Free Republic

A New Holland Agriculture 100 series box spreader distributes manure for fertilizer. (CNH Industrial/Handout via REUTERS) The war in Ukraine is causing a rise in oil and wheat prices. Other items are hard to come by due to international restrictions on doing business with Russia. For example, many countries are seeing less fish than usual, because Russia usually catches and sells a lot of fish. However, one item you may not think of that often is harder to find than normal. That is the crop-growing aid known as fertilizer. Fertilizer is added to soil and provides plants such as wheat...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal court has ruled for the first time that manure from livestock facilities can be regulated as solid waste, a decision hailed by environmentalists as opening the door to potential legal challenges against facilities across the country. A large dairy in Washington state, Cow Palace Dairy, polluted ground water by over applying manure to soil, ruled Judge Thomas Rice of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington on Wednesday. "The practices of this mega-dairy are no different than thousands of others across the country," said Jessica Culpepper, an attorney at Public Justice,...

Environmental activists are teaming up with state attorneys general and trial lawyers to bankrupt the nation's livestock farmers -- in the name of saving the environment. If the situation wasn't so serious, it would be hilarious.     The activists -- including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists -- are trying to convince Congress the nation's farms should be treated as industrial waste sites and therefore subject to severe penalties under the federal Superfund law. Some state attorneys general, supported by trial lawyers, have filed lawsuits to the same end. Why? They argue, animal manure...