Agriculture

Daughter-in-chief: Ivanka Trump pushes food distribution program

The U.S. Agriculture Department is unveiling a new food distribution program with an emphasis on aiding small businesses – an issue that is being pushed by a very prominent White House adviser. Her name: Ivanka Trump. Under the “Farmers to Families Food Box Program,” the federal government buys meat, produce and dairy products from farmers and ranchers and then provides it to local distribution centers that pack and deliver food boxes to those in need. It “really creates a virtuous cycle,” Trump told USA TODAY in an interview, citing a “robust demand” from food producers, consumers and “the most vulnerable in these challenging times.” Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who also participated in the interview, said the program will also address gaps in the food supply chain spawned by the coronavirus. “There was a misallocation of supply and demand, temporarily,” Perdue said. The program is a symbol of how the president’s eldest daughter is making her presence felt on a number of issues during the coronavirus pandemic. She has pushed for more aid to small businesses in programs designed to manufacture personal protective equipment, the paycheck protection program, and economic injury disaster loans. Trump, who called UPS chief executive David Abney about volunteering trucks to make food box deliveries, said she and others are “pulling all the levers” they can. And, no, the last name doesn’t hurt. “I think when you work in the White House, you tend to have your calls returned,” Trump said. “And I think most Americans are patriots and want to answer the call to action when things are requested of them.” She added: “I’m not shy about asking people to step up to the plate. The whole country needs to be galvanized in the effort, both to combat this deadly virus, but also to rebuild … to rebuild our economy as we emerge.” Trump spoke a day before the formal kickoff of the Food Box program, part of the stimulus plan known as the CARES Act. She will visit a distribution center in Laurel, Maryland, as the first food box deliveries go out the door. The USDA has already awarded $1.2 billion to food distributors to buy meat, dairy and produce products that farmers have been unable to sell because of government lockdowns. The distributors will pack the food into boxes for delivery to food banks, community and nonprofits that have had trouble getting food because of problems with the supply chain. “We’ll be up to $3 billion in total as it rolls out,” she said.

Outstanding!! Major kudos to Ivanka for her work on this important issue. For more, click on the text above. Excellent!! 🙂

Trump announces $16 billion in direct payments for farmers hurt by pandemic ’caused by China’

President Trump on Tuesday announced $16 billion in direct payments for farmers and ranchers to compensate them for lost business from the coronavirus outbreak that he said was “caused by China.” During an event at the White House, Mr. Trump also directed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to pursue cutting off trade deals with countries that ship beef cattle to the U.S. He said the U.S. beef industry is “very self-sufficient.” The direct payments, funded by the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that was approved in March and a commodity credit law, follows farm bailouts totaling $28 billion in 2018 and 2019. Those earlier payments compensated growers and ranchers for losses from tariffs imposed by China during the administration’s trade war with Beijing. “Now we’re standing strong with our farmers and ranchers once again,” Mr. Trump said during an announcement at the White House. Growers lost much of their customer base when restaurants were ordered to close during the outbreak. Much of the money will be used to purchase food to supply food banks around the country. The president said of the pandemic, “It should have never happened. You know that, I know that. The people that caused the problem, they know that, too.” “These payments will compensate farmers for losses related to the global pandemic caused by China,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll be providing billions of dollars for corn, cotton, soybean and specialty-crop farmers, cattle ranchers, just about every category I can think of.” Robert Mills Jr., owner of Briar View Farms Inc. in southern Virginia, said the money is not a bailout. “We always expect the unexpected, and we didn’t expect this [pandemic],” he said. “It’s not a rescue program. It’s going to help these farm families be able to make good, wise financial decisions. This country relies on what these farmers and ranchers do every day.”

It sure does! What was also left out of this article from today’s announcements at the White House was Ivanka Trump’s comments about efforts to package up food into “20-25 pound boxes” that would otherwise be going to waste, and is now going to food banks to give to those in need. As has already been mentioned (see previous article above), it is an effort that the First Daughter has been speerheading, and something she deserves credit for.

