Meat of the Matter: State of the industry By Dan Murphy September 08, 2016 | 2:28 pm EDT In the old days — like the 1970s — there were hundreds of small-scale packing plants throughout the rural areas in most states. If you were a farmer raising some cattle or a couple pens of pigs,…

Take Care With Farming’s Future Farmers by nature should be conservative, particularly in the sense of being careful. Katie Heger’s article “What Do We Need to Know about GMO’s” (WAR September 1, 2016) was full of biotechnology industry propaganda but not careful with the facts or careful with the future of farming. The biggest big…

R-CALF USA: Dominant Meatpackers Are Now Too Big to Regulate Billings, Mont. – According to R-CALF USA, antitrust and competition enforcement agencies have failed miserably to prevent multinational meatpackers from manipulating cattle prices and controlling the cattle and beef markets, resulting in financial harm to both cattle producers and beef consumers. "No other conclusion can…

September 12, 2016 OCM Declares State of Emergency in American Agriculture Following Vilsack Statement Death of fair markets undermining food security US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack missed the mark as chief of domestic agriculture on Thursday by defending the disastrous impacts of large-scale industrial agriculture, which pushes the true costs of cheap food production…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 12, 2016 Contact: Paola Masman, Media Director 202-688-5145 ext 2, paola Beef and Cattle Imports Set Record under Ag Secretary Vilsack The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) said today that beef and cattle imports have skyrocketed to record levels, displacing US cattle producers, under US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. As…

antitrust (612) 339-6900 Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation Summary On September 2, 2016, the antitrust team at Lockridge Grindal Nauen filed a class action on behalf of Maplevale Farms, Inc., alleging anticompetitive conduct in the sale of broiler chickens. Broiler chickens are generally most chickens raised for meat consumption and constitute approximately 98% of all chicken…

Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them · A prairie strip filled with black-eyed Susans lies next to soybeans on Tim Smith’s farm in Eagle Grove, Iowa. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Andrew Dickinson for The Washington Post · Tim Smith owns corn and soybean farms just east of Eagle Grove,…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 6, 2016 Contact: Andrew Jerome, 202-314-3106 ajerome NFU Says Farmers and Ranchers Stand to Lose Most from Bayer/Monsanto Deal WASHINGTON (September 6, 2016) – Today’s announcement that the proposal by Bayer AG to purchase Monsanto Co. is progressing towards an agreeable deal perpetuates the alarming trend of consolidation in agriculture. In…

Can’t imagine what a wreck this could be for the livestock industry … Judge orders JBS execs to step away from corporate roles By Anna Flávia Rochas on 9/6/2016 JBS’s CEO Wesley Batista and chairman Joesley Batista were ordered by a Brazilian judge to step away from executive positions in their companies, according to a…

Today I’m thinking about hungry people, farmers, ranchers, exploited contract growers, and abused food workers. I’m also reflecting on the corporate takeover of our government and nearly all major industries, including, perhaps most importantly, our food supply. Agricultural commodity prices are at disastrously low levels, a farm crisis worse than the 1980s is very likely…