Corn

EPA Opens Public Comment Period On Draft Fungicide Strategy

Mon, 04 May 2026 22:17:01 GMT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering the U.S. public an opportunity to help shape the future of agricultural safety, unveiling a draft Fungicide Strategy designed to balance the needs of American farmers with the protection of the nation’s most vulnerable wildlife.

The proposal marks a significant step in the agency’s effort to meet its dual mandates under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). By creating a more efficient and transparent framework for pesticide registration, the EPA says it aims to “safeguard more than 1,000 federally endangered and threatened species” while ensuring growers maintain the tools necessary to protect the nation’s food supply.

A New Framework for Modern Farming

The draft strategy focuses on conventional agricultural fungicides across the lower 48 states — an area covering approximately 41 million treated acres annually. Rather than a one-size-fits-all mandate, the proposal introduces a three-step framework:

Identify Impacts: Assessing potential population-level effects on listed species.
Mitigation Planning: Pinpointing specific measures to reduce those risks.
Targeted Application: Determining exactly where these protections are most needed based on where endangered and threatened species live and how fungicides move through the environment.

The agency emphasizes that while this strategy guides future regulatory actions, it does not impose immediate requirements. Instead, the strategy serves as a roadmap for upcoming registration reviews, with the EPA promising public input on every specific action before it is finalized.

Balancing Innovation and Conservation

Saying that it recognizes farmers are the backbone of the U.S. economy, the EPA’s draft includes several updates to provide greater flexibility. Notably, the plan expands options for reducing spray drift buffer distances and introduces new mitigation tools, such as the use of “guar gum” as a spray adjuvant.

"[American farmers] need a diverse toolbox of innovative agricultural technologies to manage crop disease, prevent resistance, and produce the affordable, nutritious food that feeds our country,” the EPA says, in a press release. “The draft Fungicide Strategy is designed to ensure those innovative tools remain available and that they are used in ways that protect the environment and endangered species.

How to Get Involved

In a push for transparency, the EPA has opened a 60-day public comment period to gather feedback from scientists, conservationists, Tribal partners and the agricultural community.

Public Comment: Stakeholders can review the strategy and submit formal feedback via (Docket: EPA-HQ-OPP-2026-2973) through June 29, 2026.
Informational Webinar: The agency will host a public webinar on May 20, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET to walk through the proposal and answer questions. Register here .

The EPA expects to review all public input and finalize the Fungicide Strategy by November 2026.

QDC Fresh Debuts Street Corn Sides Kits

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:41:24 GMT

QDC Fresh Inc. has released Street Corn Sides, a new line of value-added kits created to spice up ears of sweet corn with chef-inspired sauces and seasonings. Designed to meet growing consumer demand for convenient, flavor-forward produce solutions, Street Corn Sides delivers a turnkey way to transform everyday sweet corn into a craveable and exciting side dish in minutes, the company says.

Each Street Corn Sides kit comes complete with preportioned sauce, Parmesan cheese and/or seasoning packets and a step-by-step prep video, providing a simple, mess-free way to deliver bold flavor while reducing the need for additional ingredients at home. The initial lineup features four varieties inspired by popular regional flavor profiles — California Style, Creamy Pesto, Texas BBQ and Nashville Zest — offering retailers a differentiated, high-impact addition to their value-added vegetable set, according to QDC Fresh.

“We developed Street Corn Sides to meet consumers where they are today — looking for convenient and exciting flavor-forward meal solutions without sacrificing freshness,” says Marvin Quebec, president of QDC Fresh. “This program gives our retailer partners a flexible, innovative way to elevate packaged sweet corn from a commodity item to a complete, value-added experience.”

Street Corn Sides was developed with both retailers and consumers in mind, delivering the convenience and flexibility today’s shoppers expect. Whether prepared on the grill, in the oven, on the stovetop or in the air fryer, the kits provide multiple cooking options that can be prepared in minutes and fit into busy lifestyles. By including all flavor components in one package, Street Corn Sides adds clear value back to the consumer — eliminating guesswork while enhancing the overall eating experience, says QDC Fresh.

“We’re incredibly excited to introduce Street Corn Sides to the industry as a fresh, value-added solution that brings both convenience and excitement to the produce department,” says Rachelle Schulken, director of marketing for QDC Fresh. “Just as importantly, we’re looking forward to collaborating closely with our retail partners to create programs that drive sales, build shopper engagement and deliver meaningful value at store level.”

In addition to simplifying meal preparation, Street Corn Sides supports retailers’ efforts to drive incremental sales within the produce department and cross-merchandising opportunities throughout the store by pairing fresh sweet corn with trending flavors and ready-to-use seasonings. The fully contained kits also help reduce shrink, streamline merchandising and encourage impulse purchases during peak corn season and beyond, says QDC Fresh.

The company plans to showcase the California Style Street Corn Sides at the upcoming Viva Fresh Produce Expo in San Antonio, where attendees are invited to experience the California Style flavor firsthand. Attendees can stop by booth No. 1105 to sample and discover how Street Corn Sides can bring excitement and value-added innovation to produce programs.

Conflict in Iran Ripples Through Global Fertilizer Markets, Raises Prices Even Higher

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:28:10 GMT

Update: President Trump took to social media on Tuesday to say he has ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of all Maritime Trade.

He also says the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz if necessary.

"Effective IMMEDIATELY, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade... If necessary, the United States Navy will begin… pic.twitter.com/pIJyFwL78j
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 3, 2026

The joint U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran has triggered a significant ripple effect across global markets.

While crude oil prices soared on Monday, the global fertilizer market is also rallying. This comes as conflict threatens the stability of the Strait of Hormuz.

This narrow waterway is located between Oman and Iran and links the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It serves as a critical maritime chokepoint for global energy and also handles a substantial portion of the world’s fertilizer supply.

Key for Fertilizer Supplies

Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer for StoneX, notes the Strait of Hormuz accounts for nearly 25% of globally traded nitrogen fertilizer.

(StoneX)

“We have got three of the top 10 global urea exporters that sit in the Persian Gulf,” Linville says. “Three of the top 10 anhydrous exporters sit in the Persian Gulf. One of the world’s top five phosphate exporters sits in the Persian Gulf. And with that Strait of Hormuz continuing to stay shut out to safe passage, those tons just don’t matter anymore. They don’t exist until the Strait reopens.”

Conflict Increases Already Historically High Fertilizer Prices

Global fertilizer prices rose immediately following the attack. They moved in tandem with higher energy and natural gas prices, which are the primary feedstocks for nitrogen products.

Fertilizer prices were already at historical highs prior to the conflict. Linville reports urea markets saw the sharpest increases, followed by phosphate.

In New Orleans (NOLA), physical barges for April urea traded at $457 per ton on Friday. By Monday, prices had jumped to approximately $550 per ton.

“We have had prices up about $70 a ton from Friday afternoon trade. It’s been significant,” Linville says.

UAN and anhydrous prices have not reacted as violently, but phosphate values are not far behind.

“Phosphate, we’ve got that price up about $30 a ton from the last trade we had seen. Again, [I’m] a little surprised it’s not up more. That’s, I guess, a thankful thing that’s not up more, but I think more increases are coming. Really, the only major fertilizer that hasn’t been impacted so far is potash. But you can even make a case for that given Israel and Jordan’s importance,” he adds.

Corn-to-Fertilizer Ratio Stretches Further

He says the corn-to-fertilizer price ration was already one of the worst in history, and this has added insult to injury.

“We were already the second or third worst urea-to-corn ratio that we had been for this time of the year, this part of the calendar. This just moves that higher,” Linville explains.

(StoneX )

Timing Threats for Spring Planting

Higher prices aren’t the only problem: Supply is in jeopardy. Linville says, from a timing standpoint, it could not be worse for agriculture.

A multi-week conflict could keep some supply from getting to the U.S. in time for spring planting.

“It takes 30 days to get a vessel of urea to load in the Persian Gulf, sail it over here, hit U.S. shores, and then another three to four weeks to move that product into the interior of the nation to a point where the farmer can put their hands on it,” Linville says.

This means a vessel loading today might not be available until May 1. The window for spring application is closing quickly.

While healthy fertilizer import volumes in February provide some cushion, the industry could see a shift in acreage. Some farmers may move from corn to soybeans if nitrogen supplies do not arrive in the Corn Belt in time.

California Grocer Partners With Farm for Fall Fun

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 16:25:33 GMT

Each year more than 14,000 visitors come to the Fantozzi Farms Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch in Patterson, Calif. This year, the 10-acre maze not only offers fun for the whole family, it also tells a unique farm-to-table story starring The Save Mart Cos., the Central Valley grocer with deep roots in the Golden State.

“Our partnership with Save Mart this year has been such a positive experience,” says Denise Fantozzi, who co-owns Fantozzi Farms with her husband, Paul. “Save Mart has been a really important part of our community for years, and so everybody knows about Save Mart and partnering together — showing that pathway from the farm to the grocery store to the table — is something that we can all relate to.”

In the early 2000s, Fantozzi, a former schoolteacher, was looking to incorporate education into fun field trip experiences on the farm and together with her farmer husband opened the first Fantozzi Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch in 2003.

While Fantozzi says they started off small, the agri-entertainment farm has added to the experience over the years with scarecrow contests, hayrides, corn hole tournaments, pumpkin painting and more. It also welcomes scores of school-age children through field trips that bring the farm-to-table message to life.

Fantozzi says the corn maze receives repeat visitors from near and far.

“I just love seeing families come back year after year,” she says. “Building that connection with the community, that’s the most rewarding part.”

Over the years, Fantozzi says she’s become personal friends with many of the families who visit the farm, has watched their kids grow up and, in some cases, become employees at the corn maze in their teen years. And then there are those who visited as children who come back with kids of their own.

Designing Memories on the Farm

An aerial view of the Fantozzi Farms and Save Mart corn maze reveals its breathtaking intricacies. How does a 10-acre corn maze spanning more than 5 miles of twisting paths and 12 hidden checkpoints come to be?

“We start off with our design. We think of what we want the design to be, and that’s really sketched out on paper or on the computer,” Fantozzi explains. “From the very beginning, we’ve had a company called Maze Play that comes out, and they have the equipment to cut the maze design, put in all the paths, and they use a small tractor with a rototiller behind it, and a GPS system. They cut those paths very exact, and the final maze looks just like the design we planned.”

This year’s corn maze, which features Save Mart branding integrated in the design, was the brainchild of Jenna Rose Lee, Save Mart Cos. marketing and social media manager.

“This is ag storytelling at its finest, and it’s a connector,” Lee says. “We wanted to showcase the relationship between the farmer and the retailer, and the maze design does just that. It showcases the farm to the family table and the supply chain.

“In the design, you’ll see our logo, but then in addition to that, you see the tractor,” she continues. “There’s a big grocery cart in the middle, and then you also see a home. So, it’s really making that connection between how the food gets from the field to our shelves, to the grocery cart, and to your family’s dinner table.”

The corn maze also features one of Save Mart’s tag lines: “Valley Proud.”

“What we wanted to showcase in this huge display is that we are proud to be here. We’re not going anywhere. We’re ‘Valley Proud,’” Lee says. “We’re proud of our local farmers, and we love our community.

“We were founded in Modesto, Calif, and it’s part of who we are and where we are at the heart of the Central Valley, and it’s important for us to connect with our local farmers who stock our shelves,” she adds. “Partnering with Fantozzi was a true testament to being local and supporting our local farmers.”

Corteva's Bold Move: What Splitting Crop Protection and Seed Businesses Means for the Future

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:27:19 GMT

Global agriculture technology company Corteva announced plans on Wednesday to separate into two independent, publicly traded entities: “new” Corteva, which will continue to sell crop protection products – herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biologicals – and SpinCo, which will focus on the seed genetics business.

SpinCo will include Pioneer, the company’s legacy seed brand established in 1926, as well as Brevant and regional seed brands, including Dairyland Seed.

Upon separation of the companies, Greg Page, current Corteva chairman, will lead new Corteva, while Chuck Magro, current Corteva CEO, will become CEO of SpinCo.

In announcing the decision by Corteva, Magro said the farmer-centric organization appreciates that its customers want and need choice across their input decisions.

“The best way, maybe I can even say, the only way for this company to preserve and expand that choice and keep putting innovative, effective, sustainable solutions into the hands of farmers around the world is to give both businesses the freedom to operate without having to look out for the other,” said Magro, during an online presentation primarily focused on company investors.

He added that the separation of the company into two entities will allow both businesses to maximize long-term value for farmers, customers, employees and shareholders.

Magro described SpinCo – with expected net sales of $9.9 billion in 2025 (56% of current Corteva sales) – as “a classic growth compounder” that will pursue opportunities in out-licensing, hybrid wheat, biofuels and gene editing.

“The continued success of our SpinCo business will be predicated upon sustained investment in advanced genetics and further capitalizing on our unique route to market,” Magro said.

As a pure-play crop genetics company, Magro predicts SpinCo could go beyond its corn and soybean core into other row crops, even expanding into other areas like fruits and vegetables.

“Spinco will also look to expand on new opportunities in wheat, cotton, rice and other products, where genetics can play a transformative role,” he said. “In other words, we could see SpinCo playing in a vastly expanded addressable market.”

Corteva Crop Protection Business Is Future-Focused

For new Corteva, Magro characterized the crop protection industry as competitive and tough, but that company leaders anticipate the market will return to growth in the near future.

“At new Corteva, success will be built upon an optimized supply chain, a new level of operational excellence and the ability to invest in the next generation of sustainable, differentiated innovation, including biologicals and other nature-based products,” he said.

Magro said as company leaders weighed the pros and cons of separating the two companies, they made the decision with the future in mind.

“This is not about today, and it’s not certainly about the last six years. This is about what we see coming,” he said. “We’re in a market that we need to look out 10-years plus. That’s just the research and development and the timeline it takes to bring technology into the marketplace. So this is a long-term decision that we are making.”

Corteva’s 2025 net sales for its crop protection business are estimated to be $7.8 billion (44% of the current company’s total).

During Magro’s remarks, he gave no indication of where the two companies will be based. Corteva’s global headquarters is currently based in Indianapolis, Ind., while Johnston, Iowa, is home to its seed business.

The transaction separating Corteva and SpinCo is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026.

Corteva was formed in 2018 as the agriculture-focused subsidiary of DowDuPont, following the merger of the two companies. Corteva was spun-off as its own entity in 2019.

