Free Republic

The FDA has won its two-year fight to shut down an Amish farmer who was selling fresh, raw milk to eager consumers in the Washington region, after a judge this month banned Daniel Allgyer from selling his milk across state lines, and he told his customers he'll shut his farm down altogether. The decision has enraged Mr. Allgyer's supporters, some of whom have been buying from him for six years and who say the government is interfering with their parental rights to feed their children. But the Food and Drug Administration, which launched a full investigation complete with a 5...

USDA-backed biofuels plant in Soperton, Georgia has lost taxpayers nearly $60 millionWASHINGTON D.C.—Upon reports Tuesday that a USDA-backed biofuels plant in Soperton, Georgia has lost taxpayers nearly $60 million, IER President Tom Pyleissued the following statement:“Apparently U.S. taxpayers have yet to discover life after Solyndra. Today’s announcement that a USDA-backed biofuels plant has been sold for pennies on the dollar—at a loss of nearly $60 million to U.S. taxpayers —further underscores the point that the federal government should not be in the venture capital business.The Bush administration secured the Range Fuels loan, and the Obama administration doubled down on the...

Revisiting the resilient lifestyle… Things finally collapse, and you go to the basement, start digging out survival gear and freeze dry food. You gather the family around the radio, shotgun in hand and begin worrying about how long the “stuff” will last. OR You get up at six AM as usual, open a bag of your favorite coffee, mixing it 50/50 with the chickory root you gathered in the summer. Opening the spout on the Big Berkey water filter, you fill the percolator you picked up at a yard sale, for 2 bucks. You set the coffee on the woodstove...

Texas needs rain — and needs it quickly — to keep farmers and ranchers from suffering even bigger losses next year from the drought that already has left them with record-breaking losses this year, producers said Friday while in San Antonio. Corn growers in Texas could encounter even bigger losses in 2012 after seeing output fall by 40 percent this year; and rice plantings, which fell by only 2 percent this year, could be cut nearly in half if more water does not become available soon, officials said. “It could drive us to acreage levels we've probably not seen in...

Firstborn is getting married! So yesterday I visit the venues, she wants to be married on a farm with a barn. What do I see at the venue I prefer? In the office, a Sarah Palin bobblehead hung in effigy. Can anyone suggest a farm/venue between Winston and Durham? I would like to patronize a conservative.

--snip-- .. Labor Dept. announced proposal that would help ensure the safety of youth on farms. But,...as farm advocates claim (they) are far too restrictive. “Here’s what the government thinks is common sense,” says Craig Anderson, Agriculture Labor and Safety Services division manager at the Michigan Farm Bureau. “Eliminate work to protect workers. If you don’t work, you can’t be hurt on the job. Who can argue with that?” --snip-- “The DOL assumes that youth under age 16 lack the ‘cognitive ability’ to herd animals on horseback, use battery-powered drills, put hay bales on a bale elevator or use any...

JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's minister of land reform says black farmers have resold nearly 30 percent of the white farmland bought for them by the government - often back to the previous white owners. Minister Gugile Nkwinti announced the startling indicator of failure at Wednesday's launch of a long-delayed government policy paper to revitalize plans to more equitably distribute agricultural land, redressing historical wrongs. Seventeen years after white minority rule ended, the vast majority of agricultural land remains in the hands of some 40,000 white commercial farmers. Nkwinti said the government had bought 7 percent of the country's commercial farmland...

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning. The story that caught my ear was about a small farm in Alabama that was going out of business. The reason given; they couldn't get any illegal aliens to work cheap due to Alabama's new immigration law. The gist of the story was we need more non-Whites to help the economy. Well last time I checked Alabama has plenty of non-Whites who were born there and more than half of them under the age of 25 are unemployed. Or better yet, back when I was a young man in Kentucky...

EXCERPT "Poor Hillary feels terrible about the way she looks, but she is so busy she isn't making time for her own needs." Making things even worse is her husband of 35 years - who's battled his own weight woes until becoming thinner recently. Bill pointed out that she needed to do something, sources say . "When Hillary asked him how she looked, he told her, 'You're huge! You need to go to a fat farm!' "Then he made things worse by saying treadmills and stair climbers were fun," a pal told The ENQUIRER. "Hillary exploded!"

