Food prices rise at fastest pace in 41 years – March 11, 2022

Food prices rise at fastest pace in 41 years

The food inflation rate is up for the ninth month in a row and now matches the U.S. inflation rate of 7.9 percent a year, with double-digit increases in the price of meat, milk, and fresh fruit, said the government on Thursday. Prices for groceries rose even faster, 8.6 percent, than the overall food index, which includes food sold at restaurants, fast-food outlets, and company cafeterias.

Second bird flu outbreak in Missouri in two days

Just one day after officials reported bird flu on a turkey farm in Missouri’s Jasper County, they confirmed another outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza on a poultry farm in neighboring Lawrence County. The discovery increased the toll of “high path” bird flu among U.S. domestic flocks since Feb. 8 to 3.04 million birds, almost all of them chickens or turkeys.

Conservation tillage is dominant U.S. practice

Over a 10-year period, conservation tillage became the most popular tillage practice on U.S. cropland, said a USDA agency on Thursday. The Natural Resources Conservation Service said the practice, which leaves crop residue on at least 30 percent of the soil surface to reduce erosion, had been adopted on 53.4 million acres by the mid-2010s.

Today’s Quick Hits

Fines for heat death: Oregon’s work safety agency fined a nursery and its labor contractor $6,300 for the death of a 39-year-old farmworker, Sebastian Francisco-Perez, who died while working on an irrigation crew during a heat wave last June. (Capital Press)

Winter wheat is dry: As spring approaches, drought of varying intensity covers 73 percent of U.S. winter wheat territory, including 91 percent of Kansas, the top-producing state. (USDA)

Cotton in Kansas: Although still a minor crop, cotton is becoming more common in Kansas, where plantings increased 12-fold from 2015 to 2020, fueled in part by climate change and in part by growers looking for an alternative to wheat and corn. (Kansas News Service)

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