Your next read: Fertilizer Decisions: Balance Costs, Yields and Sustainability

High Iowa Water Nutrients Come Down to (and With) Rainfall

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 20:10:13 GMT

The equivalent of 70 nurse tanks of nitrogen per day and one truckload of phosphorous per hour is flowing through the confluence of the Des Moines and the Raccoon rivers in central Iowa. This represents an estimated $50 million annually in agriculturally valuable nutrients lost as water pollutants. So says the “Currents of Change” analysis recently released by Iowa’s Polk County.

“Those nutrients would be much better spent as fertilizer applied to crops that are actually helping our plants grow and producing food that feed people,” says Eliot Anderson of University of Iowa, one of the analysis’ 16 contributing scientists, who spoke at a livestreamed public event presenting the findings.

The analysis highlighted several key findings about the central-Iowa watershed that supplies drinking water to the Des Moines metro area. These included ecological issues like declining biodiversity, fish kill events and harmful algal blooms and water safety problems like antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing pathogens, PFAS and pesticides.

But excessive nutrients, namely agriculturally-sourced nitrogen and phosphorous, were a key focus.

Awash in Nutrients

According to both the analysis and the scientists who presented the findings, the watershed’s normal nitrate levels sit at around 6 to 8 milligrams per liter. While this is lower than EPA’s nitrate standards for drinking water at 10 milligrams per liter, it still ranks the rivers as having among the highest nitrate concentrations of the country. The analysis and presenters note nitrate concentrations regularly spike up to double that level, especially following rain events. Too-high nitrate concentrations in drinking water can have severe health consequences, including “blue baby syndrome” and various cancers.

Concentrations of total phosphorus in the watersheds ranged from roughly 0.2 to 0.7 milligrams per liter depending on location. These levels were above the national average for comparatively sized watersheds. High total phosphorus can result in harmful algal blooms.

Jerald Schnoor of the University of Iowa, another of the analysis’ contributing scientists who spoke at the public presentation of the findings, says stakeholders might well ask where the nutrients are coming from.

“Most of it is from agricultural land — roughly 80% — and of that, 40% of the nitrate is coming from fertilizers applied directly onto the land, about 20% is coming from manure onto the land, and another 20% from soybeans and other legumes that can fix nitrogen and make more nitrate available to run off into tile drainage,” he answers for nitrogen.

For phosphorous, roughly three-quarters of what is in the rivers came from “the state’s extensive corn and soybean production,” overwhelmingly from applied fertilizers, according to the analysis. It cites 2019 data from the U.S. Geological Survey sourced from monitoring sites across the Midwest in identifying the sources of nutrients in the waterways.

However, the problem of high concentrations of nutrients in the Des Moines and the Raccoon rivers is not new. The analysis itself shows nitrate concentration rates regularly getting into current ranges going back to the early 1980s. A 1992 essay from Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture notes high nitrates was a long-running problem at the time. It points out that concentrations going back to the early 1980s were quite close to those of the mid-1940s, back before commercial fertilizer use.

A History of Nutrient Control Efforts

Agricultural efforts to curb nutrient runoff in the area isn’t new either.

Greg Wandrey, director of sustainability at the Iowa Corn Growers Association, points to the 2013 Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy as just one example.

“The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy goal for phosphorus has been met,” he says. “Farmers have done a tremendous job reducing soil erosion with different practices like cover crops and less tillage and strip-till.”

Wandrey also describes the work of the Iowa Nitrogen Initiative , a public-private partnership run by Iowa State University. The initiative does on-farm trials to try to determine the agronomically-optimum application rate. He says the results of the hundreds of trials is the realization that application rate recommendations of a couple of decades ago — roughly 1.2 lb. of nitrogen per bushel produced — are too high for modern corn production practices and needs.

“The number of pounds of nitrogen per bushel is down to about 0.85 to 0.9,” he says. “The nitrogen use efficiency of farmers has improved dramatically over the last 15 to 20 years.”

And those improvements shouldn’t be surprising, he points out.

“[Farmers] don’t just put on a bunch of nitrogen just for the fun of it because nitrogen is, if you own your land, probably the second-highest input cost behind seed. And if you rent, it’s probably the third-highest behind rent and seed,” Wandrey says.

Iowa corn growers aren’t the only ones involved with controlling nutrient runoff into the watershed.

“Iowa pig farmers care deeply about clean water and clean air, and we always have, because we live here too,” says Pat McGonegle, CEO of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, in a public statement. “We’re constantly improving how we manage nutrients and care for the environment, from using advanced manure management practices to investing in research and conservation partnerships.”

Ag retailers also have been working on fertilizer best practices for some time. In a news release celebrating its 25^th year, the Iowa-based Agriculture’s Clean Water Alliance (ACWA) announced its official adoption of the 2025 Fertilizer Code of Practice . It describes the code as “a voluntary agreement between 12 ag retailers statewide to prohibit sales and application of nitrogen in early fall when conditions make nutrients more volatile.”

“Over the course of 25 years, we as an ag retail community have adopted numerous practices like nitrogen stabilizers, cover crops, reduced tillage, the 4R’s and many other practices to maximize the nutrients we are applying to be as efficient as possible,” says Dan Dix, ACWA board president. “The Code of Practice is just one tool we collectively implement to meet these nutrient goals.”

Dealing With Weather Problems

With these long-running efforts at reducing nutrients in the central-Iowa watershed, why do the levels continue to be so high? Wandrey points to weather when it comes to nitrogen.

“The single biggest factor in nitrate moving is rainfall,” he says, explaining nitrates are mobile in water, meaning that rain leads to more ending up downstream. “The last couple of years when we had literally no rainfall after June 15, there were no nitrate problems just because it wasn’t moving. It was staying in the soil and being used, and it wasn’t leaching down out of the fields.”

The inverse is also true, Wandrey notes.

“When we had all of this rainfall this year, way above average rainfall, you’re going to get more leeching,” he says. “Rainfall is the No. 1 factor.”

The analysis notes: “The greatest episodic nitrate events tend to occur in the days or weeks following heavy rain in the spring and summer.” It also highlights that, during the same time as improving farmer nutrient efficiency, climate change has meant more and more intense rain during that time, increasing 16% over the past 30 years. Not only can rainfall mobilize nitrates, the analysis notes it can increase erosion, a major contributor for phosphorous in the watershed.

Since rain cannot be controlled, farmers are working with what they can control. Wandrey points to shifting trends in nutrient application times as one example of farmers adapting to changing needs.

“We’re seeing farmers go to more in season [application] because during mid-May to July 1, that’s when that plant is rapidly growing,” he says. “Getting that nutrient, nitrogen in this case, applied when the plant is using it at that rapid rate has been found to be much more effective compared to just a fall application.”

Artificial Intelligence Joins The Fight Against Weeds, Insects And Disease

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 13:53:42 GMT

The crop protection industry needs a reboot, according to Tony Klemm.

As CEO of Enko, a crop-protection startup, he says the company is taking a different approach to solving one of agriculture’s biggest problems – developing safe, effective and sustainable crop protection products that can be brought to the marketplace faster and more economically.

Traditional discovery pipelines for herbicides, fungicides, insecticides are not keeping pace with real challenges farmers face, such as resistance issues, he told Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk on Thursday.

A 2024 study funded by Crop Life International reports the costs associated with bringing a new active ingredient to major U.S. and European markets now top $300 million. In addition, the survey says the average lead time between the first synthesis of a new crop protection molecule and its subsequent commercial introduction is now over 12 years.

Part of the long development time required is related to regulatory hurdles. “There’s just increasing demand for meeting environmental safety needs, rightfully so,” Klemm says.

A Paradigm Shift
Enko, based in Mystic, Conn., is using artificial intelligence (AI) and a machine learning discovery platform to guide the company’s research and development efforts. Klemm describes the strategy as a paradigm shift from the current industry practices for how small molecule crop protection discovery has been done.

“We use DNA-encoded libraries, and these libraries allow our scientists to explore this massive, diverse chemical space in a very targeted, automated and expansive way,” he says.

The technology allows Enko scientists to look at billions of molecules and screen them for safety and efficacy and, in the process, develop them faster and more economically.

“We still have to take the regulatory journey that, right now, no one’s figured out a way to expedite,” he notes. “But getting to that regulatory queue faster and better on the front side is really what’s bringing us that cost savings, that efficacy and is going to allow for more products to be put into the regulatory queue in a faster manner.”

Progress To Date
So far, Klemm says Enko has delivered about 50 active programs that cover all facets of weeds, insects and disease. Many use novel or new modes of action that Klemm believes will help farmers fight resistance issues, such as herbicide resistance in Palmer amaranth and pigweed.

“We’re really working on how we can bring new modes of action to farmers, give them fresh tools to win that fight. And our chemistries work using fewer active ingredients, from perspective of the load on the acre, so we’re designing safer chemistry for the future,” he says.

Specifically, Klemm says Enko recently announced a new grass herbicide is in the pipeline for the European cereals market for control of black grass. The company also has conducted field trials for corn and soybean products in the U.S. that he anticipates are five to 10 years away from market launch, depending on how long they take to move through regulatory channels.

Your next read: Bayer Affirms Support of Glyphosate, Optimistic for a Future with Over the Top Dicamba Labels

John Deere-Sentera Tie Up: Here’s What We Know So Far

Tue, 27 May 2025 15:40:37 GMT

John Deere has announced its acquisition of Minnesota-based aerial optics innovator Sentera. Although specific details are few and far between this early in the process, here’s what we know so far:

The two companies have a long history. John Deere was the first enterprise customer Sentera signed onto its system over a decade ago, and the two companies have had an API link in place between Sentera’s drone management software and John Deere’s Operations Center since 2016.
Financial details are not being disclosed. We do know the deal is not subject to any further regulatory or shareholder approvals.
In a similar fashion to the Blue River Technologies and Bear Flag Robotics acquisitions, Sentera will maintain its independence as a free-standing business unit. Once fully integrated into the Deere family, Sentera will operate under the John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group (ISG) framework. Sentera leadership will remain at its St. Paul, Minn., headquarters.
For the time being, no major changes are planned for either company as we head into the heart of the summer crop scouting and spraying season. The two companies anticipate having more details to share about the nuts and bolts of the acquisition this fall.
The two groups are a natural fit. Sentera is aggressively marketing its SmartScripts drone weed mapping program, and the technology is complimentary to John Deere’s Operations Center and its See & Spray and ExactApply application technologies. One driving force behind this deal, Farm Journal is told, is Deere’s motivation to integrate more real-time agronomic data into its Operations Center platform, and Sentera’s aerial data capture capabilities can help make that happen.

(John Deere)

A deal to lift both boats. John Deere has built up a deep bench of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous technology expertise within ISG, and Sentera has a long track record of aerial sensing and camera payload innovation. Considering how many cameras and sensors are included from the factory on new John Deere machines and within its Precision Upgrades retrofit kits, there should be a healthy cross pollination of sensor and camera innovation between Urbandale, Iowa, (where ISG is based) and St. Paul, Minn.
Sentera can help make See & Spray even better. SmartScripts uses drone-based imaging to scan a field and build a weed pressure map which is then loaded onto the sprayer’s in-cab computer. Now the sprayer operator can see exactly where weeds are in the field and focus their spraying efforts there first. There’s also a logistical and planning aspect to SmartScripts: by knowing exactly how many weeds are present in the field, and even what type of weeds are there, an adept operator can have the right active ingredients premixed and the exact amount needed loaded into the tank or staged nearby in a tender truck to keep that sprayer running all day long.

“Farming is becoming a very sensor and data-centric business, and in our opinion, there isn’t anyone doing it at broad scale today better than John Deere,” says Eric Taipale, chief technology officer, Sentera. “The way we can bring these data-driven insights and improve grower outcomes — it’s just what we’ve always been about. It’s what John Deere is all about. There’s such a great mesh between the two cultures, the objectives and the mission of the two organizations.”

Joseph Liefer, global technology marketing lead at John Deere, adds, “We’re excited about how this complements our existing portfolio with See & Spray, and then not just that (product). Now a farmer with an individual nozzle-controlled sprayer from any manufacturer can also leverage this technology. A drone can fly their field, generate a weed map, turn it into a prescription in Operations Center and the machine can go execute the plan. From an ag retailer standpoint, that might have a mixed fleet, and this gives them more tools in the toolbox to do targeted application for growers and help them save on herbicide. We view this deal as complementary to our overall tech strategy.”

Your Next Read: MAHA Report’s Surprising Stance on Glyphosate, Atrazine Explained

Carbon Robotics adds autonomous tractor solution

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 18:38:41 GMT

In a move to help growers maximize equipment and address labor shortages, Carbon Robotics launched its Carbon AutoTractor, an autonomous solution installed on existing tractors.

Carbon Robotics’ founder and CEO Paul Mikesell says its Carbon AI will power remotely monitored tractors to help specialty crop growers deploy laser weeders for almost around-the-clock production.

“With LaserWeeder, farmers want to run them as much as they possibly can, but it’s hard to find labor,” he told The Packer. “It’s really hard to find labor to do the tractor driving. It’s hard to find labor to do these late midnight shifts. It’s hard to find people to do all the different tasks you want to do with the tractors.”

The Carbon AutoTractor features two core components: the Carbon Autonomy Kit and the Remote Operations Control Center. Mikesell said operators in ROCC handle any obstructions through monitored autonomy and take over the autonomy system, so production continues. He said growers, then, don’t have to worry whether an autonomous task gets completed.

“They’re trained in using Carbon Auto Tractor,” he said. “They know how to do the functions that the farmer wants to do in the field. And then, whenever there’s something that comes up, they can literally change drive the tractor remotely, and get through whatever obstacle it is, and then keep moving.”

Mikesell said the Carbon Auto Tractor will currently work for LaserWeeder tasks, ground prep such as mulching, mowing, discing and more, but there are plans to expand its capabilities in the future.

The Carbon Autonomy Kit is initially compatible with John Deere 6R and 8R Series tractors, requiring no permanent modifications and installation completed in less than 24 hours. Once installed, tractors can toggle between autonomous and manual operation as needed.

“It bolts on and then that you plug into the harness in the inside on the inside cab, and there’s a box that mounts on the window that you can turn it on and off,” Mikesell said.

The Carbon AutoTractor system includes RTK-accurate GPS, 360-degree cameras and radar-based safety sensors, as well asphysical, remote and mobile e-stops connected via a high-speed, low-latency satellite link.

“We have better visibility from the cameras on the roof than you do from the inside the cabin,” Mikesell said.

And for those growers who might be reluctant to go to an autonomous tractor, Mikesell said the Carbon AutoTractor is designed to help growers better deploy farm labor where it’s needed most.

“You want somebody there to inspect or notice problems with your irrigation or things of that nature. You’ll still want to have those people around, but the point is that they don’t have to spend all that time driving up and down the rows to do the simple task,” he said. “They can then spend their time focusing on figuring out where or if there’s issues and how to address other problems and it relieves the constant need to be driving the tractor all the time.”

