draft memos signed on Friday by John F. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits, a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions. The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged. [node:read-more:link]

Organic grain is flooding into the U.S., depressing prices and drawing complaints from domestic organic farmers who fear their harvests are held to stricter standards than foreign-raised crops.

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More than 500 national, state and local farm, conservation and nutrition organizations have signed a letter urging the House and Senate budget committees not to propose cuts in the farm bill that this Congress will be writing. The groups point out that the 2014 farm bill was required to make $23 billion in cuts, and that spending on crop insurance and nutrition assistance is dropping sharply, according to recent cost estimates. [node:read-more:link]

Farmland values continued to wane in the fourth quarter, according to the Tenth District Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions. On average, nonirrigated and irrigated farmland values dropped 6 percent, and ranchland values fell 7 percent from the same period last year (Chart 1). These downgrades were the largest since the Great Recession of 2007-09 but were relatively small compared to declines in the 1980s. The largest changes in District states occurred in Kansas and Nebraska (Table 1). [node:read-more:link]

There is a lot of emotion these days surrounding the use of seed created with genetic engineering. Some groups have grown concerned about associated pesticides and what they see as corporate control. Scientists tell us that the technology is beneficial and poses no additional risk compared to other breeding methods.  I wanted to find this out for myself. In March I contacted Rupp Seeds, one of many suppliers of seed for farmers. The immediate problem I faced was that of scale. I live in a very small Annapolis duplex with a lawn that takes me about five minutes to cut. [node:read-more:link]

Wsconsin-based Sargento Foods Inc., is expanding a voluntary recall of some cheeses due to a possible bacterial contamination.  The company recalled some cheeses Feb. 10, but expanded the recall Friday to include products produced on the same line. Sargento says it also cut ties with Indiana-based Deutsch Kase Haus, which supplied cheese which may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. [node:read-more:link]

Philadelphia’s six-week-old tax on sweetened beverages is already taking a toll on drink distributors and grocers, with some reporting sales drops of as much as 50 percent. “In 30 years of business, there’s never been a circumstance in which we’ve ever had a sales decline of any significant amount,” said Jeff Brown, chief executive officer of Brown’s Super Stores. “I would describe the impact as nothing less than devastating.” [node:read-more:link]