By Deena Shanker | October 25, 2017 Rural Americans voted for him, but he didn’t return the favor when it came to an Obama rule meant to level the playing field. After years of fighting for an Obama-era rule that would help farmers sue the mammoth companies they work for, advocacy groups for America’s small…

by Jacob Bunge | Photographs by Nick Cote for The Wall Street Journal | Oct. 23, 2017 U.S. growers are swallowing up acreage to survive a harsh agricultural downturn, squeezing smaller operations and transforming America’s rural economy. COLBY, Kan.— Lon Frahm may represent the future of farming. Inside a two-story office building overshadowed by 80-foot…

The deck is stacked against family farmers. Here’s one rancher’s powerful response. Mike Callicrate is a rancher who started out in industrial feedlot cattle production, but converted to principles of animal husbandry and regenerative agriculture when he saw how exploitive a system he was working in — exploitive of the the land, the animals, and…

Friends, On behalf of our Oklahoma members, the Organization for Competitive Markets, Oklahoma Stewardship Council, R-CALF USA and others have been leading an effort to stop big agribusiness special interest groups from doubling the Oklahoma beef checkoff tax on cattle producers. These mandatory fees are intended to be used by the government to research and…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 23, 2017 Media Contacts: Bill Bullard, 406-252-2516, billbullard@r-calfusa.com Angela Huffman, 614-390-7552, ahuffman@competitivemarkets.com Oklahoma Ranchers Seek Supreme Court Intervention in State Checkoff Referendum OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Today, Oklahoma members of the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) and R-CALF USA joined together to file with the Oklahoma Supreme Court an application for…

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY with Megan Cassella, Maya Parthasarathy, John Lauinger and Pradnya Joshi | 10/23/2017 GIPSA DECISION REVERBERATES: After the administration’s decision last week to end Obama-era proposals aimed to help protect livestock and poultry growers, farmers and ranchers are skeptical about what may happen to the ranking system draft GIPSA rule that remains. “They’ve…

By Joe Maxwell | October 18, 2017 America as the land of opportunity is under threat. America’s family farmers, small business owners, and middle class workers have long believed that if you work hard, you can get ahead. But in the last 30 years, the growing trend toward concentration of corporate power has increasingly put…

Rollback of livestock rules divides Kansas ag community By Peter Hancock October 23, 2017 TOPEKA — The Kansas agriculture community was divided this past week over a decision by the Trump administration to block new rules from taking effect that were intended to protect poultry producers from unfair commercial practices by food processing giants like…

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Get your own copy by subscribing here. In Wisconsin, Farmers Fight Effort to Weaken Cooperatives In Wisconsin, some of the state’s biggest agricultural cooperatives want to weaken farmers’ control over their own cooperatives. Farmers in the state argue that the changes–in the form of amendments to the state agricultural…

October 18, 2017 SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA shut down its seven slaughterhouses in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul due to a court-ordered $230 million asset freeze, a press representative said on Wednesday. The asset freeze, which affects JBS SA and the group’s holding company J&F Investimentos, is related to…