Mikesell said this solution also offers growers the option to deploy tractors at night for weeding or when the nighttime temperatures are cooler. This also helps growers maximize return on investment by being able to run the autonomous solution all the time, he said.

“We found that lot of people want to run their LaserWeeder 24/7 because they get a really good ROI or more crops they can put it under, but they just can’t find the operators to run it 24/7,” he told The Packer. “If you can run it, 24/7, you can double the hours in a typical season and you can get that tool doing everything you need it to.”

Carbon Robotics said the autonomous solution works seamlessly with its LaserWeeder, automatically adjusting speed to optimize weeding performance based on weed type, size and density, which can boost coverage by up to 20% compared to manually operated systems.

Brandon Munn, farm manager with Columbia Basin Onion, has worked with the Carbon Robotics team on this autonomous solution.

“With many of our tractors and LaserWeeders running autonomously with Carbon AutoTractor, we’re able to operate more hours, address labor challenges and make night shifts safer and more reliable,” Munn said in a news release. “This isn’t just automation; it’s a practical solution that’s fundamentally changing how we farm.”

Additional Details Come In On AutoTractor
Farm Journal talked with CEO Paul Mikesell to see what else we could learn about the system and what makes it different from other tractor autonomy kits on the market. Here’s a handful of bullet points breaking down what we uncovered:

Don’t Call It A Retrofit - Because the AutoTractor kit doesn’t effectively alter or change anything mechanically on the tractor itself, Mikesell says he prefers to refer to it as a “augmentation kit.”
Satellite Connectivity Changed The Game - When Mikesell and his team started this project back in 2023, connectivity was a limiting factor in enabling a tractor to safely operate with complete autonomy. That is no longer a limiting factor as developments in the stratosphere like SpaceX’s StarLink and Intellsat’s low earth orbit constellations have provided the necessary latency and bandwidth to make driver-less operation safe and viable.
Pricing Is Still TBD - Pressed on how much the system will cost from an up-front investment standpoint, Mikesell told us that “we’re still fine tuning that price.”
Expect An Hourly Fee - Mikesell did confirm that the technology will carry a per-hour fee. He says that fee will track closely with what the user would pay a local machine operator to run the tractor. That could mean a per-hour fee anywhere from $15 in the Midwest to upwards of $25 per hour in high-wage markets like California and Washington. “We’re trying to save you money by not having to worry about travel time out to the fields. There’s no lunch break. You don’t have to worry about paying overtime. This machine will do as many double shifts as you want, and we’re still employing people to do all the monitoring. So we have a very skilled and qualified group of people that are doing all the monitoring. So that’s kind of the model: we charge you per hour to run this machine for you and we’ll work with you on what jobs you want done and how you want it done and make sure that everything is handled appropriately.”
Remote Operators With Tractor Experience - Mikesell says his remote operators that task and oversee the driverless tractors for farmers get a crash course in how tractors are used on your typical farm. “Just being out there in the field long enough to understand the size of things that are around you and just kind of what a field looks like and how things are laid out, makes a huge difference when you’re trying to drive remotely,” says Mikesell. “Even though you have a better view driving remotely, because you have a nice 360 degree view off the roof, having some concept and understanding about the size of things and kind of what everything looks like helps quite a bit.”

Your Next Read: Using tech to target food safety threats

Can Mexico Afford to Retaliate Against the U.S.?

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 19:46:40 GMT

President Donald Trump followed through on his threats of imposing a 25% tariff on most imports from Canada and Mexico, along with an additional 10% on goods from China. While China and Canada released their list of retaliatory tariffs the same day, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, says they won’t release their list until the weekend.

Sheinbaum said the country will also respond with a 25% tariff on U.S. goods but will announce the products it will target on Sunday.

But can Mexico afford to retaliate? That was one of the questions asked by USDA chief economist Seth Meyer during Commodity Classic this week. The reason is Mexico’s economy is struggling, due to a number of factors, which includes a large informal sector, high budget deficit and unstable infrastructure.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Mexico’s GDP grew only 0.9% year over year in fourth quarter 2024, after expanding 2.% in 2023 and 4.6% in 2022. Economic growth slowed, mainly due to lower investment, slowing consumption and a contracting energy sector.

(Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas)

The Dallas Fed says lower investment and consumption was the main driver behind the slow growth.

“Investment contributed three percentage points less to GDP growth in 2024 compared with 2023,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said in a recent report. “The major drop was in nonresidential construction investment, while purchases of imported machinery and equipment also slowed noticeably as the Mexican peso continued to weaken against the dollar. In addition, consumption was impacted by sluggish growth in remittances, high interest rates and flat employment. However, net exports boosted growth in 2024 after dragging it down the previous two years.”

Extremely Reliant Upon Exports
The other issue? Mexico is extremely reliant upon demand from the U.S., exporting $41.9 billion worth of agricultural products to the U.S.

In 2023, Mexico accounted for 16.3% of U.S. agricultural exports and 23.3% of U.S. agricultural imports.

By the numbers:

Mexico is the largest source of horticultural imports to the U.S., supplying 63% of vegetables and 47% of fruit and nuts in 2023.
The top agricultural exports from Mexico to the U.S. in 2024 included beer, tomatoes, tequila, avocados, strawberries, raspberries and peppers.

Mexico is the Biggest Customer of U.S. Ag Exports

The other important piece is Mexico is now the U.S.'s top ag export destination.

According to Krista Swanson, chief economist for National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), Mexico is a huge destination for U.S. corn. More than 40% of U.S. corn exported last year went to Mexico. Not only does that mean the U.S. relies on Mexico, but Mexico is also reliant upon the U.S. do to the strong demand.

“That’s the other key piece here when we think about a Mexico situation, you know, will they retaliate on corn because it’s so important to the consumers in their country,” Swanson told Farm Journal during Commodity Classic this week. “And it’s such a big part of their diets and consumption. It’s a commodity that they consume way more of than what they produce. So they’re going to have to get it from somewhere.”

Bigger Picture
According to USDA’s Economic Research Service , between 1993 (the year before NAFTA’s implementation) and 2023, U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico expanded at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7%, while agricultural imports from Mexico grew at a rate of 9.7%.

“With the economic recovery in the United States and Mexico that followed the pandemic, U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico increased at a CAGR of 15.7% between 2020 and 2023, and U.S. agricultural imports from Mexico grew at a CAGR of 11.3%,” the USDA report said. “In 2023, however, U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico decreased by 0.3% compared with the previous year, as the prices of major agricultural exports (such as corn and soybeans) declined.”

Trump Sows Confusion on Tariffs for Canada and Mexico, Floats 25% Duty for EU Goods

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:35:11 GMT

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised hopes for another month-long pause on steep new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, saying they could take effect on April 2, and floated a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on European cars and other goods.

A White House official, however, said Trump’s previous March 4 deadline for the 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods remained in effect “as of this moment,” pending his review of Mexican and Canadian actions to secure their borders and halt the flow of migrants and the opioid fentanyl into the U.S. Trump sowed confusion during his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, when he was asked about the timing for the start of the duties for Canada and Mexico and replied that it would be April 2.

“I have to tell you that, you know, on April 2, I was going to do it on April 1,” Trump said. “But I’m a little bit superstitious, I made it April 2, the tariffs go on. Not all ofthem but a lot of them.”

Trump’s comments prompted jumps in the value of the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso versus the greenback.

Canada’s Finance Ministry and Mexico’s Economy Ministry both declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the fentanyl-related actions were paused for 30 days but referred to “overall” tariffs on April 2. He did not specify whether the March 4 deadline was still in effect.

“So the big transaction is April 2, but the fentanyl-related things, we’re working hard on the border,”
Lutnick said during the cabinet meeting. “At the end of that 30 days, they have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him in that regard. If they have, he’ll give them a pause, or he won’t.”

EU Tariff Rate

Trump has targeted early April for imposing reciprocal tariffs that would match the import duty rates of other countries and offset their other restrictions. His trade advisers consider European countries’ value added taxes to be akin to a tariff.

Trump, asked whether he has decided on a tariff rate for goods from the European Union, replied: “We have made a decision, and we’ll be announcing it very soon, and it’ll be 25%, generally speaking, and that’ll be on cars, and all of the things.”

He said the EU is a “different case” from Canada and takes advantage of the U.S. in different ways.

“They don’t accept our cars. They don’t accept, essentially our farm products,” Trump said, adding that the EU was formed “in order to screw the United States.”

Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, is in Washington and will meet U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, a spokesman said. She is not slated to meet with any Trump administration officials.

New U.S. Trade Representative Confirmed

Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 56-43 to confirm Jamieson Greer as Trump’s new U.S. Trade Representative, putting a veteran of the Republican president’s first-term trade wars fully on the job.

Greer, who served as chief of staff to former USTR Robert Lighthizer, won the support of five Democrats, including both senators from Michigan, the center of the U.S. auto industry.

Trade groups welcomed Greer’s confirmation, lauding his commitment to consulting with industry and standing up for U.S. businesses, farmers and workers. “We share Ambassador Greer’s desire for an active and pragmatic trade policy that creates

U.S. jobs and more resilient supply chains,” said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council.

Greer told senators during his Senate confirmation hearing that he wanted to quickly renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade to ensure China does not use it as a back door to the U.S. market to avoid other tariffs.

“Right out of the gate, I expect that we’ll be taking a second look at the USMCA,” Greer said.

Asked what changes he would like to see in the pact, Greer zeroed in on further tightening automotive content rules.

“I think we should look at the rule of origin for automobiles and aerospace and other things to look and see if we need to have any kind of restriction on content or value added from foreign countries of concern, or non-market economies,” he said, using language that U.S. trade officials often use to describe China.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Bo Erickson and Ryan Jones in Washington, Brendan O’Boyle in Mexico City and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Dan Burns, David Gregorio and Paul Simao)

The Secret Life of Farmland Marbles

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 21:15:49 GMT

Childhood secrets are hiding in the dirt.

Months after crops are harvested and fields stripped to bare brown, the slanted rays of morning or evening sunlight fire large circular patterns of crushed glass spread across farmland. Glitter sprinkled over soil, the shining glass graveyards at field edges are the stubborn remains of sharecropper and tenant farmer sites once dotting even the most remote Southern farmland. The shotgun houses and clapboard shacks are gone, but a child’s toy waits patiently, lingering in the rows. Time, tillage and rainfall reveal the sharecropper’s last testament: forgotten clusters of magnificent clay, agate and glass marbles.

Click on the video below to go on a marble hunt with Chris Bennett.

Walking Rows

On a clear day in early May, Bernie Wright is walking rows, eyes down and head moving gently back and forth. A single inch of rain has parked Wright’s cotton planters, but it hasn’t kept him out of the fields.

There’s something special about the marbles in these fields and I love finding them,” he says. “They meant a lot to somebody long ago and maybe that’s why I enjoy looking.”

Wright, 57, is searching at mid-day and doesn’t need sun on the horizon to fire glass and serve as a site map, because he already knows where the old homes stood. Most of the tenant houses were torn down in the 1960s and Wright, farm manager at Longino Planting Co., in Jonestown, Miss., remembers the locations from childhood.

Before the advent of heavy machinery capable of servicing thousands of acres, the flat vista of Mississippi Delta farmland was heavily pocked with houses lining turn rows and county roads. The tenant system required on-site workers and the accompanying logistics translated to a range of housing layouts, from an isolated handful of dwellings on a back road to scores of homes concentrated around a commissary and schoolhouse. Necessity dictated tenants live and work at the same location.

“People have forgotten how many houses used to cover farm ground,” Wright says. “Sharecroppers had to live on their parcel of land.”

The old house sites are a slurry of glass shards, stoneware chips, bricks, buttons, coal, mangled cutlery, cork-top bottlenecks, and much more – the detritus of a farming day long since passed. Yet, in stark contrast to the other crushed remains, time has been kind to the marble spheres. Small enough to evade tillage tools, tough enough to withstand compaction, and colorful enough to draw the human eye, marbles have endured the age of mechanization.

When a marble rests just below the soil line, rain and wind start an umbrella action, and the smooth spherical marble surface sheds dirt particles, leaving the rounded top naked to a searching gaze. With a bit of luck and time, a marble exposed in a raised bed and cleaned of debris may follow the grade and roll down into a furrow, as if just dropped from a child’s hand into a row. More often, only a sliver of body shows in the dirt and offers one chance to claim a marble before weather, crops or machinery cover it again.

Marble Whisperer

(Farm Journal)

Katie and Chris Kale. © Chris Bennett

After church on a spring Sunday, Chris Kale eases along a turn row with wife, Cindy, and a truckload of grandkids, looking for house sites. A 2” rain fell four days prior and Kale knows the ground is ripe for marble hunting. He spots a slightly raised hump just off the turn row and sees glass scattered across soil a shade darker than the surrounding field. In seconds, the family spills out of the truck and the hunt is on.

The Kales spread out 3’ to 4’ apart and methodically canvass a roughly 100’-by-100’ section to compensate for tillage spread of houses that were often originally 40’-by-40’. Equipment and land leveling push marbles across all points in a given field, but the vast majority remain in proximity to home sites.

“It’s all about family, the hunt and history,” Kale says.

“There’s history laying at your feet and all you have to do is pick it up,” Cindy echoes. “Chris can’t drive by a field without looking for shining glass. If he sees something, he’ll either go look or get the grandkids and go back later.”

Kale, co-owner of Farmers Supply in Marvell, Ark., hunted arrowheads as a boy and began taking his own children on marble searches in the late 1980s. The weekly treasure hunts turned into a family constitutional, and at 58, Kale isn’t slowing down. Simply, he is a marble whisperer and has honed his skills with a focus on location, timing, possibility, quality, quantity and blind luck.

“I’ll pick up a marble that might be untouched by human hands for 100 years,” he says. “What child lost it? What was the child’s name? It was part of someone’s life and I respect that.”

Great Equalizer

(Farm Journal)

Bernie Wright looking for marbles. © Chris Bennett

Most sites around Marvell date from the late 1800s to the 1960s, Kale estimates. Families typically had four to eight kids, and despite poverty, marbles were the sole luxury afforded to children. A subsistence sharecropper, unable to buy any other toy for his kids, could still afford to purchase marbles. Even today, find a beautiful agate with a distinct pattern, and chances are the same house site is hiding many more similar specimens – direct evidence of a quantity bag or box purchase at a general store or commissary.

