Author: staff

By Cindy Gonzalez LINCOLN — In marking the merger of two water-focused state agencies, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday said he and other farmers “messed up” in managing water resources. “What’s really, really important is we go forward, that we all just have the courage to say the way it is,” said Pillen, whose family runs a Columbus-based hog operation and who became the state’s first farmer-governor in more than a century. “I’m a farmer. We don’t want to admit that we messed up, but we did. We’ve over-applied fertilizer, we’ve over-applied water, and we drove nitrates down into…

By Ainsley Platt Arkansas lawmakers passed a handful of bills during the 2025 legislative session to address environmental concerns, such as the application of industrial biosolids to farmland and a moratorium on medium and large swine farms in the Buffalo River watershed. Rep. Brad Hall, R-Van Buren, rallied legislators to pass Act 1009 overwhelmingly in both chambers, after months of complaints by Crawford Country residents of noxious odors from a waste lagoon and fields where Denali Water Solutions, a waste disposal company, stores and applies waste from chicken processing plants to farmland as fertilizer. The bill requires the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment’s…

By Roberto Samora SAO PAULO, May 7 (Reuters) – Brazil’s soybean exports could fall to 12.6 million tons in May despite the country having just harvested a record crop and China importing more amid a trade spat with the United States, according to projections from grain exporters association Anec on Wednesday. Anec’s current export estimate for May, which may still be revised based on upcoming shipping schedules, shows a potential 900,000-ton fall from both April of this year and May of the last. The potentially weaker reading for the month reflects China’s large soy inventories in the run-up to the trade war with…

By Shannon Heckt Louisiana lawmakers are asking Congress to bring back a $1 billion federal program that allows schools, child care programs, and food banks to purchase locally grown produce and protein.  The Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, both administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, were axed in March as part of the Trump administration’s move to reduce federal government spending.  Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said some small and mid-sized farms had already started planting and planning for their crops to be bought by schools or food banks…

By Cami Koons Bills updating the grain indemnity program and allowing the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship clean titles on livestock they take over, advanced Thursday from the Iowa House. Lawmakers appear to have resolved differing opinions on grain indemnity limits and including credit-sales, which has been a roadblock for similar bills in the past, though the Senate will have to give final approval to the amended bill. Rep. Norlin Mommsen, R-DeWitt, who managed the bill, said there were a lot of opinions on the policy, which left him feeling “caught between a rock and hard spot.” “I believe, at…

By Ella Cao and Naveen Thukral BEIJING/SINGAPORE, May 9 (Reuters) – China’s soybean imports plunged to a 10-year low in April as prolonged customs clearance delays and late Brazilian shipments caused by harvest slowdowns and logistics issues disrupted the usual flow of cargoes, traders and analysts say. Total imports for the month reached 6.08 million metric tons, down 29.1% from the same period last year, marking the lowest level since 2015, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the General Administration of Customs. The customs delays have severely strained China’s oilseed processing sector from April through early May, tightening soymeal supplies for its vast livestock…

By Cami Koons The economic impact of the renewable fuels industry in Iowa was $800 million less in 2024 than it was in 2023, according to a recent study released by Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.  The industry association said “stagnant corn demand” has impacted biofuels’ impact on Iowa’s economy, and said the best way to increase demand is entry to the ultra-low carbon ethanol markets. “That is the most cost-effective and impactful tool we can provide our farmers and producers,” Monte Shaw, IRFA executive director, said in a statement.  IRFA holds that the direct impacts of biofuels “remain strong” in the state,…

The USDA has given tier one projects under the former Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) program approval to continue, according to a lead partner on one of the projects. In April, the USDA announced it was cancelling PCSC and renaming it the Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative. The fate of the 130 projects funded by the $3.1-billion program wasn’t clear as the USDA rolled out new criteria that the existing projects would be evaluated on. In an exclusive interview with Successful Farming, the National Pork Board’s (NPB) Jamie Burr confirmed two of the projects given the green light to…

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) is now accepting applications for a grant to develop enterprises, supply chains, and markets for continuous living cover (CLC) crops and cropping systems in the early stages of commercial development. The application deadline is July 9, 4:30 p.m. CT.  This is the fourth round of funding, which is supported by the Minnesota Climate Smart Food Systems (CSFS) Initiative. Applicants can access more information about the grants here. CLC “refers to agricultural systems in which there are living plants and roots in the ground throughout the entire year,” said MDA. This can take many forms…

A new study suggests that, in the case of global catastrophe, urban agriculture alone could sustain only about one fifth of the population of a temperate, median-sized city, but the whole city could be fed by also farming land within a short distance of the urban area. Matt Boyd of Adapt Research Ltd, New Zealand, and Nick Wilson of the University of Otago, New Zealand, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One. Abrupt global catastrophes — such as nuclear wars, extreme pandemics, or solar storms — could severely hamper global trade. Shortages of resources like liquid fuels could…