Through May, China was buying 100 percent more DDG than a year ago. Exports to South Korea were up almost 60 percent and South Korea’s purchases were higher as well. Unfortunately, markets in Canada were down 22 percent and Mexico was down 15 percent..

Tight beef supplies and increased food prices will bring lean finely textured beef (LFTB), labeled as “pink slime” by the media, back to consumers’ plates, according to “LFTB: Beef’s Latest Battleground for Survival,” a report released last Wednesday by researchers at Rabobank’s Food and Agribusiness Research and Advisory.

USDA authorized emergency grazing and haying on eligible CRP land after the primary nesting period in 394 counties in 11 states: Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, to help provide relief for farmers short of forage.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) will not be required to report proprietary information to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the agency dropped a proposed rule that ag interest groups said would have jeopardized privacy and security for livestock producers.

Roughly $200 million of segregated customer funds are missing from the bank accounts of Peregrine Financial Group (PFG), a brokerage firm based in Cedar Falls, IA, and Chicago, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) alleged in a lawsuit filed last Tuesday morning.

According to agriculture census data from USDA, there are 359 farms in Custer County and about 601,000 acres of farm land. Total ag sales in the county were about $14.4 million in 2007. About three-fourths of agriculture land in the county is dedicated to pasture.

last week and an 8 percent five-year average. “Silking reached 25 percent, meaning the crop continues to suffer through hot, dry conditions during critical maturation,” Sanow said. “This, combined with the worsening condition ratings, point to a national yield well below USDA’s 166 bushels per acre (bpa),.

Prior to the amendment votes, the new farm bill was scored to cost $498 billion over its five-year lifespan, or $969 billion over 10 years, based on congressional scoring procedures. The bill spends about $23 billion less than projected spending would have been if the current law and programs were extended.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be allowed to continue using aerial surveillance as a tool to enforce Clean Water Act (CWA) violations after the U.S. Senate last Thursday failed to pass two separate amendments to the farm bill—one to ban the practice and another to allow aerial surveillance with certain restrictions.

The hearing in Jefferson City, MO, was in response to protests by farmers and state officials who say that the Corps’ plan to dump nearly a million cubic yards of dredged soil from its habitat restoration projects into the Missouri River is wasteful and displays a double standard in regulation of the Clean Water Act (CWA).