A new rule being proposed by the federal Department of Transportation would require farmers to get commercial drivers licenses. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is a part of DOT, wants to adopt standards that would reclassify all farm vehicles and implements as Commercial Motor Vehicles, officials said. Likewise, the proposal, if adopted, would require all farmers and everyone on the farm who operates any of the equipment to obtain a CDL, they added. The proposed rule change would mean that anyone who drives a tractor or operates any piece of motorized farming equipment would be required to pass...

The country is running out of time. We’re broke, nationally, and as the spendthrifts in Washington, D.C. try to discover new and increasingly dishonest, disguised methods by which to hide the scope of the impending disaster, we should be considering what it means for we, the people.There can be no doubt that they are driving us to complete and unrecoverable collapse. I can describe to you what I believe their motives to be, but that doesn’t change the reality, and I’d rather focus on what we can do about it. Time is getting short. It’s possible that there will...

AUSTIN, TX - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is expected to issue its new proposed rule for mandatory animal traceability very shortly. While USDA already has traceability requirements as part of existing animal disease control programs, the proposed framework goes much further to require animal tagging and tracing even absent any active disease threat. The framework has raised significant concerns among family farm and ranch advocates, who criticize the agency for failing to provide a coherent, factual explanation for the new program’s necessity. “USDA brags about the success of past programs, but has abandoned the principles that made them...

From a runner-bean spotted spiralling along the balcony balustrade of a Beijing apartment, to long waiting-lists for allotments, a plethora of gardening websites and a mushrooming of organic farms and shops, Chinese families are increasingly looking to "grow their own". In recent years China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. In April this year, police seized 40 tons of beansprouts which had been treated with dangerous growth promoting chemicals and...

BONAPARTE, Iowa, March 1 (UPI) -- Experts said a 4.1-ounce egg laid by an Iowa chicken is unusual, but not without precedent. Nathan Batten, 37, said Aussie, a black Australorp chicken, laid the egg measuring 3 1/2-inches long and 6 1/2 inches in circumference at his farm near Bonaparte Feb. 18, The Des Moines Register reported Monday. The egg weighs about twice as much as an egg labeled large by U.S. Department of Agriculture standards and exceeds the average 2 1/2 ounces for a jumbo egg. Sean Skeehan, who raises chickens at Blue Gate Farm in Chariton, said egg size...

...and he filled tanks feeding the boat’s 200 horsepower Mercury engine with gas that had been blended with 10 percent ethanol. “I heard a station in Greenville had straight gas, but I just took it to the next one I could find. Within 10 minutes, my engine started failing,” Gray said. “(The ethanol) had crystallized and crumbled and had clogged my fuel line, and I had to tear out all of the fuel system.” Gray saved hundreds of dollars by repairing it himself, but his troubles with the motor are nothing new to marine shop owners, lawn mower mechanics and...

Vows by Congressional Republicans to slash billions from the federal budget at a time when joblessness is high and the economy needs stimulus are reckless. But here is one big-ticket saving that all members of Congress should get behind: cutting the billions of dollars in farm subsidies that distort food prices, encourage overfarming and inflate the price of land. The government spends $10 billion to $30 billion a year subsidizing mainly large-scale farmers. That includes: $5 billion in direct payments that are delivered regardless of what or even whether farmers plant; up to $7 billion in “marketing loans” that effectively...

The public choice school of economics describes how the government and special interests collude against the public good, and it's hard to think of a better model than the ethanol industry. Despite opposition from an emerging left-right anti-boondoggle coalition, the Senate version of the White House-GOP tax deal preserves the corn fuel's multiple subsidies. One measure of ethanol's political clout is that reformers merely hoped to cut the tax credit for blending ethanol into gasoline to 36 cents per gallon from the current 45 cents that was due to expire at the end of the year. Instead, the deal keeps...

This past Tuesday, Nov 30th, the Democratically-controlled lame-duck House passed the $1.2 billion Black Farmer’s Settlement funding known as Pigford II. The previous week the bill had passed the Senate with assurances of strict measures to protect the taxpayers against the rampant fraud that has been widely documented from multiple sources in both the media and government. The bill passed the House 256-152, and is now headed to President Obama to sign: the man who single-handedly introduced the Pigford II legislation in 2007 to curry favor with rural black Southern voters, to which he was trailing significantly to then front-runner...

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank. "First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. Gore: "It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going. One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the...

