Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/category/opinion/)
As Dave Dickey writes: To put it in a nutshell, while performing a noble endeavor in pursuing a civil action case against Kraft Foods Group Inc. for market manipulation of wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission may be shirking its responsibility to tell the public what in the blue blazes is going on.
The never ending debate over whether Bayer's herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate causes cancer has taken another twist with the Environmental Protection Agency filing a friends of the court brief in Bayer's federal appeal to overturn a $25 million award to Edwin Hardeman, a groundskeeper who claimed spraying Roundup on poison oak and weeds for decades caused his non-Hodgkin's' lymphoma. Much is at stake for Bayer. Thus far three glyphosate cancer cases have gone to federal trial with the German based company losing every time. Given that Bayer faces at least another 42,700 lawsuits (with more likely being filed every day) you can imagine just how badly Bayer is in need of a win. In its court filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Bayer wrote the Hardeman appeal has the potential to shape how every subsequent Roundup case is litigated.
Not to the future of Roundup sales and the value of the company. Bayer acquired Roundup in its purchase of Monsanto in 2018 for $63 million. Since then Bayer stock has plummeted about 23 %. Now we get the EPA – a noted glyphosate cheerleader – backing Bayer. In its amicus brief with the appeals court Justice Department and EPA attorneys maintain:
“EPA approved the label for the pesticide/herbicide at issue here, Roundup, through a registration process that did not require a cancer warning. In fact, EPA has never required a labeling warning of a cancer risk posed by Roundup, and such a warning would be inconsistent with the agency's scientific assessments of the carcinogenic potential of the product.
Well.
Taken to a legal extreme, Obama's WOTUS would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to define navigable waters as including farmland drainage ditches, seasonal streams, tributaries and even puddle-like depressions.
It was all smiles in Washington D.C. January 15 when the President Trumped inked a Phase 1 trade deal with China. Looking on were dozens of Wall Street chief executive types from familiar companies like AGI, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, Boeing, and Citibank. As for Big Ag types … not so much.
The POTUS trade war with China took a huge toll on U.S. farmers. U.S. agricultural sales to China were down nearly $16 billion over the past two years requiring the White House to provide $28 billion in government bailouts to U.S. producers, notably soybean farmers. So on the face of it you would think producers would be jumping for joy over Phase 1 trade deal provisions including:
“For the category of agricultural goods identified in Annex 6.1, no less than $12.5 billion above the corresponding 2017 baseline amount is purchased and imported into China from the United States in calendar year 2020, and no less than $19.5 billion above the corresponding 2017 baseline amount is purchased and imported into China from the United States in calendar year 2021;
The Parties project that the trajectory of increases in the amounts of manufactured goods, agricultural goods, energy products, and services purchased and imported into China from the United States will continue in calendar years 2022 through 2025.”
So do the math. That's $32 billion in new agricultural purchases over 2017 baseline levels during the next two years. U.S. agricultural exports to China in 2017 were $19.6 billion. Bottom line: China will import $32.1 billion this year and $39.1 billion in 2021 from U.S. farmers. Those are heart pumping, fist bumping, joy jumping POTUS trumping numbers, right? But the ink had not even dried on the President's John Henry when reality reared its ugly head. The South China Morning Post reported the day before the signing that China had zero intention of increasing its annual low-tariff import quotas for corn, wheat and rice to meet demands from the United States.
You probably haven't thought much about honey bees. It's not a subject likely to come up at a dinner party (with the possible exception of how the heck do you get them to stop building a hive inside your mailbox).
But bees – better known as pollinators in agricultural circles – are critical to crop production. USDA estimates that bees pollinate roughly 90 odd U.S. crops including apples, peaches, plums, strawberries avocados, green beans, cotton, tomatoes grapes and a host of other nuts and flowering veggies.
It is no exaggeration to say that if bees were to go extinct Starbucks would be out of business. So it was a real slap in the face when the latest annual nationwide survey from the University of Maryland found bees dying at an alarming rate.
The UM survey showed U.S. beekeepers lost 40.7 percent of their bee colonies from April 2018 to April 2019. Even more concerning is that winter losses for the same period were 37.7 percent – the highest since the survey began 13 years ago. Yikes. So to state the obvious: the sky is blue, water is wet, and bees are responsible for much of the food we eat. On the face of it keeping bees healthy should be job one for multinational agricultural companies. But it hasn't worked that way.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District senior judge James E. Gritzner's preliminary injunction last month prohibiting the state of Iowa from enforcing a law making it a misdemeanor criminal offense against people using deception to gain access to agricultural production facilities for all practical purposes used the duck test.
It's that time of year again when your intrepid commentator whips out a divining rod, a scraying ball, a set of tarot cards and three marbles to prognosticate the most critical ag stories for 2020.
Here is an indisputable fact ... at the end of the day the marketplace determines business success. Especially when it comes to supply and demand of commodities. Have not enough supply and great demand and prices will go up. Have just enough supply and great demand and prices will hold steady if not increase slowly.
But have way way too much supply and dwindling demand and prices and sales will plummet rapidly. And such is the case for the U.S. milk industry which for years have ignored supply and demand forces.
Because the truth is there are too many milking cows in the U.S. while the American public have increasingly decided the answer to “Got Milk” is nope. The supply-demand imbalance reflects, in part, the management skill of U.S. dairy farmers. Way back in 1999 U.S. dairy cows produced an average of 17,763 pounds of milk a year.
But thanks to better genetics and improved feed rations dairy cows produced an average of 22,775 pounds of milk annually by 2018.
It's a head scratcher. For unfathomable reasons USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue's connotative discourse has created self-inflicted wounds for the White House.
Ultimately this case should turn on what an adult can reasonable expect a GMO label to convey. Does Nestle's No GMO Ingredients label mimic a third party verified seal with stricter standards thus confusing consumers?