by Abe Voelker | March 6, 2019 This Christmas, like every other, I traveled to northern Wisconsin to stay with my parents on the dairy farm I grew up on. As usual I took the opportunity to help my dad and younger brother with barn chores and milk cows. The cows need to be milked…
by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Nick Zieminski | March 16, 2019 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. border agents have seized around 1 million pounds of pork from China, a spokesman for the agency said on Friday, over suspicions that it might contain African swine flu disease which has hit…
by Jessica McKenzie | March 14th, 2019 Cover crops and other regenerative agriculture practices are still pigeonholed as conservation practices, not as good farming practices. But if farmers want crop insurance, they have to play by the rules. Last year, a few days before Christmas, Gail Fuller drove me out to the middle of a…
by Chris McGreal | March 9, 2019 Across the midwest, the rise of factory farming is destroying rural communities. And the massive corporations behind this devastation are now eyeing a post-Brexit UK market When the vast expanse of rural Iowa was carved up for settlers in the 19th century, it was often divided into 160-acre…
by Austin Frerick | February 27, 2019 America’s agricultural system has become extractive, and more and more of the profits are flowing to a few. A senior official at the Iowa Farm Bureau, the nation’s largest agricultural organization, recently told me that most rural communities will soon disappear. Even though the organization’s nominal mission is…
by Larry Lee | March 6, 2019 An Iowa hog producer says farmers need more control and some reforms to bring farm prices and the rural economy up. Chris Peterson from Clear Lake, Iowa is semi-retired, but he is still raising hogs. He says, “The farm bankruptcies, the bankers are having the jitters and everything…
by Jason Armstrong | February 11, 2019 The island’s only full-service slaughterhouse has quit taking smaller animals, leaving farmers, butchers and lovers of fresh kalua pork with no place to turn. HILO, Hawaii Island – Local pig, sheep and goat farmers can no longer use the island’s only full-service slaughterhouse, which prevents them from selling…
Some 20 percent of the school’s dining service contract is earmarked for “local” food. But when Coca-Cola ended up receiving a hefty portion of the early funding, an uproar and a renewed focus ensued. by Lela Nargi, FARMING, Local Eats, School Food | February 26, 2019 Nine years ago, Robert Eversole, a clinical lab manager,…