Marbles were part and parcel of youth, the single most ubiquitous item of childhood. Poor or poorer, marbles were the great equalizer. The treble of affordability, quantity and durability explains the overwhelming numbers of marbles found today on farmland. Kale estimates a sharecropper child might have owned 20 marbles at a given time. However, when a single house site spits up 75 or even 100 marbles, questions mount as to why and how.

“I can’t believe kids lost as many as we’ve found on some sites. In fact, I think these marbles were sacred in a way to children,” Kale says. “There was more going on than kids losing marbles. Lost during play, thrown away by momma, or left behind when a family moved, all of these are parts of the puzzle.”

The evidence in the ground doesn’t necessarily match conventional logic at some house sites, especially those which don’t produce marbles. Kale cites a tenant house he remembers from childhood, a home to multiple children and a particular hub of activity. He’s scoured the knoll for years and found coins, buttons, and porcelain, but not a single marble.

“That house had dozens of children spread across several generations and hasn’t yielded even one marble,” Kale says. “It’s frustrating, but I guess some questions stay buried.”

Marble Memories

Beyond the telltale glass scattered across home sites, Kale paints a rough mental picture of typical marble locations. Concentrations correspond with play zones, the actual spots where kids gathered, drew circles in the dirt, and shot for keeps. The zones share one overriding trait: shade from the Delta sun. Either under a porch, against the north or east side of a house, or beneath a tree, a game of marbles was shot in the shade. Find a play zone and it’s likely to be a marble honey hole.

(Farm Journal)

Willie Rucker showing off marbles he’s found. © Chris Bennett

“It’s telltale when I find 10 marbles in a single tight spot,” Kale says. “That’s a location where kids were playing and marbles surface there year after year.”

To the uninitiated, Curtis Storey, 57, is walking across his east Arkansas ground, checking a polypipe irrigation line, but in reality, he’s also hunting marbles.

“I love finding marbles on my land; absolutely love it,” he says. “There’s history in a marble and you can feel it.”

Storey farms 4,800 acres in Phillips County, Ark., and whether checking polypipe or measuring seed depth, he’s also looking for color.

“My family has worked this land for years, and yet these marbles pop out of my fields in amazing shape,” he says. “Pieces of glass light up on the ground, especially in the morning or evening, and draw you in to look. It never gets old, even when I find just one little marble.”

As a young boy, Storey rode atop a metal seat on the back of a four-row planter while his father, Ronald, cultivated cotton. When Storey saw a gleam in the dirt, he would whistle for Ronald to stop, and then jump down to collect the marble. If the engine noise was too loud for whistling, Storey tossed a dirt clod at Ronald to halt the machinery.

“I’d see color shining and be gone to get that marble,” he says. “My daddy would start hollering, ‘We’ve got cotton to plant, son. You’re stopping me for marbles again?’”

Storey’s catbird perch was as dangerous as it was fruitful. On a windy, dusty day in 1964, five-year-old Storey and Ronald were planting soybeans on a John Deere 3010 with a single front tire. No cab, no fenders. An old, non-hydraulic marker swung around the front of the tractor as Storey stood on the left side of the back axle to avoid the dirt and held tight to the seat.

(Farm Journal)

Rut or lurch, Storey was thrown off the axle while the tractor rumbled along in fifth gear, falling forward into the dirt. The tire rose above Storey, a cleat striking him in the head and pushing his face deep into the ground, packing the inside of his eyelids and nostrils with soil. With a fraction of a second to spare, Ronald smashed the clutch and backed up before Storey was crushed. Cradled in Ronald’s arms, Storey was sure he’d died: “I asked my daddy if I was dead. Five year olds don’t think about death, but it was all black from the dirt under my eyelids and I couldn’t see. Anyhow, I should have been dead.”

Racing across the field, Ronald placed Storey in his truck cab, scalded road for the doctor’s office, and slung four buckets of soybeans across the highway. After a lengthy cleaning, a bald spot where the hair peeled up his forehead, a concussion, and a lick of salve, Storey survived by a matter of millimeters.

“The Lord decided it wasn’t my time,” he says. “To this day, I don’t look at old metal planter seats without thinking about my daddy, that accident and marbles. They all tie together. Someone else’s marbles represent farm memories of my own childhood.”

Forgotten Tales

Kale has never counted his farm marbles, but he keeps the collection in a variety of candy jars as proof of his prowess. Thousands of marbles of all sizes, colors and patterns fill the jars, separated by an occasional arrowhead, button or porcelain doll part. His massive marble trove is all the more remarkable considering it was built one specimen at a time: spot, kneel, and pry the past from the ground.

He can’t fully explain the primal pull that perpetually draws him into the fields to find another marble.

“Farmland is kind of like a museum and it’s even more enjoyable with age due to my family,” Kale says. “Every single find is exciting because it carries a physical connection to a different time, place and people.”

Come spring, Kale will hit the rows again with his family, searching for one more marble hidden in the dirt. Change is the great constant in farming, yet although the sharecroppers are gone and the houses torn down, the marbles remain, waiting patiently to tell a buried tale.

“Find a marble that hasn’t seen daylight in 75 years, pick it up and rub the grit off,” Kale adds. “You’ll almost hear it speak.”

Click on the photo to see more images of farmland marbles.

© Chris Bennett

Mighty Earth Attacks Crop Farmers to Advance Anti-Meat Agenda

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:48:49 GMT

A report last week from Mighty Earth , a campaign of the Center for International Policy , took a break from criticizing farmers and ranchers that raise livestock for meat, and instead turned their attention to the meat companies and feed suppliers (ie. crop farmers), asking them to provide “pollution-free” feed.

In “ Mystery Meat II: The Industry Behind the Quiet Destruction of the American Heartland, ” Mighty Earth says “Demand for feed crops is driving widespread water contamination across the country, destroying America’s last native prairies, and releasing potent greenhouse gases.” The report claims excess fertilizer and manure washes off fields, contaminating local drinking water and creating algae blooms that cause Dead Zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

While the agricultural industry does have an impact on these issues (see here and here ), the report does little to quantify agriculture’s contribution to the problem versus other industries.

The article calls out Tyson Foods, charging “America’s largest meat company” is in the “regions suffering the worst environmental impacts from industrial meat and feed production—from grassland clearing in Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas, to manure and fertilizer pollution pouring into waterways from the Heartland down to the Gulf states.”

In a written statement to Farm Journal Media, Tyson responded “We share this group’s concern about the environment but disagree with its misleading characterization of our company. Tyson Foods is not in the business of raising the crops and we own very few livestock farms. Instead, we depend on thousands of independent farmers to raise our chickens or sell us their cattle or hogs. We work closely with our partners from farm-to-fork to identify and deploy new technologies designed to better protect the environment, our workforce, and the communities we serve.”

In an article by the Des Moines Register, Mark Peterson, a farmer near Stanton who has reviewed the report, said it may be impossible to produce “pollution-free feed.” … But farmers can adopt conservation practices — such as no-till or conservation tillage, cover crops, buffers and grass waterways — that reduce nutrient losses.

The negative characterizations of the agriculture industry in the report is a long list. However, it failed to include the fact that crop and livestock production is regulated and monitored by USDA’s Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency. Nor did it mention that many farmers and ranchers participate in quality assurance programs to document animal health and environmentally friendly practices. Tyson discloses its environmental efforts on its website.

Livestock feed is just one use of grain products grown in the U.S. In this chart from USDA, shows the growing market for biofuels, as well as consumer food and industrial uses. Source: USDA

Farmer Welcomes Sesame Street to Promote Agriculture

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 17:04:46 GMT

When Sesame Street knocked, Casey Cox threw open the door on her Georgia farm and charged toward an opportunity to take American agriculture to a new audience. The classic children’s television series, with viewership reaching dizzying heights, was asking, and Cox was readily answering. “Yes. Absolutely. We’ll make it work and get it done—no matter what.”

In early 2019, Sesame Street began preparing a segment partially focused on an iconic food with a hallowed place in every American pantry: peanut butter. Cox, always on the alert for a chance to champion agriculture and educate the public—particularly kids—didn’t blink at a shot to take the farm-to-table message directly from her rows to 150 million children across the planet: “There was no way I was going to miss out on telling millions of kids about where food truly comes from.”

“Make it Happen”

Cox, 29, a sixth-generation farmer at Longleaf Ridge Farms in Camilla, Ga., grows sweet corn (spring and fall) and peanuts on sandy ground, along with field corn and soybeans on the level land of Mitchell County. Outpacing row crops, Cox has more acreage in timber production and timber preservation, adding to the timeless, pristine appearance of a property that rubs against the stunning beauty of the Flint River. It’s a unique ecological environment dictated by the Flint, a flow Cox considers part of the lifeblood of her farm, and in many ways, the winding river knows her name: “It’s a special part of our family and it’s a part of our lives,” Cox explains. “I’ve grown up on the Flint River, and whether I’m in it or walking beside it, it’s the way I recharge.”

Prior to full-time devotion at Longleaf, Cox led the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District for six years, and learned the media ropes, going from local television spots to RFD-TV’s FarmHer series to a season one appearance on Netflix’s Rotten . Each interaction was an opportunity, Cox emphasizes: “I never imagined being in the spotlight, especially on camera, but I am grateful for every opportunity to cast the agriculture industry in a positive light.”

In 2019, Sesame Street , as part of its Foodie Truck segment—helmed by the classic presence of Cookie Monster—began planning a feature on peanut butter. A hired crew ( Film Captive Productions ) out of Atlanta contacted the Georgia Peanut Commission , in search of a spotlight farmer. Since returning home to south Georgia, Cox had become very involved in advocating for the peanut industry, including participating in the Peanut Leadership Academy . Due to her past experience, Cox was tapped for the Sesame Street role, and after the production team watched a bit of GoPro footage of Cox at Longleaf, the questions were over: Sesame Street had found its farmer. “It was certainly different, and out of my comfort zone,” Cox explains, “but I was all in right from the start.”

However, there was a slight problem, or more accurately, a sizable problem: There wasn’t a peanut plant in sight. Filming was set for February—a month when fields are bare and far removed from May planting. Cox began a tristate, all-hands-on-deck hunt at USDA research facilities, University of Georgia, University of Florida, and Auburn University, in search of a token peanut plant. “It was Sesame Street,” Cox recalls with a grin. “We were going to make it happen no matter what.” (A single potted peanut plant was obtained, but never made it on camera.)

(Farm Journal)

Fortunately, a few months prior during the fall, the National Peanut Board had filmed three farm families at harvest for a promotional video, including the Cox operation . Translation: Sesame Street had access to Cox’s B-roll footage.

The film crew shot Cox on a tractor, and then spliced the video with B-roll to make up for the disparities. The crew then filmed processing in a peanut butter factory with Cox performing the voiceover. All told, despite the hurdle of February production, the finished product was seamless and included in episode 12 of season 49 .

“Best Opportunities”

Cox maintains the highest praise for the Sesame Street crew: “I commend Sesame Street because they were a total pleasure to work with, and the Foodie Truck series is a brilliant concept and great way to reach children with where their food comes from. As an agriculture industry, we need to seize every opportunity to broaden our platform and reach more people. Working with an iconic partner like Sesame Street was an invaluable opportunity.”

As media windows open for other farmers, what is Cox’s advice? “Never be afraid to get uncomfortable because one door may open another. As a farmer, you know more about your subject than you realize because it is your life, and people want to hear from you.”

“You never know where your efforts might lead to next,” Cox concludes. “I never imagined I’d be on Sesame Street, but how can I top it? That experience has been one of the best opportunities of my life to promote agriculture.”

For more, see:

Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Predator Tractor Unleashed on Farmland by Ag’s True Maverick

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

The Duke of Hazard: How an Unbreakable Kansas Farmer Bore a Lifetime of Scars

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:15:43 GMT

A roadmap of scars on skin was testament to a lifetime in agriculture. On a tightrope between twin peaks of work necessity and danger, all farmers suffer injuries of various stripes, but the unbreakable Ward Henry was a breed apart.

A man of fortitude and incessant good cheer, Ward Henry’s 70-plus years in farming were punctuated by a succession of traumatic machinery accidents including a drill rollover, shooting, anaphylactic shock, amputation, and PTO mangling—as if his flesh attracted hazard. Defeating infinitesimal survival odds, he was undaunted by circumstance, disinterested in excuses, and extremely grateful for family and farm.

Ward’s calamitous tale is the inverse of its initial appearance. Rather, his injury-laden account highlights agriculture’s insatiable need for safety awareness: Danger permanently rides shotgun beside every farmer.

Bumps

Born in the upper corner of northeast Kansas’ Brown County in 1920, Ward (decd. 2014) witnessed the advent of mechanization in American agriculture and rode the shift from mule to machinery power. His youth in family fields was dominated by the necessity of livestock in the rows, requiring daily harnessing of a dozen horses and mules.

(Farm Journal)

In a 2007 memoir compiled by his grandson, Chris Henry , a professor and irrigation engineer with the University of Arkansas, Ward offered a window into the logistics of mule power: “It was quite an experience going through the fields. I remember we used to walk 10 miles a day, each round was 1 half-mile and we would walk down and back (1-mile round trip). We would make 5 half-mile rounds in the morning and 5 half-mile rounds in the afternoon, because that was about all the mules could stand when it was hot.”

As a small farm boy chasing the shadow of his father, Albert, in the rows, Ward quickly acquired a nickname, Bumps, and the moniker stuck fast with ample justification. At four years old, Ward “Bumps” Henry escaped his first brush with death.

“Literally Unrecognizable”

During the planting season of 1924, as Albert held the reins behind a mule team, young Ward sat atop a drill box, enjoying a knocking ride, blissfully unaware his perch was a potential deathtrap. At the crack of his father’s whip, the mules jumped, the drill lurched, and Ward disappeared. Down between the drill boxes and press wheels, wedged between the row units and pressed into the dirt, Ward was run over by the drill—but emerged entirely unscathed, not a scratch.

The drill miracle was followed a decade-plus later by the staccato pace of further accidents. Gunshot; #9 wire; and bumblebees.

(Farm Journal)

Breaking a winter day’s monotony as a teenager, Ward loaded a .22 rifle, intent on denting the ever-growing population of pigeons nesting in the family barn. Entering the building and drawing on the first bird spotted, his rifle jammed when the brass lodged. Returning to the house, he attempted to remove the cartridge, and carelessly placed his left index finger over the barrel’s mouth. The gun discharged and the bullet blew through Ward’s finger (and perilously close to his head), the shock of blood rendering him unconscious as he collapsed to the floor. Bottom line: the lead projectile missed all bone and nerves, leaving Ward with no permanent harm.