Between 950 and 1,000 dead pigs were found Monday on a Fulton County farm where they had apparently been abandoned months ago to die of starvation.M Humane Society Police Officer Dennis Bumbaugh said he has never seen anything like it before. He said the incident may be the largest of its kind in Pennsylvania's history. "I was horrified when I opened the door and saw what I saw," he said during a phone interview Tuesday. Bumbaugh was on his way to the Union Township farm of Daniel and Kerron Clark to begin counting the carcasses and assessing the evidence. The...

PULASKI COUNTY, Mo. (Oct. 26, 2010) — Staff members for Vicky Hartzler’s congressional campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton announced Monday that they’ve appointed three Fourth District residents, including Dixon rancher Charles Bassett, to serve as leaders of the campaign’s “Farmers and Ranchers Coalition.” Other members are Brent Heid of Hartzler’s hometown of Harrisonville and Dwayne Schad of Versailles. Bassett, who is the father-in-law of State Rep. David Day of Dixon and a relative of incoming county clerk Brent Bassett, has run a cow-calf operation for nearly 50 years, has known Hartzler for nearly a decade, and was an...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on farm dust, so senators have signed a letter addressing their concerns on the possible regulations. Many in the Oklahoma farming industry are opposed to the EPA's consideration. One farmer said the possible regulations are ridiculous. Roberts, a fourth generation farmer and rancher in Arcadia, said regulating dust in rural areas will hurt farmers' harvest, cultivation and livelihood. "Anytime you work ground, you're going to have dust. I don't know how they'll regulate it," Roberts said. "The regulations are going to put us down and keep us from...

If there are only 39,697 African-American farmers grand total in the entire country, then how can over 86,000 of them claim discrimination at the hands of the USDA? Where did the other 46,303 come from? Now, if you’re confused over what the heck I’m even talking about, let’s go back to the beginning of the story: Pigford v. Glickman In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997. The farmers won the case, known as Pigford v. Glickman,...

Here's the video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xCeItxbQY And here's the link to what Andrew Breitbart had to say about it - http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/07/19/video-proof-the-naacp-awards-racism2010/ In a nutshell, a US Gov appointed official is on tape saying “The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing, but he had come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me...

Algae. "Bio-fuel." After your latest prayer for God's solution to the Gulf catastrophe, please get comfortable in your chair and peruse this. You may wish to read this more than once and to read the linked documentation. And lest you think JoAnne and her friends are nutty, I have spoken with her and, for example, asked her if she believes the Deepwater Horzon gusher was started intentionally. And what did she say? "I don't know." Do you? I.O. does not suggest that the grand plan is to make one vast algae farm of the Gulf of Mexico, but mega-manipulators, mega-racketeers,...

"It's a perverse use of eminent domain," says Brian Rainville. “There is no public good here." He stood on a green field, filled with alfalfa and grass, on the gentle rolling hills of his family's Franklin, Vermont farm… just steps from the Canadian border. He says the barn dates back to 1800, and the land is on the national registry of historic places. But Brian’s family, who have been dairy farmers here since 1946, may not have the land much longer. The United States Government says it needs 4.9 acres of the family’s property to help protect national security. The...

My brother found this deer alone and malnourished when it was a tiny baby. My family bottle fed the baby, named Theen until he was eating grass. Several months later he's very socialized with people, our black lab, and our cats. He is free to wander if he likes and we've seen him with several herds of whitetail and axis deer. Apparently he fits in just fine with them. He frequently comes back to the house to eat some catfood and play with our dog, Buddy. He doesn't care much for deer corn.

The next time you're at a grocery store, let the cashier ring up the sale. Then try to bargain for a better deal. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? After all, just a handful of retailers sell more than half of all the groceries in the United States, and an individual shopper has very little power to negotiate. That same imbalance of power is a real problem for farmers and ranchers in the United States. Farmers are proud of their independence, but having millions of growers bartering separately puts them at a real disadvantage in the marketplace. That is why they banded...

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/February/10-at-182.html NOTE: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Department of Justice and USDA Workshops to Explore Competition and Regulatory Issues in the Agriculture Industry to Begin March 12 in Iowa Initial Workshop to Be Held in Ankeny, Iowa, at Des Moines Area Community College, FFA Enrichment Center WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today the agenda and panelists for the first joint public workshop, which will be held on March 12, 2010, in Ankeny, Iowa, to explore competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture...

