Articles by Jim Webster

Milk prices, profits set records but production holds steady

The USDA rule that requires meat labels to show where animals were born, raised and slaughtered should be overturned because it fails to meet a compelling government interest, the American Meat Institute (AMI) told a federal appeals court in a brief filed Monday.

A new technological epoch for U.S. agriculture, driven by information technology, has enormous promise but faces threats from a political system that is slow to adapt, Deere & Co. Chief Economist J.B. Penn told a Purdue University audience last week.

Twenty House members are backing legislation that would ease restrictions on interstate sales of unpasteurized milk – a product that medical experts and major dairy groups say can be harmful, even deadly, especially to children.

Farmer Mac, the $14 billion Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation created by the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987 to provide a secondary market for farm real estate loans, is in the midst of a family feud with one of its major stockholder groups – the Farm Credit System (FCS).

USDA’s detailed 2012 Census of Agriculture, released Friday afternoon, provides even more evidence of the consolidation of U.S. agriculture – a small percentage of large farms delivering most of the production and a slowly declining number of small and mid-size operations.

The food industry is sending signals that it will go to federal court again to overturn a Vermont state law that would require food labels to disclose ingredients derived through biotechnology.

For nearly four years, the Farm Credit Administration (FCA) board has faced a gauntlet of opposition from Farm Credit System (FCS) cooperative lenders over its demand that directors of the four banks and 78 local and regional lending associations hold advisory votes of their member-borrowers on sig

Even as the number of farms in the U.S. held relatively steady for the past decade, the number of dairy farms has been in a steady decline that even accelerated last year, according to an annual tabulation released by USDA.

The first installment of the 2012 Census of Agriculture shows 6.2 more women principal farm and ranch operators than five years earlier and a 2 percent gain in farmers under 35. It also adds to the arsenal of those, like Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who are pushing programs to boost younge