Coronavirus may force hog farmers to kill 10M pigs by September

U.S. pork farmers may be forced to euthanize as many as 10 million hogs by September as a result of production-plant shutdowns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the National Pork Producers Council. At least 14,000 reported positive COVID-19 cases have been connected to meatpacking facilities in at least 181 plants in 31 states as of May 13, and at least 54 meatpacking facility workers have died of the virus at 30 plants in 18 states, according to an investigation by the Midwest Center for Investigative reporting. Dozens of meat production plants closed before President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act in late April allowing large facilities to remain open during COVID-19 in an effort to address supply chain and liability issues, but farms and plants still face overcrowding threats as some plants remain closed or have significantly slower production. Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Vice President Chris Hoffman, who won America’s Best Pig Farmer of the Year award in 2019, told FOX Business that production in these meat processing plants is back up to about 70 percent, but until production gets back up to 100 percent, the industry will see backlog issues. “We process over half-a-million hogs per day, and right now, from what I heard on Tuesday, all plants are running but at different levels. We’re at 70 percent. If you take half-a-million hogs every day, and you’re only running at 70 percent production, 100,000 hogs get pushed to the next day, and then that gets pushed back to 200,000 the next day,” Hoffman said. He added that these backlog issues vary depending on which area of the country farmers are operating in and which plant they are shipping to. “I’ve heard folks say the recovery of some of these plants is faster than expected. That is a great sign that the number [of euthanized hogs] could be less,” Hoffman said, but added that the wellbeing of the people who work in these processing plants is what’s most important. About 170,000 hogs that have reached the country’s harvest standards can’t be marketed due to plant closures and slow production, the NPPC said in a press release. The organization added that housing for these market-ready hogs is “not an option” because “younger hogs coming up through the supply chain need someplace to go for care and feeding.” Producers are then faced with the choice to watch their animals suffer due to a lack of proper care or euthanize them, which the NPPC notes is the “only humane option” for farmers who produce food. It can take almost a year to care for a pig from the time it is born until the time it is ready for harvest when it has reached about 270 pounds, according to national guidelines, the release says. Hogs that weigh more than 270 pounds “cannot be processed through the nation’s primary harvest facilities due to constraints in the equipment and concerns with worker safety,” the NPPC release says. Hoffman said it takes 10 months to raise a pig to be ready for harvesting. “Every week, we have a certain amount of hogs in our facility that need to be processed. It’s not like you can turn the spigot off. It takes 10 months for the [growth] process to be completed. The lack of processing creates an overcrowded situation,” he explained. The amount of time and work farmers put into raising pigs is what makes the euthanization issue more delicate than many people may realize. Even though the pigs are raised to eventually be butchered and sold to customers as food, Hoffman says a farmer’s animals become like family because of the dedication required to take proper care of them before harvest. “These are generational farms,” Hoffman said. “Here we are with farmers who are posed with a situation they never thought they’d have to deal with, and that’s euthanizing animals. My concern as I look at the industry is: It’s a real toll on a farmer, day in and day out. These animals are like our family, they are designed for meat, and it breaks your heart to make these kinds of decisions.” Different farms approach these schedules in different ways, and some pork producers are operating normally despite the pandemic, but the industry as a whole is facing dark times. Pork harvesting was down nearly 40 percent from the prior year as of May 6 due to the pandemic. Low harvesting numbers are expected to result in the euthanization of “10,069,000 market hogs … between the weeks ending on April 25 and September 19, 2020, resulting in a severe emotional and financial toll on hog farmers,” the NCCP release notes. Members of the organization called on Congress to allocate more than $1 billion to the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-Raised Fish, as well as $505 million for euthanization and environmentally responsible disposal expenses.

