House 2018 Farm Bill fails

House 2018 Farm Bill fails

Julie Harker

Brownfield AG Network

The House farm bill has been voted down on a vote of 198 to 213.  House speaker Paul Ryan’s motion to reconsider was suspended, and another vote could be coming. All Democrats, as well as 30 Republicans led by the House Freedom Caucus, voted against the farm bill. The bill lost all support from Democrats when it passed out of the House Ag Committee because of the addition of more SNAP recipient work requirements.

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Management Considerations for Cattle Confinement Facilities

Management Considerations for Cattle Confinement Facilities

Heidi Carroll

iGrow

Cattle comfort and well-being within the pen environment directly impacts animal performance and health. This is true for any type of husbandry system, whether confinement, open dry lot, or on pasture. What determines cattle comfort? Doran provided ten variables to be aware of to optimize cattle comfort.

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Silage Conference Features ISU and Industry Experts

Silage Conference Features ISU and Industry Experts

Jennifer Bentley, Denise Schwab

Iowa Beef Center

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach will co-host the Iowa-Wisconsin Silage Conference on June 21 in Dubuque. The conference will feature presentations from both academic and industry experts who will speak on a wide variety of topics related to growing and using quality silage. ISU Extension and Outreach dairy specialist Hugo Ramirez and beef specialists Denise Schwab and Garland Dahlke will present during the course of the day-long conference.

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Arizona Border Ranchers Live in Fear as Illegal Immigration Crisis Worsens

Arizona Border Ranchers Live in Fear as Illegal Immigration Crisis Worsens

Judicial Watch

More than half a million illegal immigrants of several dozen nationalities have been apprehended on John Ladd’s sprawling cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona. Ladd has also found 14 dead bodies on his 16,500-acre farm, which has been in his family for well over a century and sits between the Mexican border and historic State Route 92.

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Six reasons we need grazing animals

Six reasons we need grazing animals

Alan Newport

Beef Producer

Despite naysayer claims to the contrary, grazing livestock are a necessity to manage, heal and build the landscape. There are myriad reasons, but here are six key components of the symbiotic animal-grassland relationship.

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What’s CRISPR-Cas9 and its Potential Impact on Agriculture?

What’s CRISPR-Cas9 and its Potential Impact on Agriculture?

Carla Wardin

Food Dialogues

In science terms, CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and refers to regularly recurring stretches of DNA that naturally evolved to defend against viruses.  When combined with guide molecules and the protein Cas9, CRISPR-Cas9 becomes a complex of enzymes that finds, cuts and edits strands of DNA.

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Breakevens Remain Key in Determining Retained Ownership

Breakevens Remain Key in Determining Retained Ownership

John Nalivka

Drovers

Sterling Marketing’s estimate for April feeding margins fell sharply from March as the break-even price increased to $118 per cwt from $116 per cwt. These higher breakevens were judged against April’s five-area steer price average of $120 per cwt. Steer prices for the first four months of 2018 averaged $124 per cwt, compared to $122.52 per cwt for the same period a year ago.

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Agriculture Is A Common Bargaining Chip in Trade Negotiations

Agriculture Is A Common Bargaining Chip in Trade Negotiations

Emma Wilson

Successful Faming

President Donald Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to use the agriculture industry as a bargaining tool. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter stopped trade completely with the Soviet Union. For a short period of time, President Richard Nixon placed an embargo on U.S. soybeans and President Ronald Reagan’s tariffs on Japan were similar to those Trump has recently imposed.

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Pasture walk in Stafford helps farmer develop better plan for grazing his cattle

Pasture walk in Stafford helps farmer develop better plan for grazing his cattle

Howard B. Owens

The Batavian

Nancy Glazier and Garry Wilson led a group of farmers on a pasture walk Thursday on property Wilson rents off of Transit Road in Stafford to raise beef cattle. Wilson said by fall he will have more than 70 head on the 200 acres he grazes.

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Catching up on those quality records

Catching up on those quality records

Black Ink

It doesn’t sound like a busy salebarn café or have the same ambience as a back table at the farm supply, but I’d argue that our weekly supply team conference calls are a CAB version of a coffee klatch.

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