During his opening statement Wednesday, Sec. Perdue pointed out that, “Net farm income has fallen nearly 50 percent from its peak in 2013, as most commodity prices have fallen over the past 5 years while global stock levels have rebounded with several years of record production. “We saw the largest U.S. soybean crop ever in 2017 and again in 2018, U.S. corn production was the second highest ever in 2017 and third highest ever in 2018. However, other countries have also seen high production numbers. [node:read-more:link]

In non-metro counties, recreation counties are growin while non-recreation counties are losing residents. Counties with outdoor recreation economies are more likely to attract new residents with greater wealth and have faster-growing wages than their non-recreation counterparts. [node:read-more:link]

A bill sponsored by one of Casper’s representatives to create a regulated industrial hemp industry in Wyoming is headed to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk. Spearheaded by Republican Rep. Bunky Loucks, House Bill 171 breezed through the Wyoming Senate on Monday on its third reading with only two members of the body – Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, and Sen. Eli Bebout, R-Riverton – voting “no” on the measure. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration has provided $8 billion in aid to date to the agriculture industry to offset the negative impact the various tariffs it has imposed since President Trump took office, according to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. [node:read-more:link]

Donald Trump’s attack on the World Trade Organization has U.S. farmers worried that the president’s ‘America first’ foreign policy approach will hamstring efforts to defend their interests. The U.S. is strangling the ability of the WTO, which oversees the rules for nearly $23 trillion in commerce every year, to resolve disputes among its 164 members. But when the WTO’s appellate body becomes incapacitated later this year, even the U.S. cases, of which there are at least two pending meant to protect American agriculture, would be derailed. [node:read-more:link]

Bayer’s $63 billion purchase of U.S. seeds maker Monsanto made its mark on the German company’s fourth quarter earnings, lifting profit and boding well for the peak season of its enlarged agriculture business. However, mounting litigation risks related to Monsanto still cast a pall over an adjusted core earnings rise of 15.8 percent, which was inflated by the addition of the U.S. group and helped by cost cuts at Bayer’s consumer healthcare business. [node:read-more:link]

With massive drifts making travel impossible, Trent Thiele road a snowmobile 50 miles Sunday, checking a dozen pig facilities to ensure thousands of animals were getting feed, water and fresh air. "It's been a lot of early mornings and late nights," said Thiele, who raises 15,000 pigs with five partners in northeast Iowa. "I'm worn out."Blowing snow cut visibility, making it difficult to see rising drifts, Thiele said.With February likely the second snowiest on record, this winter may go down as one of the toughest ever for thousands of Iowa livestock producers.

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Republican legislators are pushing a bill to streamline Wisconsin’s water pollution credit-trading system, a move that would make it easier for farms and large-scale facilities to trade with one another. The bill’s authors, Sen. Rob Cowles, Sen. Jerry Petrowski and Rep. [node:read-more:link]

We eat mutations every day. All the vegetables, grains, fruits and meat humans consume as part of their diet is jam-packed with DNA speckled with mutations and beneficial variations.In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed to regulate a specific subset of these variations as drugs: In particular, those introduced into animal genomes using modern molecular techniques like gene editing. [node:read-more:link]

Injured miners and construction workers are in the occupations most likely to receive an opioid prescription, the study shows. Injured workers living in “rural” or “very rural” areas were up to 25% more likely than urban injured workers to receive opioid painkillers. [node:read-more:link]