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Why farmers dump food and crops while grocery stores run dry and Americans struggle

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wage a silent war across the country, American farmers are being forced to pour out milk, crush eggs, toss fresh fruits and vegetables, euthanize livestock and plow under perfectly robust crops Meanwhile, financially beleaguered Americans are lining up at food banks in unprecedented numbers, humanitarian leaders fear a global starvation pandemic is burgeoning, and grocery store shelves are sparsely filled. So what has gone wrong? A dramatic dip in demand, weak links in the highly consolidated supply chain, and decades of industry monopolization, experts say. “A large portion of our food is now produced for restaurants, hotels, schools, and institutional users, about 50 percent. Those markets have effectively closed up, and there is not enough demand for home use now,” Dan Glickman, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, told Fox News. “Nor is the supply chain set up for this rapid transformation.” From his purview, the supply chain has become very centralized, especially in meat and poultry. “This move towards concentration of food processing has been a general trend for many years and has been done for efficiency and cost-cutting purposes. But we now see how it is impacted by a single event like COVID-19, where workers have been so impacted,” Glickman continued. “Four companies control about 70 percent of meat production. We no longer have a decentralized food production process, at least not to the extent of 30 years ago.” And the extent of produce waste and revenue alone is stunning. The United Fresh Produce Association, according to Politico, predicts its members are losing out on up to $1 billion per week. “Before the pandemic, U.S. consumers purchased about a third of their calories and spent over half of their food dollars on food consumed outside of their home – restaurants, fast food, schools, work cafeterias, etc.,” explained Dr. Douglas Jackson-Smith, a professor at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. “The closure of these outlets and stay-at-home orders have radically changed where most Americans buy and consume their food, and the supply chains have been slow to reorganize and respond.” The farmers who are dumping milk and plowing under produce have thus lost customers and markets that buy products in bulk, he continued. Moreover, a large fraction of U.S. milk is used to produce mozzarella cheese, most of which is used in pizza sold through retail chain outlets – and stay-at-home orders have significantly reduced the volume of demand for pizza cheese. “In regions where this is the primary end-use for the bulk of local milk supply, it is not easy to pivot to smaller retail sized packaging or non-cheese products,” Jackson-Smith noted. “A lot of the food supply chain was built to supply commercial and retail foodservice outlets. It is difficult for many of these companies to change their production practices and distribution systems in the space of a few weeks.” For some farmers, it has taken less mental anguish to kill their animals and decimate their crops than to simply standby as they suffer and rot away as the summer approaches. The stark images on social media of dumped potato mountains and fresh milk gushing into the earth has been especially haunting given that food banks, according to Feeding America, have experienced a 70 percent uptick in demand since the virus took hold and millions lost their livelihoods. Keiko Tanaka, a professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Kentucky, underscored that of the two main supply-chains in the U.S. food industry – one for household consumption and the other for commercial use – more than half the spending comes from the large-scale commercial side, which has been practically decimated. And making an immediate shift for the sudden demand change, she noted, is far from simple. Milk processors, for example, “do not have the equipment to package [excess milk] into smaller containers for grocery stores and retail use” when there has been already a glut of cheese and other dairy products with longer shelf lives.” “Like vegetable and fruit farmers, dairy farmers have little choice but to dump excess milk,” Keiko and her team of researchers stated. “Different reasons are at work for each food supply chain that makes it unfeasible to easily or quickly divert the food supplies for commercial use to household use. Among them are labor shortages, falling prices, and mismatches in the facilities and equipment.” In addition, tens of thousands of piglets have undergone forced abortion in recent weeks amid the diminished demand. Millions of chickens have been slaughtered – and not for food. In April, the biggest meat companies not only in the U.S. but the world – including Cargill Inc., Tyson Foods, JBS USA, and Smithfield Foods – were compelled to suspend production at