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| Ocean Drover ~ the world's largest livestock carrier. Photo credit: shipspotting.com |
▬ The world's largest, purpose-built livestock carrier, the Ocean Drover went to Timaru New Zealand to collect a shipment of dairy heifers bound for China. The shipment is a Fonterra initiative to supply its China dairy farms with livestock. | Stuff
▬ America Leads the World in Textile Waste and Unwanted Clothing | BK Accelerator [Lest we forget, agriculture is "food and fiber". We are inundated with media coverage about food waste but never hear of fiber/clothing waste. Fashion clothing waste is a short term egoic feel good expenditure that exploits cheap foreign labor and wastes an enormous amount of resources and pollutes, too. Globalization is the enabler. The irony is that when you see photos of the eloquent dress worn in India and Africa using beautiful cotton prints and the like, we Americans are about the worst dressed (baseball caps + tee shirts) though we waste and throw away the most fiber. Great solution: Don't be a stranger to your local used clothing stores.]
▬ The price of pork: Cheap meat comes at high cost in Illinois | Chicago Tribune [Investigative journalism in Chicago went after industrial pork last week, blaming prior Illinois law and policy for today's problems.]
▬ Whipped, kicked, beaten: Illinois workers describe abuse of hogs | Chicago Tribune
▬ Pork producers defend gestation crates, but consumers demand change | Chicago Tribune
▬ U.S. Farmland Prices Fall $10 an Acre in First Drop Since 2009 | Agweb
▬ The Willamette Valley Pie Company is growing and buys 3 million pounds of fruit from Northwest growers every year. | Capital Press
▬ Environmental records shattered as climate change 'plays out before us'; Temperatures, sea levels and carbon dioxide all hit milestones amid extreme weather in 2015 | The Guardian
▬ Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them | Wash-Post
▬ Iowa farms have more butterfly and bee habitat of late, thanks to lower commodity prices and government programs. | DesMoines Register
▬ Midwest farmers and bankers face a reckoning this fall as low crop prices and a projected bumper harvest will produce financial losses for the second consecutive year. After nearly a decade of boom times, farmers in the Upper Midwest lost $58 per acre on corn last year and almost $3 per acre on soybeans. | StarTribune
▬ Michigan cherry farmer Marc Santucci posted a photo of a sea of cherries he's been forced to dump to comply with the tart cherry marketing order, a program of the USDA's CIAB. The viral image outraged those who saw it. | Reason.com
▬ Recreation on private land offers potential for conservation | UC Berkeley
▬ Oregon Editorial: Challenge renewable fuels standard | Bend Bulletin
▬ In February, a landmark deal was sealed when Weyerhaeuser Company merged with timberlands giant Plum Creek Timber Company Inc. Now publicly traded under the Weyerhaeuser name (WY), the creation of this timberland behemoth — to the tune of $8.4 billion — has formed the largest private landowner in the U.S. Weyerhaeuser now owns 13 million acres of timberland and operates 38 wood products manufacturing facilities across the country. | Land Report
▬ Air Chilled Chicken is better | Bloomberg [I began eating air chilled chicken where it began, in Southeast Nebraska, more than a decade ago - and was so impressed at the time with the improved quality.]
▬ India Is the Largest Producer of the Neem Extracts | Digital Journal
▬ Why Big Pharma Wants to Switch Billions of Farm Animals to Vaccines From Antibiotics | Bloomberg
▬ $32 million grain terminal opens for business at Britton, So.Dakota | AP
▬ Agroecology and industrial farming: leveling the playing field | Huff-Post
▬ Some agriculture experts say perennial plants can be domesticated or crossbred with annual plants, to help combat the soil erosion caused by droughts and floods. The plants' root systems are key. | Christian Science Monitor
▬ Unifying food: Urban Seed reinvents farming in the desert | LasVegas Sun
▬ The international prices for major food commodities saw a modest decline in July, following five consecutive months of increases. | FAO
▬ Farm Bill to pay out $11m to dairy farmers under MPP | Western Farm Progress
▬ Global Tree Nut Report | USDA
▬ Pesticides used to help bees may actually harm them | Eurekalert
▬ Wegmans ranks as Americans' favorite grocery chain, over Trader Joe's | Business Insider
▬ Maintaining Sagebrush-Covered Landscapes Keeps Water on the Land for Ranchers and Wildlife | USDA Blog
▬ National Trust calls for complete reform of British farm subsidies; Proposals would see the basic income support system of subsidies scrapped and farmers being paid out of public funds for environmental services | The Guardian
▬ Clinton campaign studying alternative to U.S. ethanol mandate | Reuters [There's not a lot of substance in this story, so I assume that, at best, it is posturing before the election given polls show the majority of Americans are anti-ethanol policy. Also, last week it was reported that Tom Vilsack may be considered for Chief of Staff under Hillary, so I'm not expecting much in ethanol policy change should she become elected.]
▬ Why is a startup charging parents $180 for $2 worth of peanut butter? | The Verge
▬ Growing up on an Amish farm protects children against asthma by reprogramming immune cells | EurekAlert [I am a testament to this science, as I had relatives with allergies and redheads are more prone to allergies, so if anyone should have gotten allergies it would have been me... but I had exposure to every farm antigen conceivable from baby on... and I never developed asthma or allergic rhinitis or allergies.]
▬ Gigantic vegetables and fruits in Taranaki New Zealand ?? | Stuff [Interesting - I'd like a soil experts take on this.]
▬ Six thoughts on the future of food -from fellow Boulderite- chef and restaurant owner, Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon. | Wash-Post [Predicting the future is risky, at best, but I'd have to say I'm in agreement with most of his points barring some collapse scenario.]
▬ Health Insurers Squeeze Rural Americans | Daily Yonder
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