Maplevale Farms, one of the country’s leading food service providers, has brought a federal class action antitrust lawsuit against the country’s top poultry producers, alleging they conspired to hatch a plan to manipulate the supply of chicken to keep the price of the birds artificially high, harvesting bumper profits. According the complaint, at a time their input costs were falling – in particular, the prices of the corn and soybeans used to feed their chickens – the prices of broilers remained stubbornly high, relative to past “boom and bust” cycles. [node:read-more:link]

Louisiana Agricultural commissioner Mike Strain presented the Cuban government with a memorandum of understanding.  "It's a pledge of mutual support, working together to grow agricultural trade, industrial trade."  In upcoming months, Cuban officials will revise the memorandum, and on a state visit in October, Governor Edwards is scheduled to sign it.   But for Guillory, there's no deeper understanding than talking rice farmer to rice farmer... "Farmers everywhere have a fraternity that no one else understands."  ...and there's no substitute for a shared cigar-and a handshake.  [node:read-more:link]

A federal judge on Tuesday tentatively rejected a plan by the federal Bureau of Land Management to open more than 1,500 square miles of lands in central California to oil drilling and fracking.  The BLM failed to take a "hard look" at the environmental effects of the estimated 25 percent of new wells that would be devoted to fracking, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald wrote in the ruling. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Transportation has released a proposed rule that would require trucks weighing more than 26,000 pounds to be equipped with speed limiting devices (also known as speed governors or speed limiters), but the regulatory body did not propose a speed to which trucks would be limited. [node:read-more:link]

Fifty years after Canada began flying in seasonal workers to help out on the farm, a group is rallying to have the program’s participants granted permanent immigration status.  “These are the workers putting food on our tables, but they’re not being treated the same as other workers,” said Elizabeth Ha, a member of Harvesting Freedom, a migrant farmworker caravan travelling over the next several weeks from Windsor to Ottawa to highlight issues facing those seasonal visitors.  Facing unemployment at home on the Caribbean island of St. [node:read-more:link]

Recognizing these pathways to promotion, the California Strawberry Commission created a program that exists nowhere else. More than 3,000 employees are trained annually through regular workshops and field days for ranch managers, crew supervisors and farmers. These workshops provide continuing education and skills development for strawberry farming’s mid-level management workers: nearly all promoted from harvest worker positions.  California has the most comprehensive farm labor protections in the country. [node:read-more:link]

For those who believe the phrase “social sustainability” and the ideas it represents are an overblown waste of time, I have to say that you need to wake up and smell the coffee along with the bacon! The primary pillar of economic sustainability depends upon the corollary of social sustainability. Our incomes are ultimately sourced from the society we serve. To the extent that we allow a willful ignorance to unnecessarily alienate our ever-changing consumer base, we shoot ourselves in the foot. This era of social media is an era requiring deeper transparency. [node:read-more:link]

Ohio University has received a $2 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Partnerships for Opportun­ities and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) program to create a 28-county regional innovation network in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.  The goal of the program is to create 125 new businesses and 1,110 jobs and raise $25 million in company investments from public and private sources over the next six years. [node:read-more:link]

The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected a challenge of the way state officials approved a wind farm in Champaign County.  In a unanimous ruling released on Wednesday, the court found that the Ohio Power Siting Board was proper in the way it approved revisions to a proposal for the Buckeye I wind farm. But there remains a separate pending appeal that is delaying construction of the project. [node:read-more:link]

The hedge fund run by activist investor Bill Ackman has taken a 9.9-percent stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill, saying the fast-casual restaurant chain is undervalued. Pershing Square Capital Management said in a regulatory filing it intends to have discussions with Chipotle’s management and board that may relate to the Denver-based company’s governance, board composition, operations, cost structure, assets, financial condition and strategic plans. [node:read-more:link]