FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 14, 2016 Sens. Lee, Booker Introduce Commodity Check Off Reform Bill WASHINGTON – Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introducedon Wednesday S. 3201, the Commodity Checkoff Program Improvement Act of 2016, a measure intended to bring much needed transparency and accountability to the federal government’s commodity check off…

This Bill Could Keep the Government From Plotting Against Vegan Mayo Again It’s the only way to prevent smear campaigns. Deena Shanker July 14, 2016 — 4:00 AM MDT There are few points of agreement between Democrats and Republicans these days, but it turns out maintaining a fair marketplace for vegan mayo is one of…

Sanders Supporters: Check Out This Amazing Piece of American History for a Path You Might Take A "no" vote for corporate farms may have implications for those trying to make the DNC platform more progressive. By David Morris / AlterNet July 4, 2016 Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey / Flickr On June 14, North Dakotans voted to…

Opinion: Congress seeks to drive out independent agriculture By J. Dudley Butler/For The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting It apparently rings true that some politicians in Congress are like bananas: they come in green, turn yellow and then get rotten. J. Dudley Butler Recently certain members of Congress began efforts to protect Big Ag and…

No Images? Click here Dear Mike, We at the Open Markets program have led the fight against the concentration of economic and political power for more than a decade. In that time we have won many small battles and a few big ones. But in recent days, we made three huge breakthroughs. The first came…

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely applied herbicide and has faced major controversy ever since the World Health Organization’s International Agency cancer research arm. (photo: EcoWatch) Monsanto and DuPont Announce New Weed Killer for GMO Crops By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch 09 July 16 ne of the biggest concerns about the cultivation of genetically modified crops…

Friday, July 8, 2016 8:31 PM Amarillo company buys Cargill’s Texas Panhandle feedyards Globe-News staff Cattle feed in a Randall County feedyard. Friona Industries has purchased the Texas Panhandle feedyard assets of Cargill, one of the top U.S. meat processors. Amarillo-based Friona Industries will acquire all of the cattle feeding assets held by Cargill in…

Held ‘hostage’ by Tyson: An Iowa town’s dilemma CHEROKEE, Ia. — A few years ago, it would have been hard to find a parking spot along Cherokee’s bustling Main Street. Now, not so much. “Main Street is quieter,” said Darren Zwiefel, who owns Darren’s Clothing Co. He and others say traffic has slowed in their…

RE: http://competitivemarkets.com/evaluating-my-beef-checkoff-return-on-investment/#comment-11126 Vaughn, The Kaiser study is highly deceptive. Kaiser never evaluated returns to cattlemen. He evaluated returns to the “industry,” which included packer profits; he did not separate the benefits (costs?) to cow/calf operators and to feeders from packer profits. Kaiser and the CBB have refused to publicly disclose the data used for the…

No electronic or mechanical reproduction of the Farm and Food File is permitted without direct consent of the author. Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, July 10, 2016 The Land of Non Alan Guebert For years we Americans have been perfecting the art of non-action action. It began about a generation ago…