The old town hall and community center, a once-vital building on a once-vital Main Street, dominates the downtown of this old potato- and cabbage-farming town. It’s two stories high and sprawling, and if you squint deeply you can imagine it in its heyday, many decades ago. Hastings was founded in 1890 when Florida railroad and hotel king Henry Flagler sent a relative, Thomas Horace Hastings, inland to grow vegetables for his Flagler’s resorts. [node:read-more:link]

A Canadian livestock and animal nutrition company has proposed to build a large multi-species slaughtering facility in Cascade County, Montana, according to a report by the Great Falls Tribune. If local officials approve the project as proposed by Alberta-based Friesen Foods, the “Madison Food Park” would employ as many as 3,000 people in a state-of-the-art, robotically controlled, environmentally friendly, multi-species food processing plant for cattle, pigs and chickens and related further processing facilities for beef, pork and poultry, the newspaper reported. [node:read-more:link]

The day illustrated that as a farmer herself, Moynihan understands about the need for a new state program she just planted at the Minnesota Agriculture Department: Farm and Rural Helpline. The line is a new service, replacing an earlier farm crisis line, that allows rural Minnesotans to call (833) 600-2670 to deal with all sorts of problems, even if they do not rise to crisis level, Moynihan said.“Farmers love to farm, but it is an extremely challenging profession,” she said on the dreary Friday.They have no control over costs such as for implements, seed and fertilizer. [node:read-more:link]

A strain of salmonella detected in raw milk from a Washington dairy was the same one that sickened two of the dairy’s customers in January. The Washington Department of Agriculture Friday suspended the processing license of a raw milk dairy, which had declined to voluntarily suspend production after the department detected salmonella last month in the dairy’s milk. [node:read-more:link]

SomaDetect is the grand prize winner of the fourth annual 43North competition. The New York state-sponsored contest is meant to bring economic development to western New York by awarding cash and incubator space to winners who pitch ideas from all over the world. SomaDetect’s sensor technology allows farmers to detect illness in cows or impurities in milk. The company was established in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but must operate in Buffalo for at least a year.The runner-up company, Squire, received $650,000 during Thursday night’s awards. [node:read-more:link]

Many of Nebraska's neighbors are national leaders in wind energy, and advocates say the state could easily join them.But as wind energy has grown in Nebraska, so has a fervent resistance from mostly rural landowners and lawmakers who view the turbines as noisy, heavily subsidized eyesores that lead to lower property values.The pushback was clear last year, when Lancaster and Gage counties approved noise restrictions that effectively halted several proposed wind farms. [node:read-more:link]

At this time when farmers are suffering with low prices for corn and soybeans, the EPA is making a move that could cut the biodiesel mandate by as much as 315 million gallons. This is not good news for the biodiesel or ethanol businesses. It’s not good news for corn and soybean farmers. We thought the Renewable Fuels Standard and biofuels mandates were all settled for next year, but I guess we were wrong. [node:read-more:link]

If the current administration in the White House was successful in closing the southern border and deporting all migrant farm workers, it would be devastating to Upstate's economy according to a report prepared earlier this year by Farm Credit East. [node:read-more:link]

The Organization for Competitive Markets is continuing to push back against checkoff fees with its latest complaint filed with the Office of the Inspector General of the US Dept. of Agriculture. The group alleges that the Oklahoma Beef Council and the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association are improperly influencing a checkoff vote. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the Trump administration on Tuesday to moderate its stance in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, describing some of Washington’s demands as “poison pill proposals” that could doom the talks. Thomas Donohue, the chamber’s president and chief executive, will raise a red flag about the progress of the negotiations, according to advance excerpts of a speech he was due to make in Mexico City on Tuesday morning.The group has argued repeatedly in recent weeks that NAFTA is critical to U.S. [node:read-more:link]