some 20 slaughterhouses nationwide, triggering concerns of a mass meat shortage. Data released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed nearly 5,000 plant workers in 19 states had tested positive for the virus as of April 27, likely due to the close working conditions. The subsequent threat of a meatless America prompted the Trump administration in late April to invoke the Defense Production Act, which ultimately mandates that the processing facilities remain open throughout the crisis. But as Jackson-Smith pointed out, requiring plants to be open will require a labor force, and meatpacking plants have one of the more vulnerable workforces in the food sector. “The consolidation of the meat processing sector means that the loss of a handful of very large processing sites can impact a large fraction of the nation’s meat supply,” he said. More broadly, food production, processing, and distribution became increasingly concentrated and consolidated since the 1980s and 1990s when the U.S. passed laws and enacted policies that relaxed antitrust laws and encouraged agribusiness mergers and acquisitions. “This has led to increased centralization and consolidation in the food system whereby a smaller number of very large integrated firms control the processing, distribution, and sale of food in the U.S. and globally,” Jackson-Smith explained. “Concentration is particularly notable in meat and dairy, where a few very large firms control the processing and distribution of the majority of output in the U.S.” For one, vegetables and fruits that were initially supposed to be purchased by institutional buyers no longer had an immediate buyer – and a short window of time to buy another before they were no longer sellable. The overall waning of farming, experts contend, has come to a head during the crisis. According to the USDA data, the number of farms declined rapidly from a peak of 6.8 million in 1935 to 2.05 million in 2017 while the average size increased 155 acres in 1935 to 444 acres in 2017. Furthermore, changes in the interpretation of antitrust laws since the late 1970s, Tanaka highlighted, have enabled firms to make mergers and acquisitions that would not have been allowed previously. In 1968, the U.S. had 10,000 meat processing plants, and now there are approximately 3,000. Of those 3,000, only a few account for the majority of animals processed. “A recent New York Times article also claimed that among the 800 USDA inspected slaughterhouses in the U.S., only about 50 factories slaughter and process 98 percent of beef, and many of these facilities are owned and operated by the four big meat companies,” she said. “COVID-19 outbreaks at food processing facilities have exposed how food processing is a huge bottleneck in our food system. One-size-fits-all regulations for food safety and health disadvantage small- and medium-scale professors and mom-and-pop retailers.” But in an effort to ease the burden on the agricultural sector, last month, the Trump administration announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Food Program, which will issue $16 million in payments to ranchers and farmers. It also allots $3 billion in bulk purchases of dairy, meat the produce to be dispersed through food banks. While the federal aid is welcomed, many worry it won’t be enough to revive the country’s bread and butter – so to speak – in anywhere close to what is necessary. According to the leading farmer trade group, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the aid package will not pay for livestock that is winnowed. In a statement to Reuters, the USDA said the payment program “is still being developed, and the agency has received more requests for assistance than it has money to handle.” Furthermore, the relief is likely to be far from immediate. Officials anticipate it could take upwards of a month for food to be packaged and redirected to foundations, food banks, and other places in need. So what is needed to prevent such disruptions to the U.S. food economy in the future? “We need less concentrated food supply chains. More regional supply chains have the ability to adapt,” Tanaka and her team asserted. “In order for food products to be quickly rechanneled when a segment of the food supply chain breaks, a mix of diverse sizes and types of farms, processing plants, and distributors must be included in each regional supply chain.” Nonetheless, other experts caution that sweeping changes come with their own set of financial woes. “The challenge here is that the reforms may cost more than the waste that is currently occurring. Sometimes it is simply better to let a farmer pour milk down the drain, and compensate that farmer – not all dairy farmers – for their losses,” added Vincent Smith, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Montana State University. “This is a short-term crisis, and so simply providing food aid cash transfers to the households facing hunger and letting the private market respond is likely the best approach.”

