Following the 2012 Brownback tax cuts, farmers no longer had to pay state income tax -- just like 334,000 LLCs, S corporations and sole proprietorships.  But farmers get a little something extra: They also pay no state income tax on subsidies they get from Washington. In all, about 40,000 farmers in Kansas receive about $1 billion a year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even many farmers think not paying taxes on this money is a bad idea. [node:read-more:link]

The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law charges AMS with developing a national mandatory system for disclosing the presence of bioengineered material. USDA has established a working group to develop a timeline for rulemaking and to ensure an open and transparent process for effectively establishing this new program, which will increase consumer confidence and understanding of the foods they buy, and avoid uncertainty for food companies and farmers.  We are committed to providing multiple opportunities for engagement. [node:read-more:link]

The “they” are six researchers at The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, based at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences.  The “it” is another attempt to alarm citizens with false and misleading information in an attempt to block another new chicken farm in Maryland.  The “it” is contained in a letter to one Jennifer Feindt, a Farm Loan Specialist with the USDA Farm Service Agency. But this time around they really have “egg” all over their collective faces. [node:read-more:link]

Because of its size and the high visibility of its brand, McDonald’s has become a target for just about every activist group out there. The resulting public relations smear campaigns have resulted in the fast food giant making several changes in its purchasing practices for items as diverse as eggs, coffee, chicken meat and packaging materials. As part of McDonald’s transparency efforts, the company has commissioned articles and videos explaining where its food ingredients come from and how they are produced. [node:read-more:link]

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on July 11 signed a proclamation declaring Aug. 7-13, 2016, as "National Farmers Market Week." [node:read-more:link]

Most of the debate about GMOs has focused on transgenic crops in which a gene from one species is inserted into the DNA of another species. With herbicide-tolerant crops, a gene from a plant that is resistant to the desired herbicide is inserted into the genome of a crop like corn or cotton that normally is killed when sprayed with the given herbicide. Similarly, scientists have inserted a gene that induces the production of the toxin produced by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into a corn plant. [node:read-more:link]

Antoine Meriot, a French economist released a study that pinpoints the estimated $1.7 billion in annual benefits flowing to India's sugar producers.   At the heart of India's subsidy system are government-mandated prices for sugarcane. These prices, which are paid to farmers by the sugar mills that process the cane, are much higher than elsewhere. For example, India's farmers received $42 per metric ton of cane in 2014, compared to the $31 seen by U.S. farmers. [node:read-more:link]

Despite announcing the closure of four units at an Ohio coal plant it initially sought to protect, the amount of money FirstEnergy could recover from customers in new charges has now ballooned to more than $8 billion.   FirstEnergy still wants a non-bypassable charge that critics have said could cost consumers almost $4 billion. In the same filing, it says that a new rider suggested by staff at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio would be a good idea, but that the proposed rate of $131 million per year for three years would be inadequate. [node:read-more:link]

The decline in prices for food and feed crops, livestock and fish products in 2015 signals that “an era of high prices is quite likely over for all sub-sectors,” economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) say.  Developed jointly with analysts at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, the Paris-based OECD projected in its Agricultural Outlook 2016-2025 that most agricultural prices wo [node:read-more:link]

Years of negative margins have U.S. row crop farmers facing a bleak outlook, and Rabobank believes farmers must lower operation costs in order to survive.  A new report—Farming the Efficient Frontier: Crop Efficiency, Not Volume, Will Drive Future Financial Performance—by the Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory group, which reviews the current costs of inputs and land and the projected supply and demand of commodities, explores the outlook for U.S. [node:read-more:link]