Near the same window in time, Ward came perilously close to losing an eye. After milking cows in the chill of an early morning, he picked up a milker in each hand and walked toward the house, glancing upward to gauge the day’s weather in the breaking dawn sky at the exact moment a splice on a #9 clothesline met him at eyeline. The splice caught his eyelid, almost peeling it entirely off before continuing the cut deep into his eyebrow. Following surgery, the lid was sewn back in place and the brow stitched. Although requiring further surgery, Ward’s eyesight sustained no damage.

(Farm Journal)

A third high school accident, and the most serious of the lot to that point in Ward’s life, almost came with a toe tag. While plowing clover under in spring, he disturbed a ground nest of bumblebees and was attacked on the slow-moving tractor by a raging swarm. Ward’s son, Bob, describes the aftermath. “Dad was severely allergic to any kind of bee or wasp sting. When he hit that bumblebee nest, he got stung countless times above the neck before he could get away. He made it into the house, but by that time his allergic reaction was so extreme that he was literally unrecognizable to my grandmother at first—that’s how massively swollen his head and face were. She used some kind of home remedy on him—I don’t know what—and it acted like an antihistamine and saved him.”

The three teen accidents ended with a relatively mild outcome, despite a sizeable margin for far greater consequence. However, the heavyweight machinery accidents of Ward’s life were yet to arrive and would come close to literally ripping the life out of a Kansas farmer.

Gains—and Losses

Ward’s first significant agriculture equipment experience in the age of mechanization occurred in the 1930s, with the on-farm arrival of a steel-wheeled Fordson pocked with angle iron for traction—a tractor used solely for plowing. (His machinery reminiscences include a surreal, made-for-Hollywood vignette chasing escaped mules across Kansas fields in a no-top Model T Ford.)

(Farm Journal)

By the 1940s and 1950s, mirroring other agricultural operations across the U.S., the Henry farm reached levels of technology and amenities unthinkable only several decades in the past. Ward graduated from Highland Community College in 1940, and began working his own ground, purchasing a Farmall H Tractor, cultivator, lister, and mower for $1,000 total.

He married Virginia Vanbebber in 1941, the same year party-line dial phone service arrived on-farm, with electricity following in 1946. In 1948, Ward observed the first television of his life in a storefront window, and two years later bought a set. By 1956, he enjoyed the chill of his first window air-conditioning unit, a luxury that offset a notably scorching Kansas summer with highs reaching 110 degrees.

Wedged in the middle of the litany of technological gains was an excruciating loss that followed him to the end of his days: In 1948, prior to fall harvest, 28-year-old Ward traded for an Oliver corn picker at an equipment dealership in Falls City, Neb.

Several months later, the two-row picker stole Ward’s right hand.

Doctor’s Choice

Oct. 25, 1948. As stated in Ward’s memoir: “I had gone back to the field to run some stalks through the stalk ejector in the back of the corn picker and I was going back to the front to get on the tractor and there was a stalk feeding in the rolls, so I just reached out to push it down and as I did, it caught, and pulled my hand down into the rolls of the corn picker.”

(Farm Journal)

Fortunate to pull free before the entire arm was consumed, Ward wrapped a jacket around his dominant, right hand, and walked a half-mile across open fields to his farmhouse, walked inside, and collapsed on the floor, unconscious before a shocked Virginia.

Although his fingers were intact, the rollers had inflicted heavy compression damage to nerves and ligaments. Taken to a hospital and sedated to ease the pain, Henry woke hours later to find the hand gone, by doctor’s decision. With antibiotics scarce in post-WW2 northeast Kansas, the attending physician took no chances—amputation.

Ten days later, Ward was back on his farm, and only days after his return—minus a hand—he was harvesting grain again with the same Oliver corn picker. A year later, he was fitted for a prosthetic, essentially a clasping hook. “I had to make some adjustments on the machinery I had,” Ward recalled. “I welded loops on some of the controls so I could work them with my hook and I got along very well. Combines were not as complicated as they are today, there were only about two controls. It was not like it is today, where everything is controlled from one lever and your thumb controls all of the many functions of the machine.”

Despite the pain of a corn picker accident that took Ward’s dominant hand, forced him to become proficient with his left, and affected his physical movement until the end of his days, the loss of a limb paled in comparison to the trauma to come: “The major accident of my life happened in April of 1968.”

Slip of the Hook

Bob Henry is the firstborn child of Ward and Virginia. At 77, the active farmer has grown corn and soybeans for 55 years, many of those seasons spent at his father’s side.

Born in 1945, Bob has no memory of Ward prior to the corn picker accident and no recollection of his father without a prosthetic hand. “My dad was a man of strength. He lived a ‘shake off the dust and move forward’ attitude and never had an excuse for anything. Certainly, all the physical injuries of his life took a physical toll on him as he aged, but he wouldn’t allow them to take an emotional toll.”

(Farm Journal)

Ward’s lack of a hand was a given—not a handicap, according to Bob. “He had a hook instead of a hand, and that was it. Therefore, there was nothing he couldn’t do on the farm. Nothing. Growing up, I never thought of dad as handicapped because he did everything everyone else did. It really was that simple.”

In the summer of 1967, Bob completed a college degree and returned home to farm. Almost a year later, on an early April day in 1968, roughly two weeks prior to spring planting, Bob and Ward, along with patriarch Albert, took advantage of sunshine and temperatures ranging near 60 F to reset posts on a pasture fence.

The Henry trio utilized a PTO-driven post-hole digger that sat on an A-frame and plugged into the 2-point hitch of an International tractor. The PTO had no cover: “In 1968 there were PTO shields, but we did not have one,” Bob notes. “There was no shield around the shaft.”

Where the PTO coupler hooked to the gearbox, a set screw was supposed to hold a U-joint onto the shaft. The set screw was gone, long replaced by a hex bolt with its head sticking up approximately three-quarters of an inch.

Bob sat in the tractor, running the hitch and PTO, easing the digger into the ground with his hand resting on the PTO lever. Albert stood on the left side of the digger, raking away dirt with a spade as each hole was dug.

The pasture fence ran along a field of relatively hard ground, a condition that sometimes required extra pushing weight to help the digger break ground. Ward was positioned on the right side of the post-hole digger with his hook on the gearbox and his good hand on the A-frame, pulling down to help the auger penetrate the dirt. Ward wore a t-shirt, layered by overalls, and topped with coveralls. It was clockwork progress by three generations of Henrys in unison—until Ward’s hook slipped.

Upon the downward shift of the hook, the cuff of Ward’s coveralls caught in the PTO shaft, and in a nightmarish blink, Ward, 5’10” and 165 lb., was rag-dolled into spinning steel and rocketed across the machinery, the sounds of the violent wrenching swallowed by the din of a tractor engine running at one-third throttle.

Despite his hand on the PTO lever, Bob’s reaction was no match for the speed of the shaft. “I saw the coveralls catch and I reacted as quickly as I thought humanly possible, shutting off the PTO. Too late,” Bob explains.

(Farm Journal)

Hurtled to the ground, Ward landed beside Albert in a broken heap, stripped of every stitch of clothing, save his socks and boots. Bob burst off the tractor and saw his father in extreme pain, but conscious. Along with fractured limbs and extreme overall trauma, his skin was grossly abraded by the high-speed rubbing of denim and canvas as clothing tore away from his torso at tremendous velocity.

“All his clothes were hanging on the PTO shaft and he was covered in so many injuries,” Bob says. “It was a scraping and bruising that is hard to describe. Still, he was alive. In a way, the loss of his clothes saved dad because the shaft stripped him and spit him out—otherwise he would have been torn apart.”

Albert covered Ward with a coat and sweatshirt, and Bob drove the International a mile to the farmhouse, and directed his mother, Virginia, to call an ambulance for Ward. Virginia kept her nerve and asked no questions or sought any details; she instinctively understood the gravity of the situation and responded in seconds with an emergency telephone call.

Bob traded tractor for truck, racing back to Ward in a 1967 International pickup. Placing Ward in the truck bed, Bob sped for the farmhouse, reaching the yard as the ambulance pulled onto the property. Strapped to a gurney, Ward was rushed to a hospital in Hiawatha, precipitously close to losing his remaining hand and arm.

Ward’s body was broken and there was no 10-day recovery repeat of 1948: The Kansas farmer would not return to his Brown County land for four months.

“Losing My Hand Was Nothing”

Along with a broken shoulder, Ward suffered a compound fracture of the humerus and a gruesome twisting of muscle around bone that required surgery and a metal plate. “How I survived, that I’ll never know, but it did major damage to my body…I remember not knowing whether I was going to lose my other hand or not. I remember I prayed that I wouldn’t lose my other hand,” recalled Ward.

Day by day, week over week, from April until August, Ward, 48, recovered in hospital and returned home just prior to the 1968 harvest. The physical toll was almost more than he could bear—a fact borne out by his comparison of corn picker versus PTO: “And of the two accidents, if I could have taken away one of them, I would choose the second one. Losing my hand was nothing compared to my incident with the post hole digger.”

Ward farmed another 20 years. “My dad slowed, but he kept going, Bob emphasizes. “He’d permanently lost strength in the left arm and a whole lot of muscle in the accident. Once his arm finally healed, it was just a matter of adjustment. Resilience. That’s who he was. He even took up golf in his 60s, and he never complained or let any of it bother him.”

(Farm Journal)

After Ward’s 1968 accident, safety became paramount on the Henry farm. “It woke me up for life and became a constant reminder to not be careless or get in a hurry,” Bob adds. “Back in the 1960s, we knew we needed PTO shields, but the accidents kept happening, and they still needlessly happen regularly today.”

Chris Henry , UA irrigation engineer, echoes his father’s sentiments: “When we see these unsafe conditions, we all need to think about Ward and correct them so nobody suffers the same fate as my grandfather. Whether it’s an unsafe wiring situation, safety shield, safety glasses, flowing grain, pinch points with implement hookup, or just how we are working around each other, we should all take the time to fix it before we go on. Just remember Ward’s post hole digger.”

“To this day, I can still see what happened when dad got snared by the PTO shaft,” Bob concludes. “I can still the very instant. All it takes is for me to see a PTO, and it takes me back in time.”

To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man

How a Texas Farmer Killed Agriculture’s Debt Dragon

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History

US Farming Loses the King of Combines

Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

The Fresh Guys produce supplier awaits summer

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 21:37:02 GMT

The year started off fine for The Fresh Guys , said president Peter Braidman. But then COVID-19 came along.

The Denver-based produce supplier is “muddling through day by day,” Braidman said, but business is down 70% compared to last year.

The company, which serves restaurants almost exclusively along with a few small markets, is “keeping somewhat busy” and has had no layoffs, he said.

Customers missed out on spring items, he said, but he’s now waiting for summer fruits and vegetables to come on, which will include a variety of

Rocky Mountain tomatoes, kales, collards, chards, cabbages, onions, bell peppers, Hatch peppers, Olathe corn and peaches.

Related content:
Colorado “Know your market”
Denver produce distributors deal with coronavirus
Colorado gears up for summer

D.R. Walcher halts expansion

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 21:36:54 GMT

The COVID-19 pandemic has put some expansion plans on hold at D.R. Walcher Farms in North Fairfield, Ohio, said Ken Holthouse, partner.

“We were planning an expansion at Walcher, adding onto the building and getting into some bagged product eventually, but the way the COVID thing has hit, we’re waiting,” he said.

“We need to get this season behind us. The whole world wants 2020 to go into the history.”

The planned expansion includes a 20,000-square-foot canopy at Walcher’s 10-year-old packingshed, Holthouse said.

“We’re pretty large into the fall squash and fall decorative items; you have to get it out of the sun as much as pos-sible and we don’t have a whole lot of space,” he said.

“We’re going to wait on that for the time being.”

Sister company Holthouse Farms in Willard, Ohio, has added about 15,000 square feet in the past three years, Holthouse said.

“There’s a new loading dock extension, a new office complex and a box storage barn,” he said.

Related Content:

Ohio suppliers ready for heavy retail sales this season

Showcase Your Stewardship Skills

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:59:40 GMT

The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is giving sustainability-minded farmers a chance to preach what they practice. The association created the Good Steward Recognition Program to promote and expand awareness of various best practices of sustainable corn production.

“Success stories abound in agriculture in the areas of precision application and timing of inputs, improved seeds and large advancements in tillage and other practices,” says Don Glenn, chairman of NCGA’s Production and Stewardship Action Team. “However, some of these successes remain untold, and this program will help deliver the message loud and clear.”

In particular, NCGA is looking for farmers who have demonstrated that there is no tradeoff between production and stewardship. NCGA says nominees should show superior commitment to sustainability through best management practices and innovation in areas such as:

• Irrigation (if applicable)
• Cover crops
• Soil erosion control
• Nutrient management
• Water quality

Nominees should have a history of adopting new technology such as farm-level mapping software, GPS guidance systems and yield monitoring. They should also have effective communication skills.

NCGA will process the nominations and announce the reward recipient at the 2014 Commodity Classic in San Antonio. Nominations are due by 5 p.m. CDT Friday, Jan. 10, 2014. You can download the application here .

Farm Family Harvests Crop, Life's Challenges Together

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:04:58 GMT

Jay and Cara Myers of Colfax, North Dakota are no strangers of technology. Farming in the state can be challenging due to a smaller window to plant and harvest. That’s why these 2014 Top Producer of the Year Candidates want to make every acre count.

As the remaining bushels of the 2017 crop gets shut in the bin, this North Dakota farm family is turning toward more pressing issues.

AgDay national reporter Betsy Jibben has the story.

Rat Bomb: Farming’s Death of a Thousand Bites

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 04:47:15 GMT

What sex-crazed, eating machine gorges on a portion of profit from every farm, ranch, dairy, hog barn, feed mill and grain elevator on the planet? Guess rat, and guess right. Without fail, each year the agriculture industry endures the death of a thousand bites from a rodent that reigns supreme as a survivalist in the animal kingdom.

All told, rats rack up to $20 billion in damages to the U.S. economy each year, and agriculture pays a hunk of the bill, covering for damage to field crops, stored grain, equipment, building structures, and much more. Coast to coast, rat presence is near-ubiquitous at some level on agriculture operations of all types, but beyond the propensity to eat, gnaw and burrow, most producers know very little about a rat’s phenomenal ability to thrive in all quarters. Know thy enemy—especially one that has sex dozens of times per day.

