Some overdue support and payback are on the way for Native American farmers and ranchers. A $380 million settlement, issued by a federal judge this April, will create a Native American-run $265 million endowed trust for nonprofit organizations working on Indian lands. It will also pay other money to families who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for discrimination. [node:read-more:link]
Seven outbreaks of salmonella linked to backyard poultry flocks have caused 324 cases of illnesses in 35 states since January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One death has been reported, and 66 people have been hospitalized. Results from investigations with local health, veterinary and agriculture officials, as well as USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, found the culprit to be human contact with live poultry such as chicks and ducklings from multiple hatcheries. [node:read-more:link]
Cotton producers will receive $300 million in one-time ginning-assistance payments to help cope with the global downturn in prices for the commodity. “The Cotton Ginning Cost Share program will offer meaningful, timely and targeted assistance to cotton growers to help with their anticipated ginning costs and to facilitate marketing,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The payments will be based on a producer's 2015 cotton acreage, multiplied by 40 percent of the average regional ginning cost. [node:read-more:link]
The death of meaningful U.S. immigration reform, done in by Washington partisanship and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s incendiary comments on foreigners, is leaving crops withering in the field and the farm lobby with nowhere to turn as a labor shortage intensifies. Carlos Castaneda watched one-quarter of his Napa cabbages rot in three of his California fields this spring as 37 immigrant laborers scheduled to arrive March 13 under a farmworker visa program were delayed by bureaucratic paperwork. [node:read-more:link]
Farming, food processing and distribution are playing a major role in a community revitalization program designed to lift people out of poverty and reduce crime in special Promise Zones across the country, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said. One of the nine new Promise Zones announced Monday is in southwest Florida. The area has developable land, an unemployment rate of over 30 percent, and plenty of potential for growth, Vilsack told reporters in a teleconference. [node:read-more:link]
The Institute for Feed Education & Research is pleased to announce its support of the recently released Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle: Eighth Revised Edition (Beef NRC) publication. IFEEDER largely funded the revision, donating $75,000 to the National Academies of Sciences. The Beef NRC, originally published in 1944, serves as a reference to animal nutritionists, professors, and the cattle and feed industries in the development and implementation of nutritional and feeding programs for beef cattle. [node:read-more:link]
Cook learned skills for his startup from an entrepreneur development course at Fond du Lac's Emergent Technology Center. The 12-week session aims to help people bring their business ideas to fruition. Wisconsin often tracks near or at the bottom of state-by-state start-up rankings, but the center is working to change that. Cook learned to develop back-end business planning steps to launch BoviSync. The software was largely completed when he enrolled in the course, but there are always more steps to starting a business than developing a good product, Cook said. [node:read-more:link]
In California, there is so much solar energy that grid operators have to switch off solar farms. One solution of dealing with the additional power generated is to share the renewable wealth across state borders – but in the West, it's sparking some not-so-neighborly opposition. Nancy Traweek's job is to balance California's electrical grid at the California Independent System Operator, keeping the lights on for 30 million people. [node:read-more:link]
Brad Allamong understands the concerns about a proposed $100 million wind farm to be built near Crossville. He has heard directly from some who fear the project's impact on the community. But Allamong is urging everyone not to jump to conclusions until they get a full understanding of the project's pros and cons. [node:read-more:link]
Larval perch gorge themselves on microplastics, which seems to be stunting growth and affecting natural instincts. Earlier this year a report from the World Economic Forum claimed there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050 and president Obam signed a ban on plastic microbeads into law late last year. Now, a new study shows that the problem may be more urgent than first thought—some baby fish choose plastic microparticles over natural food, leading to stunted growth and changes in behavior.
