As it moves away from its focus on small suppliers, Whole Foods is increasingly becoming one itself—for Amazon. by Joe Fassler | January 15th, 2019 On Friday, Yahoo Finance reported that Whole Foods Market won’t open any more 365 stores—the smaller-format, budget-friendlier markets it had once said would be the key to its expansion. According…

Op-ed by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA On January 9, 2019, The Washington Post article titled “Trump farm bailout money will go to Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm, USDA says” reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is deceiving the American public. The Washington Post article stated that one of the biggest meatpacking firms in the…

by Sarah Mock | January 9, 2019 Rural America’s slow recovery from the Great Recession isn’t entirely bad news, says the founder of the Rural Opportunity Initiative. For smart public and private investors, it could provide a chance to get ahead of the pack. There’s not much grass on Georgetown University’s Washington, D.C., campus, let…

by Sandeep Vaheesan A century ago, reformers gave the Federal Trade Commission extraordinary powers to take on abusive corporations. It’s time to wake the agency up. It is by now widely acknowledged that the United States has a corporate concentration crisis. Sectors across the economy—from agriculture to airlines to online search to pharmaceuticals to telecommunications—are…

NEWS JBS trade aid payments under fire Petition calls on Congress and USDA to halt payments to JBS under farmer trade aid purchases. Jacqui Fatka 1 | Jan 11, 2019 The U.S. Department of Agriculture will purchase roughly 1.8 million lb. of pork products worth $5 million from Brazilian firm JBS using funds appropriated by…

by Jeff Stein | January 9 U.S. taxpayers will buy about $5 million in pork products from a Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm under President Trump’s bailout program, which was designed to help American farmers hurt by the administration’s trade war, according to documents released Wednesday. JBS, one of the biggest meatpacking companies in the world, will…

posted November 7, 2018 COLUMBUS, Ohio — The cost of producing a grain crop is expected to rise next year, but farm income is unlikely to increase, an agricultural economist with The Ohio State University has projected. On average, profits for Ohio farmers next year will be “low to negative,” said Barry Ward, an assistant…

by Eesha Pendharkar, BDN Staff | January 7, 2019 Bangor schools will stick to more demanding nutrition standards for school lunches even as the federal government officially relaxes them next month. New guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that take effect in February will ease up on some school nutrition guidelines first established during…

by Chris Clayton, DTN Ag Policy Editor | January 7, 2019 States Wanted Supreme Court to Rule on State Livestock Standard Laws OMAHA (DTN) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied attempts to make oral arguments before the court by 15 states in lawsuits against California and Massachusetts over claims of regulating agricultural production…

by Jason Margolis | January 07, 2019 The standoff over the border wall continues. And so does the partial shutdown of the US government. We’re well into week three and some 800,000 federal workers are in employment limbo. Among the government agencies shut down are the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration,…