The Rat Czar

Ironically, understanding the impact of rats on agriculture requires a trip into the urban realm of Bobby Corrigan, the “Rat Czar” of New York City. Simply, no one knows rats like Corrigan. A rodentologist with 25 years of experience, his reputation extends far beyond U.S. borders and carries him around the globe to Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Paris, Rome, and beyond, offering consultations to cities afflicted by relentless rat populations. Television documentaries, movie directors, major newspapers, magazines by the dozen, university recognition, and much more, Corrigan is lauded for an encyclopedic grasp of rats. Yet, the affable Corrigan, 65, is far removed from the ivory tower of academia. When he’s not on a rat-lecture tour, he’s typically found with a flashlight crawling through the pitch-black of an abandoned building, crouching in a dim alley, or lowering a microphone into a burrow to record the incessant chatter of a rat colony.

In subways, sewers, basements, beneath subflooring, or below buildings, Corrigan enters the dark confines of rat-ruled domains that attack the physical senses and send nauseous chills up most spines, as musky, gamey odors emanate from layers of defecation, with the smells piggybacked by the rat colony’s unmistakable vocalizations slicing through the darkness. “It’s like all of your senses assaulted at one time,” Corrigan describes. “Once you go in their world, the odors are pungent, almost like a zoo in a tight space. You hear scurrying, audible communication, squeaks, and teeth chattering. You stand still and watch them dart, jump, and stand on back legs to box one another. There are lots of shrieks of pain because they’re always biting each other in dominance, attacking each other’s flanks and taking big bites out of other males.”

Twice in his career, Corrigan has been bitten—a pain of reckoning from an animal capable of six bites per second with jaws delivering a 7,000 lb. per square inch crunch. “I’ve had rats within a couple inches spit right at me,” he continues. “They’ll grunt and stomp their feet just like a buck in the woods.”

Corrigan has seen rats burrow beneath foundations and take out sidewalks, streets, retaining walls and even sewer systems. “If you have a grain bin with a slab footing, or any other farm building, they’ll burrow under in a blink and crack the slab. A major, major expense to fix.”

Despite burrowing hazards, the biggest threat, he says, is consistent gnawing damage. “Wherever you have wires, they’re going to chew and cause high dollar damage. Gas lines, water lines, vehicle wires, building wires—so much expense. Even for airplanes in agriculture, they’ll chew on those wires. It’s such a big deal and you never want to let rats live on your farm. Never take the complacent attitude that every farm has rats.”

All You Can Eat

Farm rats are divided into two types of the same species, black and brown. The black rat (roof rat) usually lives above ground, often building nests in trees or rafters, and is a steady blight on the citrus and orchard industries. The brown rat (Norway rat) is the grand burrower, at home in the sewers of New York City or beneath a Midwest dairy barn or in the side of a Mississippi Delta irrigation ditch. Brown rats arrived in the U.S. during the late 1700s, as stowaways on European ships, and then spread across the country, riding the coattails of human habitation. Find people, find brown rats.

Rodents make up nearly half (43%) of all mammals on Earth—an undeniably strong indicator of survival skills. And in the mammalian kingdom, brown rats have a spot at the head of the survival table. They can go from easy pickings in a livestock barn to scraping a living in bare rocks beside the ocean, swimming underwater when necessary to find food. Coal mines, mountains, or cities: Whatever pitch the planet throws, the rats hit.

Along with remarkable adaptation skills, brown rats possess a mind-boggling capacity for reproduction. “They will crank out offspring like you can’t believe,” Corrigan says. “A single female can produce a chain of 15,000 offspring in a single year. Doesn’t happen often, but it can, given the right circumstances.”

And what are those “right circumstances?” What element triggers massive breeding? Abundant food. Combined with easy access, surplus food allows rats to take energy spent foraging and transfer it to mating. Females can copulate hours after giving birth, ovulate once every four days, and produce litters throughout their entire lives. (Life span in the wild is about 7-10 months, although a rat without stress can live for several years.) “With ample food and average pressure, rats can start breeding at 8 weeks of age (roughly 12 weeks with limited food). That’s 10-12 pups with plenty of food, and 4-5 pups with less food. Under stress and without food, they’ll kill and eat their own young to maintain caloric needs. Again, plenty of food is key.”

Grain is nature’s premium food source for rats, and their favorite meal, but when possible, rats select for complete nutritional balance (fruit) and need protein intake. They attack birds and smaller mammals as a meat source, and often supplement with insects. Generally, an average brown rat requires 3 oz. of food and 1 oz. of water to keep it strong in the wild; approximately 55-100 calories every 24 hours.

And where can rats access a bounty of food? Cities and farms. “Take a feed mill, for example, or even a set of grain bins,” Corrigan describes. “If a farmer doesn’t clean up properly, or the mill isn’t kept tight, you’re guaranteed hundreds of rats. People in the situation often think it’s thousands of rats, but it usually doesn’t work like that.”

“Astonishingly Smart Animals”

As with a beaver or squirrel, a rat’s front incisors never stop growing and are kept in check by incessant chiseling against the opposing pair. Whether electrical wire damage in equipment or buildings, most agriculture operations are frequent victims of rat teeth. Corrigan frequently places microphones inside burrows, and the noise from grinding or chattering teeth is a constant. “They can keep their own teeth filed down and don’t need to gnaw—that part is a myth. But we all know they do gnaw on anything and everything, and nobody is certain, but we think it’s because they are looking for reaction. Gnaw on bark searching for a cavity; gnaw on a stem and water drips out; gnaw on plastic or rubber and see what’s inside. Gnawing is exploring and hoping for something beyond or beneath.”

The blunt-muzzled brown rat is usually 12”-18” in length, and averages roughly 16 oz. in weight. Yet, particularly around farms, how does a creature that sometimes can grow to almost a pound-and-a-half move with incredible dexterity through tiny access holes? It’s all about the head.

“Once the head goes through, the body follows suit. I tell farmers, any hole where a quarter fits, or even less, is a rat door and needs repair because rats’ rib cages operate like hinges; they’re compressible. Shave a rat of its fur and you’ll be stunned by a scrawny mammal. Measure from the top of skull to bottom of the skull, and it’s half an inch and almost the same on side,” Corrigan notes.

Physically, rats are top athletes in the animal kingdom, capable of scaling rough surfaces, including the sides of brick buildings, or moving with a gymnast’s ease between pipes and rungs. “Watch them in a barn and you see unbelievable agility,” Corrigan describes. “This is a creature that can swim 72 hours without fail, or hold’s it breath several minutes underwater, swim up or down into/out of a toilet bowl, or dive in a creek for crawdads.”

(For related, see Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs )

Riding shotgun alongside its adaptive qualities, breeding capacity, physical characteristics, and all-you-can-eat buffet diet, is a phenomenally high level of intelligence. The popular image of rats as dull and reactionary is false.

“Astonishingly smart animals,” Corrigan says, “We’ve been wrong in thinking every behavior we observed in rats was instinct. Measuring brain activity shows they experience a range of emotions and make calculations ahead of time, and make decisions based on previous experiences. The research is incredible and shows high intelligence—so high that it contains many of the capabilities we thought were reserved just for us and primates.”

“For example, let’s say a piece of food gets stuck between two barn doors. A rat will forage for a stick, and then use the stick as a tool to extract the food. That is game-changer intellect, and presents farmers with a question they might not want to hear, but it’s absolutely true: How do you control an animal with that level of intelligence? When it comes to rats, nothing is as simple as it first appears.”

“Rats are by no means stupid varmints. If you’ve got a rat problem on your property, then you’d better treat it carefully and with best management practices, just as you would with any type of livestock.”

Baptism By Fire

As a teenager growing up in Long Island, N.Y., Corrigan was the classic nature nerd, and after high school, he answered an advertisement for extermination work in an attempt to save money for college. It was baptism by fire: Corrigan was thrown into the sewers of New York City—the world’s emblematic hot zone of brown rat infestations.

The exterminator stint was followed by several years at Purdue University, where he cut his rat teeth in agriculture. Literally, Corrigan got on staff at Purdue and began rat research on Indiana farms and feed mills. (He still owns a small farm in Wayne County, and splits time between Indiana and New York.)

Corrigan, director of RMC Pest Management Consulting, is consistently bombarded with the same questions: How many rats live in the five boroughs of New York City? A trip through Google reveals a wild variation of purportedly concrete rat population totals—all false, Corrigan explains. “They’re just guessing, but they don’t want to say that. We don’t know a hard number, but it’s likely in the millions. One thing for sure, I suspect the cost of control is in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. A great indicator of our rat population is the $4-$5 million in rat-related cleaning fines the city levies to people each year. Think about that: Almost $5 million in fines because of brown rats.”

Numbers, however, can be deceiving according to city size, and far more significant than population, Corrigan notes, is per capita presence. “Let’s say, just for argument, that New York City has 3 million rats, but much smaller Washington, D.C. has 500,000 rats. Who has the worse problem?”

The Rat War

Excluding the polar regions, the globe is a rat haven. There is only one mainland holdout—the ever-vigilant Canadian province of Alberta, which has…so far…won the rat race. Slightly larger in land mass than France, Alberta has kept brown rats at bay for 70 years, since the first recorded incident in 1950, when inspectors found rats on a farm in the southeast part of the province, along the Saskatchewan border. Government officials went into nuclear mode, sending armed men to the area to exterminate any and all rats, along with a publicity campaign including posters, pamphlets, free poison and public meetings on how to kill rats.

Bottom line: The effort paid off in spades, and as of 2020, Alberta has no resident or breeding population of brown rats. An eight-man rat patrol continues to monitor the border, and checks thousands of farms every year. In addition, Alberta maintains a rat hotline (310-RATS) and keeps rat prevention in the public eye.

However, take Alberta’s story off the table, along with rat elimination success on a few islands, and it’s readily apparent that rat races seldom end with human victories.

The Warhorses

Film producers consistently badger Corrigan for a money shot—thousands of rats in one place, existing as a camera-ready hoard. Such a location, Corrigan insists, is pure fiction. Rats are highly gregarious, but as multiple families form colonies, the rats migrate into new territory, shifting in search of balanced food opportunity. “You can end up with 400-500 rats on a single acre, but when it gets that bad, they move down the road or follow the creek to the next property. Your rat becomes your neighbor’s rat.”

However, Corrigan has seen exceptions. “Again, it’s all about food. I’ve been on some mismanaged swine operations where there were thousands of rats in one location, but those types of situations are not the norm.”

Below ground, or deep in the bowels of a city or farm structure, rats live in family units, typically sleeping in basketball-sized nests, Corrigan describes. “I’ve opened a nest and seen 30 rats explode in all directions. Especially in winter, they’ll all hugger-mugger together for body heat, but if food is in short supply, they’ll stay separate and get extremely aggressive.”

Aggression is standard in the rat world and dominant males are a force, Corrigan insists. “They’re truly tough looking, almost like an old warhorse, and packed with bulk, muscle, and a ‘Don’t mess with me,’ attitude. The biggest rat on a farm totally runs the show.”

Despite near-mythic status, king rats are fiction, he insists. “I’ve personally never seen anything confirmed in a brown rat over 1 lb. and 6 oz. Lots of guys tell me they’ve seen rats the size of cats. No, you saw a cat.”

Deputy Dog

Tucked deep in the Mississippi Delta, 1,200 miles from New York City, Mike Wagner’s Two Brooks Farm is an exceptional rice and soybean outfit focused on crop quality and conservation. Wagner’s farming operation is unique; his rat problem is not.

In the winter of 2018, he bought an old, low-dollar combine, exclusively for cutting test plots, and prior to the 2019 harvest, was forced to rewire the machine due to depredation from rats. Rice and rats are an unholy pair, and although Wagner experienced an onslaught of rodent damage, he managed to find a unique solution.

Rats were a financial drain on his Tallahatchie County grain bin system, often inflicting $10,000 to $20,000 in damage per year. On a whim, Wagner brought in a six cats to his farming headquarters, hoping to stem the bin damage—and clockwork, the rat problem ceased. “It was amazing, but it only worked for a short time—then the coyotes showed up and killed the cats at night.”

Cats killed the rats; coyotes killed the cats; the rats returned. Once again, Wagner relied on Mother Nature, adopting an abandoned Great Pyrenees dog to protect a second batch of cats. The new dog, Deputy, flipped the balance back in Wagner’s favor. Afraid of Deputy, the coyotes stayed on the perimeter, and the cats were free to prey on rats. Wagner’s old-school solution, through the soldiering of a Great Pyrenees, won the day—and still keeps the rats at bay around the bins. “That special dog was the end of my trouble,” Wagner says.

Plain Truth

Rat control on a farm (or in a city environment) is packed with irony, because the best control is obvious, yet seldom practiced: Cut off the food supply. If a family unit of 16 rats consumes just a pound of food per night, multiplied by seven each week, and extrapolated to 30 lb. of intake per month, how can a farmer, surrounded by augers, bins and livestock, stop the flow? “There is no magic wand. Nobody can clean or secure everything,” Corrigan says, “but you can have an immediate impact on whether you have 50 or 500 rats. Keep your rat population at 50 and then you can have a shot at them with rodenticides and rat traps.”

In an urban location, brown rats will forage up to 500’ from their nests, but typically stay within 100’, provided a food source exists. In a farming environment, proximity is much narrower, and forage distances significantly shrink. “The No. 1 concern is to shut off food sources, but you’d be amazed by how few people do that,” Corrigan explains. “Don’t go the hardware store, buy poison, and put it out at random. We can all fix a leaking pipe, but to what degree? The secret to poison is proper location where the rats truly are, otherwise it’s ineffectual, costs a ton of money, and may hurt other animals.”

Despite the destructive power of rats, Corrigan maintains tremendous respect for a species geared to survive. “What’s not to admire about a species specializing in success? There is still a ton of mystery surrounding rats and the more we learn, the better off we can control them in cities and in agriculture.”

“The truth is plain about rats in farming ,” Corrigan adds. “If you don’t clean up spilled grain and leaking augers, and if you don’t cut off the main food sources, then you’re going to have huge rat problems that poison and traps won’t fix. You can’t bail out an ocean.”

For more, see:

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Predator Tractor Unleashed on Farmland by Ag’s True Maverick

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

United Fresh seminar looks at latest FreshFacts on Retail data

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:37:46 GMT

The United Fresh Produce Association will be presenting the data from its latest FreshFacts on Retail report, covering the first quarter of 2020, with a web seminar.

The seminar is at 2 p.m. Eastern May 29. It will take a deep dive into how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected retail prices and sales trends for leading produce categories, according to a news release.

By registering for the web seminar, attendees will receive a copy of the report before the seminar. Registration is online .

The report features cantaloupe , watermelon and corn , and also has a year-to-year comparison of the last three years’ third-quarter results to help companies plan for a successful third-quarter 2020.

Jeff Cady, director of produce and floral for Tops Friendly Markets , will moderate the web seminar, which will also feature analysis from Mike Galaburda, client director for Nielsen Fresh. There will also be a Q&A period and interactive discussion, according to the release.

