A dirt road runs between two corn fields in Adair, Iowa, in April. (Joshua Lott/for The Washington Post) by Holly Bailey | May 8, 2019 DES MOINES — J.D. Scholten has gotten phone calls from former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. He’s campaigned with Sen. Cory Booker. He held a town hall with entrepreneur Andrew Yang and…

by Gilles Stockton, Grass Range, Montana | May 3, 2019 Giles Stockton Instead of apologizing to Montana’s beef consumers and cattle ranchers, the Montana Farm Bureau (MFB) in an article/press release (“State Mandated Placarding Is Not COOL”) chose instead to double down on the half-truths and innuendos used to kill Montana Country of Origin Labeling…

The situation is far worse now: – Much higher levels of concentration – Meat processing is now mostly foreign owned – Companies have large and growing criminal records – Meat recalls are much larger and more frequent – Refugee labor comes from more places farther away – Chains move even faster – Local/Regional independent butchers…

A Fair Deal for Farmers Raising Earnings and Rebalancing Power in Rural America By Zoe Willingham and Andy Green Posted on May 7, 2019 Getty/VW Pics/Edwin Remsburg A combine harvests wheat on the eastern shore of Maryland, June 2013. Introduction and summary Almost every step of America’s food supply chain has grown more concentrated in…

By Phyllis Entis on May 1, 2019 JBS Souderton Inc. continued to distribute pentobarbital-adulterated products to customers even after receiving formal notification of pentobarbital contamination, according to a warning letter issued on April 23 by the Food and Drug Administration. The warning letter to JBS Souderton Inc. which does business as MOPAC was sent more…

Yftach Herzog/Wikimedia Commons The highly contagious disease may kill 200 million animals in China this year. by H. Claire Brown| May 1st, 2019 Since it was first confirmed in China in August of 2018, highly contagious African swine fever has spread to every province in the country, then to Vietnam, Mongolia, and Cambodia, and is…

by David Lynch | May 3, 2019 PATERSON, Wash. —Fifty-mile-per-hour winds and snow drifts seven feet deep greeted Ted Wishon when he checked on his cattle herd, hunkered down on a hillside along the northern bank of the Columbia River. With his 21-year-old son, George, Wishon labored through six weeks of brutal weather this year…