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Fertilizer from human waste faces scrutiny but remains a profitable industry
The cool morning spring breeze hit Saundra Traywick “like a punch to the face.” Walking through her wooded 38-acre donkey farm in central Oklahoma, Traywick suddenly found it hard to breathe as the air smelled “toxic” and “like death.” Less than a mile away, a truck was spreading a chunky dark fertilizer on a hay […]
As investors pay top-dollar for land, farmers are often priced out
As Jess Bray pulled up to a 21-acre farm nestled in an eastern Oklahoma valley, she instantly got a warm feeling. “This is the place,” she thought. After attempting to buy two other properties before being outbid by cash buyers, Bray and her husband Jon began to wonder whether their dream of owning and operating […]
With California’s Prop 12 now law, pork producers adapt while lobbying groups continue to fight
In 2021, two years before California enacted new hog confinement standards for pork to be sold within its borders, Seaboard Foods said it would “no longer sell certain whole pork products” in the state. Passed in 2018, California’s Farm Animal Confinement Initiative, often referred to as Proposition 12, required pork producers to give sows, or […]
Federal audit: More information on foreign-owned agriculture land needed
Federal records on foreign-owned agricultural land include errors, lack details on subsidiaries and secondary owners, and are not provided to other government agencies in a timely manner, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in a recent audit. Foreign companies are required to disclose land purchases or leases to the United States Department of Agriculture as […]