Agriculture, Irrigation, Farming News: July 2015 Round-up

July has been a busy month for farming. From Midwestern flooding and California drought to robotic tree-tapping and new EPA ozone rules, we’ll take a look at everything happening in our industry and how it affects our market and bottom line.

• Chicken Recall – On top of the record number of deaths from bird flu, Aspen Foods has issued a recall of nearly two million pounds of chicken offered through a variety of companies due to Salmonella enteritidis contamination. The chicken was processed between April 15 and July 10, and have use-by dates between July 14, 2016 and October 10, 2016.
• Row-Crop Ratings Improve – Though they’re still down from last year’s ratings, the USDA has steadily improved row crop ratings in corn and soybeans this month, with wheat reaching a five-year high at 75%. Pasture and range conditions are 10% higher than last year, so make sure you’re making hay while the sun shines.
• Bird Flu Recovery Continues – After staggering losses of 34 million birds, Iowa turkey producers are hoping for quick disinfection and a 3-week waiting period to restock their turkey barns. With turkeys requiring 20-22 weeks of growth for the Thanksgiving dinner table, poultry farmers are anxious to get turkeys back in the barn by mid-August to make their November cutoff.
• Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act – This bill, HR 1599, will prevent states from passing individual laws affecting labeling of GMO foods. Though intended to provide uniform labeling standards such as the USDA Organic standard, opponents are concerned that it will prevent labeling of GMO foods, resulting in potential health problems down the road.
• Western Water Wars – In the continued drought in California, the strife continues between the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District and California’s State Water Resources Control Board when the Board hit the Irrigation District with a $1.5 million dollar fine over the diversion of 670 million gallons of water. The Irrigation District has water rights going back to 1914 and earlier and claim their water rights cannot be infringed by the Control Board.
• Robotic Tree Tappers – Two McGill University graduate students were featured in a blog post by Farm Industry News for combining robotics and agriculture at the 2014 ASABE competition to develop robotic tree tappers to help lower the cost of maple syrup production. Among their developments? Bharath Sudarsan and Trevor Stanhope are working on “eyes” for a cultivator that controls exactly where mechanical weeding is needed in organic crops and UAVs (drones) that detect nutritional deficiencies in the field.
• New EPA Ozone Rules – A new blog post on The Hill took a hard look at the EPA’s ozone rules that will go into effect later on this year. Because farming in general consumes a lot of energy, whether from tractors, fertilizer production or barn electricity, the new regulations will increase costs across the board for farmers in the field and consumer at the store.

Be sure to check in next month for the next installment of our Monthly Round-Up series!