Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/agriculture/page/18/)
All stories related to farming, including urban agriculture.
(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – Some officials expect Gov. Jennifer Granholm to line-item veto funding for Michigan State University’s research and extension offices. “I think it’s a safe assumption,” said Patrick Cudney, north region director of MSU Extension. The state allocates $64 million a year to MSU Extension and Michigan Agricultural Experimental Station. But October’s payment was $5 million short, and no one seems to know why. More
(MI) The Holland Sentinel – A controversial farm animal welfare bill signed into law this month by Gov. Jennifer Granholm has left some local farmers wondering how they will survive after implementing the law’s new requirements. The law requires that farm animals confined to cages have enough room to turn around and fully extend their limbs. More
(NY) The New York Times – According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, feeding humanity in 2050 – when the world’s population is expected to be 9.1 billion – will require a 70 percent increase in global food production, partly because of population growth but also because of rising incomes. The organization hopes that this increase can be brought about by greater productivity on current agricultural acreage and by greening parts of the world that aren’t now arable. It is also “cautiously optimistic” that, even with climate change, there will be enough land and probably enough water to do so. It’s important to look at this projection in light of another United Nations goal – preserving biodiversity – and ask whether the two are compatible. More
(MI) The Associated Press – Gov. Jennifer Granholm has signed legislation requiring that farm animals confined in small cages have enough room to turn around and fully extend their limbs. The bill signed Monday makes Michigan the second state to ban commonly used cages for egg-laying chickens, the fifth to ban common crates for veal calves and the seventh to ban certain stalls for pregnant pigs. More
(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Like canoe-paddling Johnny Appleseeds, John Patrick and others are trying to change northern Wisconsin’s landscape back to the way it used to look, one handful of wild rice at a time. Efforts to restore ancient wild rice beds are paying off as rice gatherers – who recently finished one of the best harvests in recent years – now collect as much as one-third of the annual crop from reseeded beds, said Peter David, a wildlife biologist with the commission. More
(NY) The New York Times – Three years ago, a technological breakthrough gave dairy farmers the chance to bend a basic rule of nature: no longer would their cows have to give birth to equal numbers of female and male offspring. Instead, using a high-technology method to sort the sperm of dairy bulls, they could produce mostly female calves to be raised into profitable milk producers. Now the first cows bred with that technology, tens of thousands of them, are entering milking herds across the country – and the timing could hardly be worse. More
(IN) The Indianapolis Star – Indiana’s cattle producers — their billion-dollar-a-year industry threatened by an obscure bacterium — turn their eyes anxiously to Franklin County. There on a small farm lived a cow that had bovine tuberculosis. The disease was detected in the cow at a slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania in December. More
(MI) The Detroit News – A global team of researchers has mapped the genetic code of the world’s most popular vegetable – the potato. The draft of the potato genome released last week represents the work of more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions and will provide a starting point for other researchers to develop sturdier, more nutritious potatoes. More
By Haley Walker
Walkerh4@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 25, 2009
Big Blue, Gus, Chomsky, George and Leonidasto buried their snouts in leafy greens, rolled in the mud, and grunted happily when they arrived recently at Michigan State University’s student organic farm. They had traveled from their birthplace at MSU’s old swine farm to a garden at the university’s organic farm. It was only a physical distance of a few miles, but light years in the way the 6-month-old pigs were raised. These animals are part of a university experiment that will look not only at their growth but also on their impact on the land.
(MI) Kalamazoo Gazette – Allegan, Berrien, Cass, Kalamazoo, Kent, Ottawa, and Van Buren lead the state in total value of agriculture production – including sales of crops and livestock. Food and agricultural county profiles for each of Michigan’s 83 counties and nine agricultural regions released Tuesday in a report by the Michigan Department of Agriculture show the region’s importance to the state’s agriculture industry. More