Cows talk to each other, including about food, shocking new study says

Cows are able to “commooonicate” with each other, a startling new study says. Published in Scientific Reports in December, the study notes that Holstein-Fresian heifer cattle are able to communicate with one another, using their own distinct moos. The researchers, including lead researcher Alexandra Green, took 333 samples of cow vocalizations and analyzed them using acoustic analysis programs. They discovered the cows are able to give cues in certain situations and express different emotions, including excitement, arousal, engagement and distress. “We found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts,” Green said in a statement. Positive signs were seen when the females were in heat and when there was anticipation of being fed. Negative contexts were spotted when they were denied access to food and during “physical and visual isolation from the rest of the herd.” Cameron Clark, one of the study’s co-authors and Green’s academic supervisor, praised her research. “Ali’s research is truly inspired,” Clark said in the statement. “It is like she is building a Google translate for cows.” Previous research had revealed cows and their calves are able to communicate by keeping individuality in their lowing (the vocal sounds made by cattle), but Green’s research indicates that the individuality is kept throughout their entire lives and spread across the herd. “Cows are gregarious, social animals,” Green added. “In one sense it isn’t surprising they assert their individual identity throughout their life and not just during mother-calf imprinting. But this is the first time we have been able to analyze voice to have conclusive evidence of this trait.” Green hopes that her research will be used by farmers and integrated into their routines to better understand their animals and improve their well being. “Individual distinctiveness is likely to attract social support from conspecifics, and knowledge of these individuality cues could assist farmers in detecting individual cattle for welfare or production purposes,” the researchers wrote in the study’s abstract.

Fun!! To read the study, click on the text above. 🙂

Trump signs memorandum diverting more water to California farmers

President Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum directing more of California’s scarce water supply to farmers and other agriculture interests in the state’s Central Valley, a Republican stronghold. Speaking alongside House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the lawmaker’s hometown of Bakersfield, Trump boasted of how his administration reworked environmental rules to assure more water gets to farmers, while also taking shots at his political rivals – from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to Democratic presidential primary hopeful and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “For too long water authorities have flushed millions of gallons into the Pacific,” Trump said. “I ordered the administration to update outdated opinions which determined water allocation in this state.” Trump added that he is going “to put a lot of pressure” on Newsom to enact the changes and if the California governor doesn’t follow through then “you’ll get a new governor.” Trump has long criticized the environmental rules governing the flow of water in California – calling the rules “insane” during a campaign stop in 2016 and pledging that he’d be “opening up the water” for farmers. The environmental rules are meant to ensure that enough water stayed in rivers and the San Francisco Bay to sustain more than a dozen endangered fish and other native species, which are struggling as agriculture and development diverts more water and land from wildlife. Environmental advocates and the state say the changes will allow federal authorities to pump more water from California’s wetter north southward to its biggest cities and farms. The Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and farm and water agencies say the changes will allow for more flexibility in water deliveries. In California’s heavily engineered water system, giant state and federal water projects made up of hundreds of miles of pipes, canals, pumps and dams, carry runoff from rain and Sierra Nevada snow melt from north to south — and serve as field of battle for lawsuits and regional political fights over competing demands for water. Environmental groups say the changes will speed the disappearance of endangered winter-run salmon and other native fish and make life tougher for whales and other creatures in the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean. After an initial study by federal scientists found the rule changes would harm salmon and whales, the Trump administration ordered a new round of review, California news organizations reported last year. The overall effort “ensured the highest quality” of evaluation of the rule changes, Paul Souza, Pacific Southwest director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement Tuesday. “We strongly disagree that the proposal will reduce protections for endangered species,” Souza said. Beyond operational changes in the federal Central Valley Project water system, the administration’s changes allow for more habitat restoration, upgrades in fish hatcheries and the water system itself, monitoring of species and other improvements, Souza said.

While we do not know the specifics, it appears that this decision was made after much thought and consideration. California is controlled by the Democrat party in Sacramento with a supermajority / veto-proof majority in the state legislature and a VERY liberal Democrat governor who are all beholden to the extreme enviro-wakos there. And, the state is so far in debt that it’s on the verge of bankruptcy. So, it’s more than reasonable to assume that a little pushback by Trump for the benefit of those poor farmers trying to feed all of us is probably a good thing. Of course we’ll continue to monitor this developing story and report any more details we hear about.

