Big Ag Set to Crush Family Farmers with ‘Climate-Smart’ Carbon Markets: Report

Family scale farmers in the Midwest may lose a lot to large agribusinesses through carbon markets, a new report says.

According to the report, “Agricultural Carbon Markets, Payments and Data: Big Ag’s Latest Power Grab” by Open Markets Institute and Friends of the Earth, carbon markets programs will entrench chemical-intensive farming practices and increase corporate control of agriculture rather than reduce greenhouse gas emissions like politicians assert.

Read More

Three Ohio School Districts Take Part in Pilot Program to Teach Students About Where Their Food Is Grown

Three local school districts in Ohio are teaching students about where the food they eat at school is grown, as well as adding to the overall menu variety, as part of a pilot program through Feed Our Future’s Local Menu Takeover.

This pilot program started last year in Northeast Ohio, and this year, three Cincinnati school districts have committed to serving only locally sourced meals this week as part of Farm to School Month.

Read More

Wisconsin Gov. Evers Signs Bill Appropriating $883K to Promoting Dairy Exports

Gov. Tony Evers

Wisconsin taxpayers will pay $883,000 for a new agricultural exports program to promote dairy products.

The tab results from a bill signed by Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday, which was National Agriculture Day.

Wisconsin Act 207 (Senate Bill 827) requires the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection to apply the existing, unused appropriation for a newly created agricultural exports program.

Read More

Commentary: It’s an Unraveling, Not a Reset

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that a shortage of fertilizer is causing farms in the developing world to fail, threatening food shortages and hunger. Ironically, the lead photo is of mounds of phosphate fertilizer in a Russian warehouse.

Modern synthetic fertilizers are typically made using natural gas or from phosphorous-bearing ores. The former provides the nitrogen that is critical to re-use of fields in commercial agriculture. They constitute more than half of all synthetic fertilizer production. 

So what happens when oil and natural gas extraction are crippled in industrialized nations? One likely outcome is that the fertilizer manufacturing industry is also crippled, leaving both large commercial growers and smaller farms around the world starved of a key substance they need to grow food for hungry populations.

Read More

Farms Fail as Fertilizer Prices Soar

Blue tractor in a field, fertilizing the land

Soaring fertilizer prices across the globe have impacted farmers making it more expensive to produce food and forcing them to cut back on production, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Diammonium phosphate, or DAP, a common component of fertilizer, cost $745 per metric ton in December 2021, more than double its average 2020 price, the WSJ reported.

Higher fertilizer costs could translate into increased food prices in the next year, worsening global hunger after the pandemic caused massive job losses and further growing inflation, the WSJ reported.

Read More

Washington Correspondent Neil McCabe Weighs In on the Killing of 800,00 Jobs by Death Tax

Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Washington Correspondent for the Tennessee Star Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on his latest piece addressing the death tax of Joe Biden.

Read More

Grant Applications Open for Michigan Farms, Agriculture Processors to Offset Coronavirus Impact

Applications are now open for $15 million in grants for Michigan farms and agricultural processors to offset damage done by the coronavirus pandemic, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development announced on Wednesday.

The Michigan Agricultural Safety Grant Program will allocate $15 million from funding from the federal CARES Act to farms and agricultural processors, with $10 million being provided to processors and $5 million provided to farms.

Read More

School Districts Push A Return To Busing, Despite Their Own Data Suggesting It Won’t Reduce The ‘Achievement Gap’

Multiple school districts across the country are considering busing-style programs to distribute impoverished students equally, but data suggest that such proposals would not reduce an achievement gap between poor students and their wealthier schoolmates, analyses by the Daily Caller News Foundation and others found.

Read More