Month: October 2021

With UAW on strike, Deere says, ‘We’ll keep running’ The world’s largest farm equipment maker, Deere and Co., said managers and other salaried employees would keep its factories operating in the face of a strike by 10,000 union workers. “We’ll keep running,” the company said on Thursday. More USDA nominees… Continue reading

Voluntary FDA guidelines would cut salt intake by 12 percent With Americans consuming 50 percent more salt than recommended, the FDA issued voluntary guidelines on Wednesday that would reduce sodium content in packaged and restaurant food, the major source of salt in the diet. The FDA said guidelines might “become… Continue reading

Surge in yields brings biggest U.S. soybean crop ever The U.S. soybean hit parade, with record production in 2016, 2017, and 2018, will continue this year with the largest crop ever, the government forecast on Tuesday with the harvest in full swing. A late-summer surge in likely yields per acre… Continue reading

Ag coalition proposes climate mitigation for $100 an acre At the same time farm-state lawmakers are trying to add $2 billion to $3 billion a year to USDA conservation programs, a coalition of farmers and ag groups says the price tag for climate mitigation on the farm should be much… Continue reading

Senate approves Stone-Manning as land management chief Tracy Stone-Manning, a long-time environmentalist, will serve as the first Senate-confirmed director of the Bureau of Land Management in more than four years, winning a party-line roll call on her nomination, 50-45. Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, said Republicans resorted to character… Continue reading

Lawmakers shrug at Grassley call for livestock reform Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley urged reauthorization of mandatory price reporting, telling the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday that it is the ideal vehicle for ensuring cattle producers get a fair price from meatpackers. But few committee members got on board with the… Continue reading

Americans’ spending on food plunged during pandemic The pandemic and its accompanying economic slowdown prompted a dramatic 7.8 percent cutback in consumer spending on food in 2020, said two USDA economists. The reduction was more than double the impact of the Great Recession on food sales, partly because the pandemic… Continue reading

More farmers experiment with cover crops, a climate tool, survey shows Slightly more than half of the country’s biggest farmers say they planted cover crops this year, indicating a broadening acceptance of the crops’ benefits for soil health, even with the accompanying complication they bring to land management, said Purdue’s… Continue reading

Agriculture is ‘unpredictable sector’ in Sino-U.S. trade, says Tai The United States will press China to live up to its commitments in the “phase one” agreement, said U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai on Monday in unveiling the Biden administration’s “strategic vision for re-aligning trade policies toward China.” During a speech… Continue reading

USDA puts into action its pledge to expand meat industry capacity Three months ago, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the USDA would commit $500 million to expand meat and poultry processing capacity and create a more competitive livestock market. “I believe it is going to leverage literally billions of dollars… Continue reading