WESTON, Fla. -- Authorities are investigating a traffic crash in which a truck full of goats, pigs and chickens crashed into another vehicle, killing one person and several animals.The Florida Highway Patrol said the crash happened Monday night in Broward County, about 15 miles north of Weston, when a flatbed truck jackknifed and was struck by another vehicle. The driver of the second truck was killed, and dozens of animals thrown onto the road. Some of the livestock escaped into the Everglades, and investigators fear they could become a road hazard. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Spc. Courtney Brown, Delta Troop, 3/73 Cav., 1st BCT, 82nd Airborne Div., drives one of the tractors delivered to Iraqi farmers, Dec. 22, in Sununi. Photo by Spc. Crystal Witherspoon, 3rd Infantry Division. FOB MAREZ — To help them reap a bountiful harvest next season, U.S. Soldiers here recently delivered two large tractors and two mid-size combines to local farmers in Sununi. Because farming, a very essential contributor to Sununi's economic success, has been rather hard for the workers due to a lack of farming supplies, the U.S. State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team here has been making plans since September...

LOS BANOS, Philippines (AFP) – Asian rice farmers typically do not fly around the world on holidays or own big-engine cars but scientists say they have an important role to play in helping cut the world's output of greenhouse gases. While much of the globe's focus in the climate change fight is on the burning of fossil fuels and the logging of rainforests, water-logged rice paddies are also a major source of global warming-causing methane. > About 10 percent of the methane comes from rice farming, while other sources include the flatulence of cows and decomposing landfill garbage dumps. Wassmann...

Most businesses in Indiana applaud the new tax caps. However, there is one industry in the state that has said no to their elected officials. The farmers of Indiana are rallying against the proposed caps. They say the caps, as listed in the bill, are unfair...

After soaring in 2007 and again in 2008, farm income has plunged in 2009 with little improvement expected in the next few years. A 30% drop in 2009 farm income is projected by the US Agriculture Department. Except for recession in 2002, this will drop the constant dollar value of farm income back to the level of the early 1980s when the farm crisis was headline news. The relatively strong economies and construction markets in the plains states in the last few years were due largely to soaring farm income. But these states are at a high risk of lagging...

It's no secret that many times the federal government can spend your tax dollars in ways that might leave you scratching your head or even make you angry. But wait until you hear what I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock dug up and who is getting your money now. William Roderick Kent was 87-years-old when he died. He now rests in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Park Cemetery North along Miami's 8th Street. Kent lived in a nice home in Coconut Grove. He owned property throughout South Florida, including a place in multi-story building in Coral Gables. So why -- even two years...

The crispness is in the air and frost has already been on the pumpkin this fall. It's harvest time in Indiana. But for farmers, this has not been a good year. A shortened planting season because of rain is now mixed with a late harvest because of rain. Some reports have the moisture content as high as 35 percent in some areas. This has posed a problem for the wheat industry in Indiana.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat, is calling on the Obama administration to block the use of stimulus funds for a utility-scale wind farm in West Texas that would make use of turbines manufactured largely in China.

NORTH ROSE – A Wolcott fruit grower is accusing the U.S. Border Patrol of racially profiling four of his workers who were stopped on Route 414 Aug. 17 as they were returning to his farm from a trip to purchase clothing. The men were all detained and taken for processing; Border Patrol Officer E. Rodriguez, who was in charge of the scene, told fruit grower Brian Doyle the men volunteered they were in the U.S. illegally. Doyle said Rodriguez then accused him of being a “federal criminal” because he employed the men. He said Rodriguez continually referred to the men...

Beginning in the late 17th century, an estimated one million Germans pulled up stakes and went looking for better places - - including more than 120,000 who migrated to the American colonies. The Frontier Culture Museum's German Farm, originally built in the Rhineland-Palatinate, exhibits their way of life and the timber-frame construction of houses and barns.

The buildings comprising the Staunton, Virginia, Frontier Culture Museum's Irish Farm originally stood in County Tyrone, Ulster (Northern Ireland). The Ulster Plantation was an English-dominated, Protestant colony in Ireland. The Frontier Culture Museum's Irish Farm highlights the production of linen. The farm stood on leased land, of course, the fee title being held by the English planters, and rent was due every three months. To make the rent, the Ulstermen produced linen which they sold at local markets.

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's English Farm installation features a yeoman farmer's house that was built in 1692 in Worchestershire, in west-central England, and more recently reconstructed in Virginia. Many yeoman farmers and other English commoners migrated from the western shires to America during colonial times, although their numbers most certainly did not include the builder of this house, who had to have been successful enough to own a small parcel of land on which to built a nice home.

