Report: Farm, Food Prices Rise Under Net-Zero Climate Rules

Farmer Working

Farms and families will pay significantly more under the Biden administration’s net-zero climate policies, a new report from an Ohio-based policy group says.

The Buckeye Institute’s Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm shows farmers will see a 34% rise in operational costs under the policies and family grocery bills will increase 15% based on modeling.

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Study Shows 82 Percent of Farmstead Income Is Earned Outside the Farm

Research shows more farmers aren’t relying on the harvest to make ends meet, and the trend is changing the economic distance between rural and urban communities.

“I don’t want to paint this as challenge for agriculture,” Alan Spell, an assistant extension professor at the University of Missouri, said in an interview with The Center Square. “In many ways, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s just a story that hasn’t been told very much.”

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House Republicans Request Government Watchdog Investigate Foreign Investments in American Farmland

More than 100 House Republicans are asking a government watchdog to probe foreign investments in U.S. farmland, including those by China, which they say may present national and food security concerns.

Led by Reps. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania and James Comer of Kentucky, the lawmakers on Saturday called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study foreign farmland ownership and how the U.S. government is monitoring acquisitions, a letter shows. There has been an uptick in foreign investments and ownership, which may be “underreported” due to the U.S. Agriculture Department’s (USDA) unreliable data, the Republicans say.

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Ohio Group Joins Fight Against California’s Livestock Regulations

An Ohio group joined the fight against a California proposition that it believes imposes illegal regulations on the pork industry across the country.

The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based policy group, filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court recently in a case filed by the National Pork Producers Council that challenges California’s Proposition 12, saying it violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which restricts states from regulating commerce outside their borders.

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Wisconsin Dairy Farmers Want New State Water Officer to Help, Not Hurt

Gov. Tony Evers

There are some worries among dairy farmers in Wisconsin about a new water officer position that’s headed for Gov. Evers’ desk.

The Wisconsin Senate this week approved a plan, AB 727, that creates a new hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.

The Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and the Venture Dairy Cooperative released a joint statement pleading with the governor not to turn the new position into an environmental advocate.

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Farmers Cry Foul over Biden’s Death Tax Proposal

Woman with ball cap on, out in the fields of a farm

President Joe Biden has proposed amending the inheritance tax, also known as the “death tax,” but farmers around the country are raising concerns about the plan.

In the American Families Plan introduced earlier this year, Biden proposed repealing the “step-up in basis” in tax law. The stepped-up basis is a tax provision that allows an heir to report the value of an asset at the time of inheriting it, essentially not paying gains taxes on how much the assets increased in value during the lifetime of the deceased. This allows heirs to avoid gains taxes altogether if they sell the inheritance immediately.

Under Biden’s change, heirs would be forced to pay taxes on the appreciation of the assets, potentially over the entire lifetime of the recently deceased relative. 

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Bill Lee Delivers First of Many Planned Video Addresses From Family’s Franklin Ranch to Summarize His Work as Governor

Last week, Gov. Bill Lee gave what he called a “Friday Afternoon on the Farm” video address on Twitter to celebrate his first week in office and provide a brief update on his work. The video, just over a minute in length, is available here on his official governor’s Twitter page. We’ve had a great first week in office. I issued my first executive order focused on rural Tennessee and we began work on the budget. We’ll be posting regular Fridays from the Farm videos, and I’m excited to post my first one here on my new, official Twitter page: pic.twitter.com/VFuaF1qx3X — Gov. Bill Lee (@GovBillLee) January 26, 2019 In the video’s post, Lee says, “We’ve had a great first week in office. I issued my first executive order focused on rural Tennessee and we began work on the budget. We’ll be posting regular Fridays from the Farm videos, and I’m excited to post my first one here on my new, official Twitter page.” While he and wife Maria are living in the Governor’s Mansion in Nashville, they were spending a three-day weekend on “the farm,” he said. The farm to which Lee refers is his family’s Triple L Ranch…

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Drones Can Help Farmers Grow Better Crops

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by Elizabeth Lee   The tools available for farming have come a long way since Dale Cope was a boy. “One of my chores for my parents is to go weed the garden with a hoe. Now, I’m not going to send a hoe out there, I’m going to fly out there with my drone, and I’m going to take care of the weeds that way,” said Cope, associate professor of practice, Texas A&M Department of Mechanical Engineering. He and a team of researchers at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, are studying how unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, can be used in agriculture to help farmers. Researchers said within the next 10 years, drones can become an important tool in precision agriculture for farmers around the world. “You can know where to apply pesticides, fungicides (and) fertilizer in specific areas of the field instead of doing the entire field,” said Cope. Conventionally, crop consultants would walk the fields looking for problematic weeds, insects and diseases, which is time-consuming, expensive and not completely accurate. “If drones can be employed, it would save a lot of time. It would be a lot more effective and accurate,” said…

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Giles County Chicken Breeder Quarantined After Testing Positive for Avian Flu

chickens

Tennessee state department of agriculture officials have identified a third outbreak of avian flu. A flock of chickens at a commercial poultry breeding operation has tested positive for “low pathogenic avian influenza” (LPAI). It is not the same as the China H7N9 virus affecting Asia and is genetically distinct. The facility in question is a chicken breeding operation in Giles County, near the Alabama state line. The company that operates it is a different company from the one associated with the recent detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in neighboring Lincoln County. At this time, officials do not believe one premises sickened the other. On March 6, routine screening tests at the Giles County premises indicated the presence of avian influenza in the flock. State and federal laboratories confirmed the existence of H7N9 LPAI in tested samples. “This is why we test and monitor for avian influenza,” State Veterinarian Dr. Charles Hatcher said in a statement. “When routine testing showed a problem at this facility, the operators immediately took action and notified our lab. That fast response is critical to stopping the spread of this virus.” As a precaution, the affected flock was immediately exterminated and buried; and the…

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