AEM hopes to help find answers to the infrastructure challenges facing the U.S. agriculture sector. Under its Infrastructure Vision 2050 thought-leadership initiative, AEM will seek innovative ideas and best practices to address those challenges in the context of current and future U.S. infrastructure trends. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday published a final rule on the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), the nation’s premier conservation easement program that helps landowners protect working agricultural lands and wetlands. These rule changes will make the program more flexible and responsive to the unique needs of farmers and ranchers in each region of the U.S. The 2014 Farm Bill consolidated three previous conservation easement programs into ACEP to make it easier for diverse agricultural landowners to fully benefit from conservation initiatives. [node:read-more:link]
Glenrath Farms has a profitable egg business, one of the U.K.’s largest, whose hens lay around 1.5 million eggs per day. John Campbell, the company's chairman, told the audience at the United Egg Producers’ Annual Board Meeting & Executive Conference in Miami Beach, Florida, on October 18, “I strongly advise any egg producer to avoid free range. It (free-range rearing for hens) is a disaster waiting to happen.” What makes these statements remarkable is the fact that Glenrath Farms has made a lot of money supplying free-range eggs to U.K. consumers. [node:read-more:link]
Federal lawmakers may authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to pursue a $451.6 million project to convert hundreds of acres of privately owned farmland into Puget Sound fish habitat, unsettling to a farmer who owns property vital to the government’s designs. “It’s definitely, definitely in the back of my mind, all the time,” said Scott Bedlington, third-generation Whatcom County farmer. “I have to farm. [node:read-more:link]
A second suit was filed in January, 2016 by HSUS, Association of Irritated Residents, Environmental Integrity Project, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club against EPA. Plaintiffs filed their original petition to regulate ammonia from CAFOs in 2009. On September 19, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the environmental groups’ second request to force EPA to regulate ammonia and other emissions of pollutants from CAFOs. The environmental groups are unlikely to stop their effort to regulate ammonia. [node:read-more:link]
For many in China, the term “genetically modified food” evokes nightmares: poisoned seeds, contaminated fields, apocryphal images of eight-legged chickens. China and the global agricultural industry are betting billions of dollars that they can change those perceptions. They are starting with farmers like Li Kaishun. Mr. Li is an agricultural thought leader. [node:read-more:link]
Fewer acres would be purchased as easements to protect wetlands and other sensitive lands under the new Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), which is replacing three programs repealed by the 2014 farm bill. The Natural Resources Conservation Service published its final rule for ACEP in the Oct.18 Federal Register, after accepting comments on an interim final rule issued in May 2015. [node:read-more:link]
Direct Action Everywhere, an all-volunteer animal advocacy group, released a video of a stealth visit to a cage-free barn in California that produces eggs sold at Costco under its private label brand, Kirkland. The video shows dead birds on the floor and injured hens pecked by other chickens. One bird had a piece of flesh hanging off its beak. The video focuses on a hen that Direct Action rescued and named Ella. When the organization found her in the cage-free barn, she was struggling to pull herself up and had lost most of her feathers. [node:read-more:link]
A new proposal by Jersey lawmakers is poised to make the Garden State a serious player in the food-waste fight. Under a bill that’s moving through the legislature, restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, and other establishments that produce considerable food waste (104 tons per year at first, then 52 tons after the first three years) would be required to separate and save all leftover scraps. These scraps would then be converted into renewable energy used to power homes, schools, and businesses statewide. [node:read-more:link]
The first report of zearalenone (ZEA) in this year’s U.S. corn crop has come in, along with an additional report of deoxynivalenol (DON). DON has been found in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Indiana. Fumonisin has been found in corn from Missouri, Texas, Illinois and Oklahoma. [node:read-more:link]