LUMBERTON - As darkness fell on the final evening of the Burlington County Farm Fair on Saturday, one distinct parade made its way through the crowds of festival-goers. As part of his recent introduction of his running mate for the November election, Gov. Jon S. Corzine and his caravan made a stop at the Farm Fair to shake hands and talk to residents. The visit came as a late surprise to Farm Fair Manager Bill Spicer. "First he was coming and then he wasn't and then he was," said Spicer with a laugh. "But now he's here and I think...

Candia – Pigs are getting a bad rap. So bad, that Charmingfare Farm has opted to delay the arrival of a sow and her piglets normally on display in late spring. “It is not that the pigs are sick or anything, it is just public perception,” John Pyteraf, owner of Charmingfare Farm said. “I think the public sometimes just needs time to get educated.” Although the new strain of flu, type H1N1 has been called “swine flu,” no pigs have yet come down with the virus, according to state veterinarian Steve Crawford. And according to the John Pyteraf, owner of...

Nothing says summer in Iowa like a cloud of dust behind a combine. But what may be a fact of life for farmers is a cause for concern to federal regulators, who are refusing to exempt growers from new environmental regulations. It's left some farmers feeling bemused and more than a little frustrated. "It's such a non-commonsense idea that you can keep dust within a property line when the wind blows," said Sen. Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee who still farms in northeast Iowa.

Animal owners, consumers and taxpayers: NAIS ALERT! Protect your right to farm and to eat local food. Speak out against the National Animal Identification System! The USDA [http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome] has proposed a rule to require all farms and ranches where animals are raised to be registered in a federal database under the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) for existing disease control programs. The draft rule covers programs for cattle, sheep, goats and swine. It also sets the stage for the entire NAIS program to be mandated for everyone, including anyone who owns even one livestock animal (for example, a single chicken...

MENDOTA, Calif. -- Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores across the country now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought. California's sweeping Central Valley grows most of the country's fruits and vegetables in normal years, but this winter thousands of acres are turning to dust as the state hurtles into the worst drought in nearly two decades. Federal officials' recent announcement that the water supply they pump through the nation's largest farm state would drop further was enough to move John "Dusty" Giacone to forego growing...

Japanese researchers on Friday unveiled a robot suit designed to help reduce the heavy burden of harvesting as the nation's farm industry faces an ageing, shrinking workforce. Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology demonstrated a prototype wearable assistance machine equipped with eight motors and 16 sensors. The 25-kilogramme (55-pound) device is designed to assist elderly farmers who need support for their leg muscles and joints when they keep a crouching position or lift their arms high. In a demonstration, a person wearing the suit pulled radishes from the ground and picked oranges from high branches like a robot....

Farm worker advocates and opponents of illegal immigration are blasting one of President George W. Bush's "midnight regulations" that will make it easier for agricultural employers to hire foreign workers. They say the changes undermine worker protections, exploit immigrants and set wage levels so low that domestic workers cannot compete with foreign workers for jobs. The regulation,which makes changes in the U.S. Labor Department's H-2A Temporary Agriculture Worker Program, allows agricultural employers to hire temporary foreign workers if not enough domestic workers are able or willing to fill farm jobs. The changes also promise to reduce paperwork and make processing...

BINDURA, Zimbabwe (Reuters) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Saturday he would not allow a unity government to reverse his controversial policy of seizing white-owned farmland and giving it to blacks. Speaking at his ZANU-PF party's annual conference, Mugabe said that while he hoped the opposition would agree to form a coalition government, he would not compromise on policies such as land seizures, which critics say wrecked Zimbabwe's economy. "We don't want a unity which is retrogressive," Mugabe told about 6,000 ruling party supporters at this town about 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital Harare. "The biggest...

Farmers would have an easier and cheaper time securing foreign guest workers under pending Bush administration rules. The controversial changes to the so-called H-2A guest-worker program could cut wages and speed worker recruitment. They also would relax requirements for providing foreign workers with housing and transportation. "The Department of Labor is going to weaken oversight and enforcement," Bruce Goldstein, the executive director of the Farmworker Justice Fund, charged Wednesday. A Labor Department spokesman said Wednesday night that the final rules would be made public Thursday and published in the Federal Register on Dec. 18, which means they'd take effect two...