Articles Tagged with ''specialty crops''

This is the first part of a four-part series examining the promise of cover crops, the potential for them to meet the nation’s environmental goals that rest on their success, and the potential pitfalls and unintended consequences of trying to make cover crops work in parts of the country where they currently don’t.

A broad array of contract livestock and poultry producers will be eligible for coronavirus relief and payment rules for specialty crop growers are being liberalized under rules changes made by the Agriculture Department.

The challenge of expanding and refining the use of artificial intelligence to resolve challenges in agriculture is drawing increased state and federal funding to researchers in the San Joaquin Valley.

In its most recent report, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation found illegal amounts of chemical residue on 4% of the samples it tested, with most violations on imported produce.

Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who’s one of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s newest members, is jumping into a range of farm policy issues, including pushing for as much as $20 billion a year in new conservation spending to be part of an upcoming climate and infrastructure package.

The outgoing Trump administration is tapping unspent USDA funding to provide coronavirus relief to contract producers for the first time while providing supplemental payments to hog farms. USDA also is adjusting payments calculations for many producers who have already received Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payments.

Farmers who were facing a steep drop in government payments in 2021 will instead see a third round of coronavirus relief payments and other producers and ag processors left out of previous aid programs this year will get help this time, under a massive stimulus package and government funding bill.

USDA NASS has released the 2019 horticulture census report, covering floriculture, nursery and specialty crops.

A nationwide cap and trade program hasn’t been on the legislative horizon since the idea died in Congress in 2010, but government and private market developers are counting on there being a robust demand for carbon offsets from a host of corporations, including energy companies, airlines and even major food companies, that need to offset their emissions.