Trump’s China deal, USMCA relieve Iowa farmers rocked by trade war

Iowa’s farmers were among the biggest casualties of the U.S.-China trade war, but President Trump’s historic trade agreement has them confident of a comeback. The phase one deal comes on top of trade pacts his administration has negotiated with Canada, Mexico and Japan. Those four countries are the biggest buyers of U.S. agriculture, purchasing more than $62 billion of products in 2018. “You’re going to have to get bigger tractors and a hell of a lot more land,” Trump said at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday, just days before the state’s caucuses to choose a Democratic candidate for president. A battleground state, Iowa gave its six electoral votes to Trump in 2016, and the state is important to his re-election bid this year. Its economy had been humming along before the outbreak of the trade war, growing at 5.4 percent and 4.2 percent in the first two quarters of 2018, before Trump imposed his first set of tariffs on Chinese goods on July 6. China responded by putting its own levies on U.S. goods, including soybeans. The nation had bought $12.5 billion of U.S. soybeans the year before, and Iowa was the largest producer, growing 562 million bushels, or about 22 percent of nation’s output. The state’s economy decelerated sharply as the tit-for-tat trade war escalated, growing just 1 percent in the third quarter before contracting 2 percent in the final three months of the year. It returned to growth in 2019, expanding at 2 percent, 1.1 percent and 1.3 percent in the first three quarters of the year. Trump responded to the trade war’s toll with two aid packages, totaling $28 billion, to help cushion the blow to U.S. farmers, whom he publicly praised. “What President Trump has done had to be done,” Roy Bardole, president of the Iowa Soybean Association, said…

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Record Farm Yields Contradict Climate Doomsayers’ Claims

U.S. and global crop production continue to set new records, even as climate activists ramp up a campaign to convince people that climate change is decimating crop production and forcing farmers out of business. The latest misinformation was spread by Politico. Politico in October published an article titled, “‘I’m standing right here in the middle of climate change’: How USDA is failing farmers.” On December 9, Politico followed up with an article titled, “How a closed-door meeting shows farmers are waking up on climate change.” The October article claimed “American farmers are reeling” from extreme weather caused by climate change. The article also complained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is not devoting more money toward climate change programs. The December article asserted horrible “destruction wrought by catastrophic weather this year.” The article placed the blame on climate change and then trumpeted efforts to change government agriculture policy to focus on climate change. The Politico articles generated substantial attention from the media echo chamber, including Google News searches for “climate change” placing the Politico articles at the top of search results. Unfortunately for climate activists – but fortunately for farmers and the rest of us – the climate change crop scare is pure fiction. Presenting crop data collected by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the Global Economy website documents that U.S. crop yields are enjoying excellent short-term, mid-term, and long-term growth, with new records being set almost every year. According to the USDA publication, “Crop Production Historical Track Records,” the past three years produced the three highest U.S. wheat yields per acre in history. The past five years produced the five highest U.S. corn yields and the five highest soybean yields per acre in history. U.S. and global crop production are a story of steady growth and almost yearly new records as the Earth modestly warms. Even with the “catastrophic weather this year,” the USDA projects this year’s corn, soybean, and wheat yields to each be among the top six years all-time. Also, much of the problematic “catastrophic weather” occurred as part of early-spring snowstorms and late-fall snowstorms, which will continue to become less frequent and severe with ongoing modest warming. At the global level, the UN Food and Agriculture’s “World Food Situation” website documents the same strong, consistent crop growth globally, with new records being set virtually every year. The UN global crop production data is particularly helpful getting to the bottom of claims that climate change is a major factor in people attempting to enter the United States from Central America. NBC News, for example, published a July 2019 article titled, “Central America’s choice: Pray for rain or migrate.” The subtitle read, “Ravaged by drought, farmers in rural Honduras and Guatemala live on the edge of hunger.” The article placed the blame for drought, crop failures, and resultant migration on global warming. UN Food and Agriculture data, however, show Honduras and Guatemala are enjoying long-term growth in crop yields per acre, with record crop yields being set throughout the past decade. The same holds true for Mexico and nearly every other country in Central America. Ultimately, more atmospheric carbon dioxide has the same beneficial impact on farm production as it does in greenhouse growing facilities. Also, warmer temperatures bring longer growing seasons and fewer devastating frost events. U.S., Honduran, Guatemalan, and global crop data show that climate activists are telling tall tales when they assert that climate change is causing global or regional crop devastation. The proof is in the objective crop production data.

