Government
Crop insurance, farm safety programs get big cuts under Trump’s budget
|
Crop insurance and other farm support programs are set to receive big cuts in President Trump’s proposed 2021 budget.
Government
After suing feds for contempt, Kraft Foods attempts second settlement in wheat market manipulation case
|
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Kraft Foods Group, Inc. have reached a tentative second out-of-court agreement in an ongoing saga that stemmed from the food company’s alleged wheat futures market manipulation nearly a decade ago.
Agribusiness
As sales of the pesticide chlorpyrifos ends in California, maker Corteva announces it will stop producing it.
|
Corteva Agriscience – the main manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children – said it would stop its production by the end of this year.
Half of North Dakota’s Corn is still in the field. USDA calls it “on-farm storage”
|
ROLLETTE, ND - Driving through Rollette County, North Dakota in mid-January, there are places the corn can be seen popping out of snow drifts piling up on the edges of the field. Squares of brown, unharvested fields dot the otherwise white, flat landscape. That corn wasn’t supposed to be there at all. It should have been harvested by October. “USDA calls that ‘on-farm storage’,” Ryan Pederson said, laughing as he drove past his unharvested corn.
The largest single beneficiary of Trump’s tariff payments? An alternative farm lender.
|
The Trump Administration has paid farmers billions to offset losses from ongoing trade wars, but millions have also gone to an alternative farm lender.
Agrifund LLC, which does business as Ag Resource Management, or ARM, has received more trade mitigation money than anyone else, according to a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
More foreign ownership of U.S. beef processors raises food safety concerns
|
With Marfrig Global Foods' purchase of National Beef Packing Company, two of the four largest U.S. beef processors will be owned by Brazilian companies, which has some cattle ranchers worried.
Government
Report warns of dangers from staff decline at Illinois EPA
|
The state's lack of investment in the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is putting citizens at increased risk of public health issues, according to a report released by a group of experts on Tuesday.
A 10-minute delay of key USDA reports gave some people an advantage. Here’s why.
|
Each month, the United States Department
of Agriculture releases a series of reports that analysts, grain traders,
investors and farmers use to make decisions or buy and sell commodities.
But on Friday, November 8, two of those USDA
reports - World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimate (WASDE) and the Crop
Production report – were delayed by at least 10 minutes.
Government
Does efficient irrigation technology preserve groundwater? A new GAO report says the answer is probably no.
|
Note: This story is embargoed for republication until Nov. 24, 2019
Efficient irrigation may produce more crops, but it doesn’t appear to preserve groundwater, according to a federal report released this week. Decades of irrigation has already depleted aquifers that many irrigated farms rely on, according to the report from the Government Accountability Office, and efficient systems appear to not help. Minus a few exceptions, GAO researchers found “there is no change in the amount of water farmers apply to a field with more efficient technology,” according to the Nov. 12 report.
Energy
EPA’s second attempt to fix Renewable Fuel Standard loophole draws criticism
|
Critics of new proposed rules regulating how oil and gas refineries blend biofuels say the federal administration’s generous exemptions to large refineries have contributed to the shuttering of at least 10 ethanol plants since 2017.