Seth Nidever Staff Reporter May 9, 2017 HANFORD – Brian Medeiros sat in the office of his Hanford dairy Tuesday and let out a long sigh. On the desk was a pile of paperwork that had to be sorted through, the visual evidence of what it takes to wrap up the Medeiros and Son dairy…
By Zen Honeycutt / AlterNet May 17, 2017 Investing in a company that sells harmful products like the toxic herbicide Roundup is counter to CalPERS’ mission. I was recently informed by a former California public health employee, that CalPERS, the state’s pension and health care fund, the largest in the nation, has invested $136 million…
May 5, 2017 By Steven M. Sellers Large factory farms increasingly occupy rural landscapes once dotted with small family farms, and their concentrated waste has produced a wave of toxic tort litigation. Known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, the facilities confine and raise large populations of livestock. Environmentalists say these operations supply food to such…
Hello all, Below is a chart I recently created that shows the relationship between cattle prices and consumer beef prices. It reveals that the new “lag time” (the phenomenon whereby the drop in retail beef prices occurs sometime after a drop in cattle prices) far exceeds the historical lag time, indicating that beef packers/retailers are…
By Michael Grabell Case Farms built its business by recruiting immigrant workers from Guatemala, who endure conditions few Americans would put up with. By late afternoon, the smell from the Case Farms chicken plant in Canton, Ohio, is like a pungent fog, drifting over a highway lined with dollar stores and auto-parts shops. When the…
By Ben Terris May 2 at 8:00 AM BIG SANDY, Mont. — When Sen. Jon Tester was 9 years old, he had a job: take meat from cows slaughtered on his family’s farm and feed it into the steel maw of a meat grinder. The motor took it from there, pushing the beef through four…
By Peter Whoriskey May 1 at 7:21 PM The High Plains dairy complex reflects the new scale of the U.S. organic industry: It is big. Stretching across miles of pastures and feedlots north of Greeley, Colo., the complex is home to more than 15,000 cows, making it more than 100 times the size of a…
by Nick Sibilla, Contributor A government official appears at a man’s door. The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home. This isn’t a page from Kafka—it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles. For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread. The ingredients are…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 27, 2017 Media Contacts: Bill Bullard, 406-252-2516, billbullard@r-calfusa.com Angela Huffman, 614-390-7552, ahuffman@competitivemarkets.com Over 250,000 Farmers, Organizations, and Businesses Urge Congress to Pass Meaningful Checkoff Program Reform WASHINGTON, D.C. – In letters to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, more than 80 organizations, representing over 250,000 ranchers, farmers and businesses called…
By David Roberts on Apr 17, 2013 The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks…