Articles by Jim Webster

Rural Americans need new alliances with urban and suburban interests if they are ever to regain the political clout they enjoyed in the past, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum in Washington today.

A U.S. District Court judge today threw out a suit by attorneys representing the Waterkeeper Alliance [http://www.waterkeeper.org] against a Maryland family and Perdue Farms

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was sworn in Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden as president pro tempore of the United States Senate, putting him third in the line of presidential succession after the vice president and the speaker of the House.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was sworn in this morning as president pro tempore of the United States Senate

Updated information on farm hands on the Potomac for the week of December 17

The Ranchers-Cattlemen’s Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) has asked for a federal investigation of JBS USA’s plan to assume management of, and potentially acquire, U.S. and Canadian slaughter plants owned by XL Foods of Alberta.

Government support for farmers in the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell to 19 percent of total farm receipts last year, the lowest since OECD began tracking the data in the mid-1980s.

Frank Mitloehner, the California-Davis air quality expert who challenged a 2006 UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report that wildly exaggerated the environmental impact of livestock, has been named chairman of an FAO-led partnership that will improve how environmental impacts of the live