A Roadmap to Better Decision Making

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its May 2023 baseline for the farm bill, which projects that total spending for the next decade will reach $1.51 trillion, the most expensive ever. This is an increase of +$31.5 billion from the February baseline and represents a nearly +74% increase from the original estimated cost of the 2018 farm bill of $867 ...
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According to a recent Rabobank report, adoption of gene-edited (GE) crops will increase significantly in the years ahead. Within the next 5 to 10 years, Rabobank analysts expect adoption rates could exceed 50% worldwide.Chia-Kai Kang, farm inputs analyst at Rabobank, says that GE technology has the potential to solve issues across the food supply chain for all stakeholders. "It can ...
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Wildfires and their related troubles in the US have typically been concentrated in Western states. This year, however, record wildfires in eastern Canada are impacting parts of the Northeast and Midwest. Smoke from the fires is blamed for New York City's air quality recently ranking as among the worst in the world. The smoke has reached as far south as ...
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There's starting to be more talk of dry conditions creeping into some important soybean growing regions of the US. While soybeans are a resilient crop, prolonged dry conditions during both germination and the reproductive growth stages can be particularly detrimental, reducing stands and ultimately limiting yields. Below are some thoughts and information we have gathered through the years... Soybean yield ...
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Chemical giant Dow has entered into a supply agreement with biomass refiner "New Energy Blue "to develop bioplastics from corn stover. Described as a ‘first-of-its-kind’ agreement in North America, New Energy Blue will create bio-based ethylene for Dow’s US Gulf Coast facilities to produce renewable plastics. Dow expects to use the bio-based ethylene in recyclable packaging, transportation, and footwear applications ...
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The famous Velveeta Cheese we all grew up with wasn't so much discovered as it was invented, and even stranger is the fact that it's actually the second cheese invented by Swiss immigrant Emil Frey. Frey emigrated to the US with his father in the late 1800's. His father was a farmer and cheese maker, and both eventually ended up ...
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After nearly two decades of planning, the new, state-of-the-art National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) has finally opened in Manhattan, Kansas. The $1.25 billion facility, a level-four is the first of its kind in the United States and will allow scientists to study and diagnose critical animal diseases. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) collaborated with ...
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The US beef cow herd started the year with the smallest numbers since 1962 thanks to severe drought conditions that have plagued at least 40% of the country since September 2020. Drought conditions have dramatically improved but the US beef herd is still expected to shrink even further due to a combination of ongoing drought in key regions and lingering ...
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On this day in 1897, Pearle Wait, a carpenter in LeRoy, NY was developing a cough remedy and laxative tea in his home. He experimented with gelatine and came up with a mixed fruit-flavored dessert that his wife, May, named JELL-O. Wait and his wife, May, created strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon flavoring to mix with the granulated gelatin and ...
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Scientists in Israel claim to have made a "world-first breakthrough" in plant gene modification that they believe could revolutionize how crop traits are improved. The researchers say their discovery makes it possible to reveal the role of genes and traits in plants previously hidden by functional redundancy. Meaning they are able to isolate and identify dozens of new genetic features ...
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