Related stories:

United Fresh LIVE! session mulls future of organic produce

Retail mango sales grow

Broccoli, lettuce, onions contribute to Q2 vegetable sales growth

Killing the Input Beast

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:03:33 GMT

The gospel of high yields at all costs has a new apostate. In 2012, Johnny Hunter pumped massive amounts of water onto his crops, but could only watch as extended drought drained yield from his fields. Cost of production demanded 230-250 bu. corn, 70-80 bu. soybeans and 3-bale cotton. When those levels weren’t achieved, particularly with the worst corn harvest of his career, financial trouble followed. He steadied his nerve, pulled the handbrake on his operation, and began a manic search for a soil solution.

Hunter was victim to agriculture’s version of the death of a thousand cuts through endless rounds of $5 treatments. A switch to a no till cover crop system tailored to his Essex, Mo., ground changed his entire management dynamic and provided a booster shot to weed control, irrigation efficiency and overall soil health.

YouTube Yearning

When the last tractor was shut down and harvest dust settled on a dismal 2012, Hunter was frustrated and playing against time. Despite pumping the most water of his career across a high tillage and big input system, another poor year in 2013 would place his operation in dire financial straits.

“One year and all the money I’d made was negated,” he says. “You can farm like that and make a living, but you can’t stub your toe or suffer a hiccup because you’ve spent so much money. It’s a fragile, uneasy spot and a lot of farmers are in it.”

Heavy tillage was the default practice on Hunter’s southeast Missouri operation, peppered with blanket fertilizer across all acres. Almost invariably, at least one treatment of some sort was sprayed weekly – an inordinate amount of money to increase yield.

“I was killing myself with $5 and $7 treatments to bring bushel increases,” Hunter says. “Yes, in some instances that’s exactly what happened, but we just kept bleeding profit.”

He typically doctored 2,450 acres of farmland with the intensive management of a man possessed: increased fertilization rates, tissue sampling, and micronutrient applications were only a portion of an ever growing regimen. The knee-jerk solution to go from red to black? Buy more metal in the form of a 20’ disk ripper and tear ground to shreds to increase water infiltration.

In December, while hunting online for the right machinery, Hunter clicked a tillage radish advertisement. In turn, the radish link led to a series of YouTube cover crop videos. He was hooked and hardly left his house for a week, consuming soil health videos and chasing more cover crop links. The penny dropped and Hunter knew he was on the trail of a turnaround.

In the mix of cover crop videos and literature, a particular name kept surfacing: National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) conservation agronomist Ray Archuleta. Hunter emailed Archuleta on a Saturday night; Archuleta called Hunter on Sunday morning. Hunter’s journey to soil health had begun.

“Johnny was trying to find a better way to survive,” Archuleta recalls. “ Cover crops are merely a tool, not the goal. The goal is simple: Copy nature and increase soil function to cut back on input dependency. Understanding what’s going on in the soil system and how to use cover crops is the key.”

“Ray patiently explained how a cover crop system would benefit my overall efficiency,” Hunter says. “Sure, I was scared and felt like I was walking out on a high-dive board, but I was more scared of keeping on with the same practices and going out of business. Another bad year and I was knocked out.”

Hunter’s cover crop scheme is a fluid mix, and he rarely repeats the exact recipe of cereal rye, annual rye, black oats, hairy vetch, crimson clover, red clover, and Austrian winter peas. He doesn’t kill covers early in the year and believes a loose 75% of benefits are derived in spring. Erosion benefits come in winter, but Hunter wants a living root as soil warms. Before corn and soybeans, he terminates covers 48 hours ahead of the planter.

“The last thing I need to do is kill covers in February,” Hunter notes. “I like a healthy balance of good biomass to put carbon in my soil, and having a good place to plant my cash crop.”

Most of Hunter’s farmland is precision graded and divided into 40- to 80-acre fields, with soils ranging from sandy to Sharkey clay gumbo. Cover crops serve as a sponge and can factor heavily in the delicate dance between early planting and rutted up ground. A big April rain on buckshot is stressful and can destroy a planting schedule, but cover crops wick away a significant amount of excess moisture and preserve precious time during early spring.

Termination occurs 48 to 72 hours before planting. When soil temperatures reach close to 60 F at midday, Hunter chemically terminates with Gramoxone (or a combination of Roundup and Sharpen) and may carry the mix with liquid fertilizer. The next day he leaves the field idle as chemicals translocate, and sends in planters with mounted rollers the following day.

“Getting a cover crop terminated and laid flat on the soil surface, and then planted into as quickly as possible provides the best results,” Hunter says. “I want the cover lying flat on the soil surface so it provides benefits fast: weed suppression, moisture retention, and soil health.”

Cash Back

Palmer amaranth loves sunlight, but can’t handle thick layers of cereal rye. Through 2012, resistant Palmer pressure caused Hunter’s herbicide bill to balloon, yet after a single year of cover crops in 2013, the reduction in pigweed was remarkable. When Hunter gets a cover laid down and no tills through the mat, he says the result is the best residual herbicide money can buy. The covers impede germination by crowding out weed seeds and blocking sunlight, but cereal rye and tillage radishes also produce natural allelopathic chemicals to hinder broadleaf weed seed.

Through a no till, cover crop system, Hunter is taking bites out of the herbicide monster . Blanket pre-emerge spraying is no longer a necessity. Contingent on the cover type, a stout layer of biomass won’t even allow pre-emerge chemicals to reach the soil. However, on gar holes, skips, and odd spots, Hunter still applies pre-emerge to avoid weed problem areas. Overall, by eliminating a chain of spray trips, he’s gained substantial herbicide cost savings.

“My goal is to continue dropping weed pressure to get away from weed chopping and high herbicide bills. These are the kind of savings that make us profitable,” Hunter says.

Fertilizer and soil nutrients remain in the soil far better with Hunter’s cover system, with generally clear water leaving the bottom of fields, instead of a mocha slurry. Irrigation was an initial worry for Hunter, but slicing through the mat with a furrow tool carved a clean water path. Most of his acreage is furrow irrigated with polypipe, and the covers slow down water flow to increase irrigation efficiency, according to Hunter. Essentially, it means increased soaking time for crops and more moisture contained by residue.

“No more turning on wells and never turning them off,” Hunter says. “Irrigation is another area to save money.”

Weening Inputs

During the brutal 2012 drought, producer Peter Rost, New Madrid, Mo., watched corn burn even under irrigation. As he saw soil health benefits blossom on Hunter’s ground, Rost took note and began implementing cover crops in 2014. Hunter and Rost are among a handful of growers using a cover crop system in adjoining Stoddard and New Madrid counties. In 2016, Rost had 50% of his 3,500 acres in cover crops, but plans to boost coverage to 95% in 2017.

“This is not a sprint and I can’t suddenly cut out fertilizer applications and spraying,” Rost says. “However, I’m getting weened off intensive irrigation, heavy nutrients and non-stop spray passes.”

Rost is already seeing returns through a reduction of input costs from a heavy cover mat to choke weeds and thick biomass to increase irrigation infiltration and ensure water doesn’t slide down a hard middle.

“I’m planting a lot of hairy vetch and clover, and I’m looking forward to curbing back my nutrient applications by year four or five,” he says.

Catching Sun

The principles of soil health don’t rest on cover crops, Archuleta advocates. His aim isn’t to guide a producer toward cover crops; it’s to understand soil health context and biomimicry. Cover crops are merely a tool to put the soil system in motion and withstand drought, hold more water and cycle nutrients more efficiently. Harvesting corn and soybeans from a field and leaving it bare is a loss for the soil and ultimately a profit loss for the producer through energy and nutrient leaks, Archuleta emphasizes.

He believes the most effective way to make money on a farm is to capture solar energy.

“Is your farm running on ancient sunlight or new sunlight? Ancient sunlight is diesel, gasoline, pesticides, and chemical inputs. New sunlight farmers use cover crops to capture sunlight which pumps carbon into the soil ecosystem which significantly reduces those inputs,” Archuleta says.

And how do the numbers stack up? On average, producers following the soil health system have reaped astounding savings, according to Archuleta .

“I’ve already watched farmers reduce nitrogen needs by 50%, fuel consumption by 75%, and herbicide use by 75%,” he says. “I’ve seen some operations entirely eliminate fungicides and insecticides.”

Never Till

In farming reality, weather and ruts dictate certain management necessities, but with 75% of his acreage in no till, Hunter’s goal is to continue minimizing tillage.

“I don’t care if you’re in Michigan, Mississippi or Missouri; tillage is detrimental to soil health. In a perfect world, my ground would be in never till. That’s the ideology I chase, but I also understand the nature of the beast.”

And what does Hunter advise other producers considering cover crop implementation? Education, research, and small steps.

“Educate yourself away from fear by looking at a ton of available resources,” he says. “Field days, soil health alliances, and NRCS professionals are waiting. It may sound silly at first, but YouTube is a treasure trove.”

As a third-generation producer, Hunter, 35, jumped to 5,400 acres in 2016: cotton , field corn, popcorn, soybeans, rice and pumpkins. Admittedly, he was once scared to make changes, but profitability and the future of his operation forced his hand: “Lots of people say they want to change, but the reality is otherwise. Everybody wants different results, but few are willing to change their business.”

Pride and Pain: Farmer-Soldier Sacrifices for Country and Family

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:32:48 GMT

Joseph Sparacio drew a deep breath and took a last look across his farmland. He then wiped away his wife’s tears, scooped up two tiny children—a toddler and a newborn—and stared into the faces of his past, present, and future. One more kiss, one extra hug, and one final glance over his shoulder before he steeled his emotions and left behind everything he loved—family, land and country—in order to pay the costs of other men’s freedom.

Sparacio, 33, will plant no seed, tend no crops and work no ground in 2020. Instead, the farmer-patriot has traded the rich loams of his New Jersey farmland for the desert sands of Iraq—his second Middle East deployment in six years as a member of the Air National Guard. What happens when a young grower steps into harm’s way and leaves behind an entire farming operation to serve his country? Top to bottom, young to old, Sparacio’s farming family pulls together and answers the call in faith—all while bearing a heavy load of pride and pain.

Counting the Costs

Sparacio’s Garden State farming heritage tracks a century back to Ellis Island and further to Italy, where his forefathers originally grew tomatoes and asparagus in Sicily, and brought their agricultural expertise to Cumberland County in 1909. Sparacio grew up on the family operation along with two brothers and one sister outside Rosenhayn, approximately 35 miles south of Philadelphia. In 2005, at 18, he signed up with the Air National Guard —the first in his century-long family chain to enlist in the military. “He did it because he loves this country,” describes Joseph’s father, Anthony. “My wife, Mandy, and I raised our children to have the deepest respect for this nation and give back in every way you can, and that’s why my son serves.”

Anthony and Mandy raised four children (Anthony III, Mary Anne, Joseph and Michael) with a focus on civic responsibility, hauling their crew each Sunday to St. Mary’s Holy Catholic Church (Parish of the Holy Cross) to fill up an entire pew. Church involvement, school boards, community organizations, and farming committees were part and parcel of life in the Sparacio household. “That’s what we do,” Anthony continues. “Patriotism is what we were taught and what we believe. My own dad always told me stories about how great our country is, and I passed the same to my children.”

Trained as an aircraft firefighter, Sparacio deployed for the first time in 2014, leaving behind the family farm for a tour in Kuwait. “Joe came home with more appreciation than ever for our country,” Anthony explains. “After he got home he’d come downstairs every morning, and the first thing he’d tell me: ‘Pop, you don’t know how lucky we are to live in America.’”

A year after returning from Kuwait, Sparacio stepped beyond Anthony’s grain and nursery operation, and took the reins of opportunity by going solo, purchasing a 150-acre vegetable farm from his uncle, Butch Sparacio, in lock, stock and barrel fashion—packing house, machinery, land, and processing equipment. In tandem, Sparacio married Micole, his high school sweetheart, intent on raising his children on farmland.

Sparacio’s belief in service extended far beyond the military, and even prior to deployment in Kuwait, he ran for political office, with approval from the Judge Advocate General’s ( JAG ) Corps, later winning a committeeman position with Deerfield Township while in Kuwait. In 2016, he ran for Cumberland County freeholder (county commissioner), won the seat, and concluded his tenure in December 2019, declining to run again. Why? Sparacio’s Air Guard unit was put on alert. On Jan. 2, 2020, Sparacio deployed to Iraq, leaving behind Micole and two sons—2-year-old Santino and 1-week-old Giuseppe. Five days later, the New Jersey farmer was 6,000 miles away from his cropland at a base just west of Baghdad, under a barrage of ballistic missiles shot by Iran (Jan. 7). “It’s not just something on the news or a headline when it’s your own son taking fire,” Anthony emphasizes, “and serving our country has real-life costs. Somebody pays a cost for every freedom we have.”

From the Heart

Beyond corn, soybeans and wheat grown strictly as rotation crops, Sparacio’s fields host a remarkable variety of produce, including asparagus, strawberries, beans, sweet peas, cabbage, cucumbers, eggplant, fava beans, peppers, tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini, daily marketed 6 miles away at Vineland Cooperative Produce Auction , as well as an on-farm, roadside stand.

How does an absentee farmer get his crops planted, managed and harvested from a world away? Enter Butch, Anthony, Micole, and every branch of the Sparacio family tree. “Butch is keeping the place running with all cultivating and spraying, and Micole is covering the packing and books,” Anthony explains. “Mandy, my sons and daughter—they’re all pitching in wherever needed. They all have full-time careers outside farming, but they’re helping in every way possible. Butch and all of us are keeping the farm tight for Joe.”

“Plus, all our labor is from Puerto Rico, and it’s the same family we’ve had for 60 years that date back to working for my Uncle Nate. Sons, grandsons, cousins are all in the family. They’re the best people and highly trained. Seriously, they know everything about picking and packing.”

On the surface, the direct consequences of Sparacio’s service are extremely heavy: life-threating danger and absence from family. However, Anthony says the financial risks are a cost recognized by few outside the farming community. “Farmers know the situation we’re all in right now with operating and equipment loans. Just imagine if you had to disappear from your farm for up to a year. After Joe bought the farm, the first two years were OK. The third year was fair, but 2018 and 2019 were terrible. As farmers, we can’t control the market or the weather, and both have been awful the last couple of years, and now we’re all locked into virus troubles. Those are not complaints, but just the reality of what must be dealt with.”

