Agricultural news highlights:
America’s farmers are getting older. Now the USDA is attempting to recruit younger farmers and ranchers to replace them. This according to the Washington Post.
Verlyn Klinkenborg is making big waves with his bound to be hotly-debated essay “The Folly of Big Agriculture: Why Nature Always Wins.” The author is a member of the New York Times editorial board. His article appears in the opinion section of Yale Environment 360. Below is a summary of his thesis:
Large-scale industrial agriculture depends on engineering the land to ensure the absence of natural diversity. But as the recent emergence of herbicide-tolerant weeds on U.S. farms has shown, nature ultimately finds a way to subvert uniformity and assert itself.
Not long ago, it was reported that beef prices were up. Well, now they’re going down. According to AgDay:
Cattle prices continue to fall pushed lower by controversy, a strengthening dollar and export concerns. Live cattle futures hit their lowest mark in nearly 4 months.
The report continues:
Part of the problem … consumer demand has fallen off since alarmists began calling lean finely textured beef pink slime.
AgDay also reports that honey is in short supply. The shortage has caused a seven percent price increase for the product since 2010.
We’re sure to hear more about plans by the USDA to expand a program that allows poultry processors to employ their own inspectors instead of relying on ones employed by the Department of Agriculture.
NPR’s food blog, The Salt, describes an FDA plan for producers to voluntarily reduce their use of antibiotics on livestock.
A big shout out to the Daily Yonder and Harvest Public Media for the scoops on the first two stories.
Photo by John Haynes Photography/flickr.com
