North Country Growers LLC has been awarded a $25 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agricultural Rural Development for its hydroponic greenhouse project and expects to finalize purchase of the property this week.The state’s Congressional delegation announced Tuesday that the loan had been approved for construction of two 10-acre high tech greenhouses that will produce eight million pounds of tomatoes and 15 million heads of lettuce annually. It is also expected to create 80 full-time jobs.Berlin Mayor Paul Grenier called the announcement great news for the city and region. [node:read-more:link]

Shane Shifflett reported that, “For American producers who rely on the nation’s waterways to export and distribute billions of tons of grains, coal and chemicals each year, aging locks systems on rivers and the frequent delays they cause cost more than just time.“‘If we have a barge stopped on the Upper Mississippi…commodities sit there until the problem is fixed,’ says Rick Calhoun, president of Cargill Carriers, the Minnetonka, Minn.-based barge operator for the largest U.S. agricultural company by sales. [node:read-more:link]

Farmers and producers in the western states see the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as providing benefits to both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, says Canada’s minister of agriculture and agri-food. Cardigan MP Lawrence MacAulay was in Portland and Oregon recently to promote the importance of the bilateral trade relationship between the Canadian and the U.S. agriculture sectors.
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Who are these special cows, you ask? They're snack company Herr's cattle. And you can taste them—as steaks, burgers, and more—at a few restaurants in the Philadelphia area. Herr has long had cattle on more than 1,000 acres of farmland near their eastern Pennsylvania headquarters. The cows graze on grass watered by the company's otherwise unusable gray-hued wash—turned that unpleasant color after scrubbing potatoes—and they're fed a diet made up of the company's unsellable snacks. Don't worry: nutritionists helped develop their odd diet, which even includes cheese curds. [node:read-more:link]

The President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, established by President Donald Trump in March in response to a nationwide epidemic, publicly released their interim recommendations. The commission, which is chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), said the best way to “rapidly increase treatment capacity” is to expand the availability of treatment under Medicaid with more federal funds. [node:read-more:link]

Al Souki does not complain. He fled war-torn Syria and worked backbreaking 12-hour shifts in his home country and Jordan before making his way to the United States. He is grateful for the $10.50 an hour he collects at the poultry plant. “I like work. I need work,” he said in the smattering of English he has picked up. “Without work, not a man.” Al Souki needs the work—and employers in the meatpacking industry say they need workers like him. Refugees have increasingly become vital workers in an industry with high turnover. [node:read-more:link]

Think of it this way: If you wanted to buy Iowa farmland in 1970, the average going price was $419 per acre, according to the Iowa State University Farmland Value Survey.By 2016, the price per acre was $7,183—a drop from the 2013 peak of $8,716, but still a colossal increase of 1,600 percent. For comparison, in the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose less than half as fast, from $2,633 to $21,476. Farmland, the Economist announced in 2014, had outperformed most asset classes for the previous 20 years, delivering average U.S. returns of 12 percent a year with low volatility. [node:read-more:link]

Brazilian farmers are in the midst of collecting their biggest corn harvest ever and American supplies are also plentiful -- setting the stage for a stiff battle to win world buyers in the second half of the year. It’s a turnaround from just a year ago when U.S. exporters were seeing sales boom as a drought plagued Brazil’s fields. This year, the South American growers enjoyed much better weather and crop supplies have gotten so big that farmers are already short on storage after collecting a massive soybean harvest just a few months earlier. [node:read-more:link]

The apparent demise of the Republican drive to scrap the Affordable Care Act may open the door to bipartisan fixes to the law. If it does, some of the proposals being touted by a bipartisan group of governors may get a hearing on Capitol Hill. The seven Democrats and six Republican governors who crafted the proposals want federal money to stabilize the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces, and greater power to manage them. [node:read-more:link]