“In this societal anxiety and financial difficulty, Joe had to leave two tiny kids and a farm for someone else to run,” Anthony continues. “That’s hard for most people to relate to, but at least other farmers can better understand what I’m saying. We’re strongly involved with the Fellowship of Christian Farmers and they always remember and pray for Joe. The farming community is very aware of what has taken place, and several of my farming neighbors have spoken from the heart to tell us they’ll come running if we need anything at all.”

Tell-tale Praise

One of Sparacio’s farming neighbors is Abby Perlstein O’Brien, and at seven years his senior, she was raised alongside Sparacio on the same stomping grounds, and watched his character develop throughout his childhood. “I couldn’t be prouder of him. He’s a born leader. Just watch him walk in a room and you’ll see a smile that makes you feel like everything will be OK. Joe has an incredible personality that makes you believe in things.”

O’Brien served alongside Sparacio on the Deerfield Township: “He is a man of his word and he approached local politics with the utmost sincerity,” she says. “Some people think local government is not so important, but not Joe—to him it meant the most because that’s where he grew up.”

And from O’Brien’s vantage point, what does she believe fuels Sparacio? “It’s difficult to measure because Joe doesn’t talk about himself and is very modest. He will give you the shirt off his back, but not want you to tell anyone. So I can only speculate, but I think his drive and joy come from his wife and greater family. They just don’t make people like Joe Sparacio anymore.”

Sparacio’s impact on his community is further revealed in tell-tale praise from friend and colleague Jim Quinn, a highly respected fellow freeholder in Cumberland County. Quinn and Sparacio served together for three years: “Joe is one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever dealt with. I’m a Democrat and he’s a Republican, and I’m as close to him as anyone I’ve ever worked with. Across 32 years, I’ve never worked with anyone I thought more of than Joe Sparacio.”

“I’ve always admired my farming friends, and Joe has a work ethic second to none,” Quinn continues. “Then again, his father and brothers are just like him. The Sparacios exemplify all the good things in farming, and they’re one of the finest families in the whole of south New Jersey.”

Talking History

Sparacio’s military duty in Kuwait and Iraq mirrors a once common, but increasingly rare, figure in U.S. history: the farmer-soldier. During the era of the Revolutionary War, over 90% of the U.S. population was engaged in agriculture—the Continental Army was stocked with growers. During the Civil War, according to the American Battlefield Trust , almost half of all soldiers in the Union Army were farmers. Bottom line, farmers have long been soldier stock, Anthony notes: “Back when our country first started, so many of those guys took their squirrel guns and went to fight. Me and Joe talk history all the time, and we talk about the wars that farmers have always fought in.”

According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture , 370,619 U.S. producers qualify as military veterans, but their average age is 67.9—over a decade older than the average age of U.S. producers as a whole. Significantly, the 2017 Census notes young producers (35 and below) with military service number just 7,824 nationwide.

In Harm’s Way

What fuels Sparacio ? What pushes him to multiple levels of service? “It goes back to love of country, roots, and family,” Quinn says. “Remember, Joe gave up elected office to go back. I pray for my friend in harm’s way and I’ll keep doing so until he returns.”

On a unseasonably warm March evening, farm work finished for the day, Anthony enters his house with his lips moving in prayer—an appeal to Providence for a homecoming. Approaching his bedroom door, he can hear Mandy’s soft cries, as she writes her son one more nightly letter in a growing chain of correspondence, hopeful for the safe return of her son. “Mandy hurts like only a mother can,” Anthony says. “I keep a straight face for Mandy and my whole family, but it hides pride and pain.”

“Joe will be back soon on the farm he loves, back to Micole and his two little ones,” Anthony adds, “but nothing comes free, and that’s why he’s overseas serving. I’m waiting for the day my boy comes home.”

For more, see:

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

The Great Shame: Mississippi Delta 2019 Flood of Hell and High Water

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Farmer Builds DIY Solution to Stop Grain Bin Deaths

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

The Supply Chain Cares About Sustainability More Than Ever

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:02:43 GMT

There was a time when once grain left the farm gate, little was thought about where it went. Those days are disappearing quickly, with more and more links in the supply chain taking significant interest in how the grain they source is grown. The upside – interest usually leads to positive change in the industry.

Case in point – Smithfield is ramping up a program called MBGro that it hopes 75% of its grain sourcing acreage in the Southeast and Midwest will participate in by 2018.

“The goal is to provide technological assistance and information to our grain growers along the line of fertilizer optimization,” says Kraig Westerbeek, Smithfield’s hog production division’s vice president of engineering and environmental support services. “We’ve hired a full-time agronomist and are looking at cover crops, sensors and GPS-based technology. There’s a tremendous toolbox available.”

Maggie Monast, an agriculture sustainability expert at Environmental Defense Fund, says one great tool in the MGBro toolbox is a set of Trimble GreenSeeker crop sensing system that Smithfield has loaned out to five farmers. This technology allows the farmers to determine very precise fertilizer needs in real-time.

“Precise fertilizer application is a huge win-win for farmers and the environment, since farmers save on input costs and reduced fertilizer losses improve air and water quality,” she said.

The GreenSeeker loans are for one year – after that, the farmers return it so another farmer can use it, or purchase the system. Either way, Smithfield is able to share the technology with more and more farmers each season.

“For something this expensive, it’s a good way for a farmer to try it and see the benefits before making a full investment,” Monast says.

Ultimately, Westerbeek and his colleagues at Smithfield are interested in isolating any production practice that is good for both the producer and the environment. Doing so also keeps them in the good graces of retailers such as Walmart.

“The retailer is becoming more interested in what we do, so we in turn become more interested in what our grain suppliers are doing,” Westerbeek says.

Monast says MBGro could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 60,000 tons – the equivalent of taking 13,000 cars off the road.

“Our hope is to see if we can get other animal protein companies to follow in their footsteps,” she says.

The MBGro tools are free to use, and participation in the program is voluntary. Visit mbgro.com for details.

Glyphosate a Hot Button Issue in Germany

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:11:34 GMT

The debate over weed killers containing glyphosate continues to be issue in Germany. Reuters reporting the country wants to end the use of glyphosate-based products. Products like Roundup, which is made by Germany based Bayer AG, are the subject of a big debate. German leaders agreed earlier this year to limit glyphosate use with the goal to end using it, but no timeline has been set. Farmers worry about losing an important tool. Bayer Leaders say the company must get more involved in the conversation. The head of Bayer CropScience in Germany says a ban would result in more ploughing and put German farmers at a competitive disadvantage. He went on to say that the debate over it in Germany is shaped by politics, not by science which shows the chemical is safe.

Related article:

Germany seeking an end date for glyphosate use

Too Much Corn With Nowhere to Go as U.S. Farmers Plan for Record

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:01:25 GMT

The ripening corn and soybean fields stretch for miles in every direction from Dennis Wentworth’s farm in Downs, Illinois. As he marveled at his best-yielding crops ever, he wondered aloud where the heck he’ll put it all.

“Logistics are going to be a huge problem for everyone,” the 62-year-old grower said, adding that he has invested in boosting output rather than grain bins. When harvesting starts in a few weeks, Wentworth expects his 150-year-old family farm to produce 10 percent more than last year’s record. “There are going to be some big piles of grain on the ground this fall.”

From Ohio to Nebraska, thousands of field inspections this week during the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour show production of corn could be 1 percent more than the government’s estimate and soybeans 1.2 percent higher, according to a Bloomberg survey of crop scouts. Months of timely rains and mild weather created ideal growing conditions, leaving ears with more kernels than normal on 10-foot (3-meter) corn stalks and more seed pods on dark, green soy plants.

Prospects of bumper harvests sent Chicago futures tumbling into bear markets last month, two years after a drought eroded output and sparked the highest prices ever. Cheaper grain is bolstering profit for buyers including Tyson Foods Inc. and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., encouraging some cattle producers in the Great Plains to expand herds, and eroding income for farmers who say increased output will make up for some of the slump.

Bigger Yields

Corn on the Chicago Board of Trade has tumbled 21 percent since the end of May to $3.69 a bushel yesterday, and soybeans are down 30 percent to $10.3825 a bushel. The Bloomberg Commodity Index slid 6.2 percent over the same period, while the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities rose 2 percent. The Bloomberg Treasury Index gained 0.5 percent.

Samples in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa -- representing 45 percent of forecast U.S. corn output and 41 percent of soybeans -- showed bigger yields than last year, according to inspections on the 22nd annual Pro Farmer crop tour, which ended yesterday. Corn production will be 14.178 billion bushels, compared with 14.032 billion bushels estimated by USDA, according to a survey of 13 grain company and hedge fund analysts on the tour. Soybean output was forecast at 3.861 billion, versus the government estimate of 3.816 billion.

The volunteer scouts on the four-day crop tour drove more than 15,000 miles across seven Midwest states, the biggest growing region, taking random samples by counting the number of kernels on corn ears and pods on soybean plants. Editors of the Pro Farmer newsletter will issue final estimates of U.S. output today, partly based on this week’s measurements.

Ideal Weather

In Illinois, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted this month that yields will be 188 bushels an acre on average, the tour estimated 197 bushels an acre, up 16 percent from the same areas surveyed last year. In Iowa, preliminary samples showed 1,107 soybean pods per 3 square feet, up 18 percent from last year.

The outlook has improved after months of ideal weather. Through Aug. 16, the majority of the Midwest was slightly dry to abnormally moist, according to a weekly Crop Moisture Index from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Temperatures that have been cooler than normal will remain average or below average through the end of August, the agency forecasts.

The government on Aug. 12 predicted record crops and a drop in exports that will boost reserves. Corn production will rise 0.8 percent from last year’s record to 14.03 billion bushels, and soybean output will jump 16 percent to 3.82 billion bushels, the government said.

Cutting Bets

Prices have plunged to the lowest since 2010, with soybean futures in Chicago dropping to $10.35 on Aug. 20 and corn slipping to $3.58 on Aug. 12. Money managers have cut their bets on a corn rally by 75 percent since early April, and they have had a net-short holding in soybeans for five straight weeks, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show.

Surging crop supplies may exacerbate the squeeze on grain storage and shipping. BNSF Railway Co., owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. struggled with “greater-than normal” demand from shippers of coal, oil and Midwest crops, the USDA said this month in a report.

Combined with inventories left from the 2013 harvest, production of all grains and oilseeds will boost 2014 supply to 26.97 billion bushels, USDA data show. That’s more than the 23.4 billion of storage on farms and grain-company silos as of Dec. 1, the government estimated in a Jan. 10 report.

Roads, Trains

“I don’t know where it will all go this year,” said Richard Guse, a 54-year-old farmer from Waseca, Minnesota, who owns a 1 million-bushel grain elevator that he expanded in the past year by 275,000 bushels. “We need better roads and faster train shipping to keep the grain moving,” Guse said this week while inspecting fields as part of the Pro Farmer crop tour.

With the main harvest still weeks away, there is still time for crops to be damaged by weather, including an early frost. Parts of eastern and northwestern Iowa, the largest corn-growing areas, had less rain than normal over the past two weeks, QT Weather said in a report yesterday.

Not everyone is seeing better yields. Parts of Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota had samplings that were less than last year. Ron Lampe’s 2,100 acres in Cumminstown, Iowa, were flooded by 20 inches of rain in late June, forcing him to replant more than 10 percent of his corn fields and damaging some of those that survived.

More Rain

Prices already may reflect expectations for a national corn yield of 170 bushels an acre, which would be more than the 167.4 bushels estimated by the USDA earlier this month, said Christopher Narayanan, an analyst at Societe Generale SA in New York who participated in the crop tour.

“I haven’t seen anything or heard anything that might suggest it would be higher,” Narayanan said in an interview yesterday.

For now, there are few risks seen and many farmers are expecting bigger harvests.

More rain is expected through the weekend across the northwestern and eastern Midwest, increasing soil moisture to boost the final stages of soybean growth, Donald Keeney, a meteorologist at MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said in an Aug. 20 report. There are no risks yet of frost, Commodity Weather Group said. The weather service yesterday predicted national corn yields will reach 171.5 bushels an acre, 1 percent above a prior estimate.

Best Crop Ever

Wentworth, the Illinois grower, said that instead of adding extra grain bins he is relying on forward-contracting to sell his anticipated avalanche of grain to six grain companies including Cargill Inc. and Andersons Inc. It will take about 538 semi-truck loads, each capable of hauling 80,000 pounds of corn and soybeans, to get his anticipated harvest to buyers. He’s been working to lease trucks and hire temporary drivers to help his two part-time employees keep his grain moving.

Cory Ritter, who farms about 2,000 acres with his father near Blue Mound, Illinois, said they planted more corn this year and expects to harvest 250 bushels an acre, at least 15 percent more than he originally anticipated. Some fields may get as much as 280 bushels, with some plants sprouting second ears and kernels heavier and larger than last year, he said.

“My corn has not been under any weather stress for one day,” said Ritter, 33. “The seed popped out of the ground in four days and started growing right away. Cool temperatures helped during pollination, producing big ears, and rains have come at the perfect time all season. It’s my best crop ever.”

DuPont Pioneer Sued by Migrant Workers in Michigan

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 21:30:19 GMT

A major seed company is being sued by 32 migrant farm workers and seven of their children over the workers’ claims that they were underpaid and experienced unsafe conditions and poor housing while removing tassels from corn in southwestern Michigan.

The workers are mostly from Texas and were hired in 2012 to work in Cass County. Detasseling is hot, labor-intensive work that occurs while the corn still is in the ground.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Grand Rapids, accuses Johnston, Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer and two recruiters of violating federal wage and migrant labor laws. The allegations include poor housing, unsafe transportation to the fields and inadequate water.

The suit said that the defendants housed the workers and their families “in mobile trailers and a renovated farm building, which failed to comply with state and federal health and safety requirements.”

It said the defendants also violated their rights by “providing false and misleading information at the time of recruitment regarding the terms and conditions of employment; failing to provide potable water, toilets and hand-washing facilities for plaintiffs while they worked in the fields; and failing to pay plaintiffs for all the hours of work performed.”

DuPont Pioneer was formerly called Pioneer Hi-Bred and is part of Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont Co.

The seed company said the claims were untrue.

It said it “denies that the housing facilities failed to comply with state and federal health and safety requirements, given that the facilities were inspected and approved by the Michigan Department of Agriculture.”

The company also denied that it “provided false and misleading information to plaintiffs concerning the terms, conditions or existence of agricultural employment when recruiting and offering plaintiffs employment.”

On the availability of drinking water on the job, the company denied the claim but acknowledged “that on some occasions cups were not immediately available.”

A court filing last week said all parties “remain open” to a settlement. Attorneys for both sides said they “believe that all discovery proceedings can be completed by June 30, 2015.”