John Adams once said that “facts are stubborn things.” Indeed.. Thanks to James Taylor (no, not the singer) for that enlightening op/ed. James is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. He can be reached at: JTaylor@heartland.org Excellent!! 🙂

Farmers to feed cows seaweed to cut down on gas emissions

Coastal Maine has a lot of seaweed, and a fair number of cows. A group of scientists and farmers think that pairing the two could help unlock a way to cope with a warming world. The researchers — from a marine science lab, an agriculture center and universities in northern New England — are working on a plan to feed seaweed to cows to gauge whether that can help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. About a quarter of the methane in the country comes from cattle, which produce the gas when they belch or flatulate. The concept of feeding seaweed to cows has gained traction in recent years because of some studies that have shown its potential to cut back on methane. The reduction might be because the seaweed interrupts the process of production of the gas in the animals’ guts. One of the big questions is which kinds of seaweed offer the highest benefit to farmers looking to cut methane, and the researchers hope to find out, said Nichole Price, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, and the project’s leader. “What on that list has the ability to do two things — not just reduce methane emissions, but have some health benefits for the cow that have a cost savings or cost efficiency for the farmer?” Price said. The researchers plan to conduct feeding trials with cows in Maine and New Hampshire in 2020 and 2021 to see whether seaweeds that can be used as cattle feed can cut the methane. They also intend to screen seaweeds for compounds that make them useful as cattle feed additives. The lab work to determine whether the seaweeds succeed in reducing methane will take place at University of Vermont.

Ok.. Let’s get this straight… Some eco-nerd scientists from the northeast are feeding cows SEAWEED (something that is NOT part of their normal diet) in an attempt to cut back on their farting. Even IF their weird science experience bears some fruit in terms of reduced cow farting, it opens up all sorts of questions like.. What effects will it have on the cows? Will the taste of the cow’s milk or steak be altered? And, will some federal or state governmental agency (or Dem-controlled legislature) seize on this and force farmers in the Midwest to feed their cows SEAWEED?…like that’ll ever happen, lol. For more of this crazy AP story, click on the text above.

Corn War? U.S. Farmers Say Mexico Needs American Corn

Some U.S. farmers say a Mexican lawmaker’s plans to introduce a new bill requiring the country to stop buying American corn and shift those purchases to South America seems more like tough talk than anything else. Mexico currently buys nearly all its corn from the U.S., totaling a quarter of all U.S. corn exports. While it’s a big market, American corn farmers describe it as a mutually beneficial relationship. “It’s not going to make sense for Mexico to buy from South America, from what they’re saying because they are going to see 10 –12 –15% increase in their costs. And, then you’re [going to] have to ship it on top of that,” Chad Etheridge, CEO of Growing America and Founder of Farmers for Trump, told FOX Business. “The likelihood of them actually doing that and spending an extra 15%, just because they’re unhappy with us, doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he adds. Currently, Mexico, which is the largest buyer of U.S. corn at 27%, (surpassing Japan last year, which fell to 22%), is also getting the crop at a very cheap price as the U.S. is seeing a surplus of the commodity in recent years. “Corn prices are now below the cost of production. There is just a lot of corn sitting around because we’ve had several good years of corn yields,” Kurt Hora, a corn farmer from Washington, Iowa and president of Iowa Corn Growers..

Definitely something to keep an eye on.. To read the rest of this article, click on the text above.