March 18th is National Ag Day, celebrating farm families and the contribution farming makes to the United States and to the world. This year's theme is "Agriculture: Together We Grow."
A couple of weeks ago I talked about some downsides to vaccinating poultry against Avian influenza. Last week, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that HAPI Vaccines are now off the table in the fight against High-Path Avian Flu. She stated that the USDA will focus on re-population of flocks and while prioritizing the bio-security portion of her five-point strategy, since industry leaders convinced her that vaccines are ineffective, and have not worked well in places like Mexico.
Senator Mitch McConnell has introduced “The Protecting Americans Farmlands Act” legislation in the Senate to address the decline in available farmland. It aims to address the problem of retaining farmland for agriculture use by ensuring that retiring farmers can transition their operation to the next generation, while also preserving farmland for agricultural use.
Last week, after U.S. imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the European Union announced retaliatory tariffs on $28 billion worth of U.S. ag products. The tariffs will target U.S. almonds, pork, dairy and soybeans, the largest agricultural export to Europe. EU president Roberta Metsola expressed regret over the tariffs, because they disrupt supply chains, and raise uncertainty for economies and jobs in both the U.S. and Europe. If all of the tariffs Donald Trump has proposed are put in place, American farmers will face a global market that features U.S. tariffs on four of their top five agricultural customers. In 2023, trade included China at $33.7 billion, Mexico $28.2 billion, Canada $27.9 billion, and the European Union $12.3 billion, for a total of over $102 billion.
Roughly one in seven federal office leases terminated by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency belonged to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to a DTN review of canceled leases, DOGE has forced at least 793 federal offices around the country to look for new leases or shut down altogether, claiming that this action will result in roughly $500 million in savings from the terminated leases. The Farm Service Agency office in Monticello, Utah was the target of one of these terminations.
DTN points out that the Trump administration claims to be committed to "Make America Healthy Again," but the report points out that USDA’s decisions to eliminate funding that helps support healthy local food options may work against that commitment. Cancellation of the $1 billion Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and the Local Foods for Schools Program, will likely leave food banks and schools with less access to local foods. At the same time, more than 10,000 farmers could see their 2025 selling options suddenly dry up. Vice President of the Iowa Farmers Union points out that apple producers with supplies they expected to sell and livestock producers that had locked in orders of poultry or dates to deliver their products to meat lockers are now looking for new markets. Iowa Farmers Union is leading a “call to action" to press USDA to reinstate these programs, and the National Farm to School Network has also called USDA's decision "disastrous" for farmers and child nutrition programs.
About 10 days ago, Donald Trump contended that Canada had been putting on a 250% tariff on dairy products that were shipped from the United States for almost half of a decade. That didn’t seem likely, since there had been no mention of such a tariff since the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement was signed by Trump in 2018. It turns out that Trump and Canada agreed that a 250% tariff would be triggered only after the amount of dairy products hit a quantity negotiated in the agreement, and as the US dairy industry acknowledges that the US is not hitting its allowed zero-tariff maximum in any category of dairy product. Trump also claimed that the Biden Administration allowed the amount of dairy products allowed to flow to Canada duty free was raised by the Biden Administration, but Canadian officials dispute that claim.
A source that has provided accurate information in the past told me about a freak accident involving a farm tractor that was often used for feeding hay to his cows. On a cold March morning, the farmer had a hard time starting the old beast, and when it finally fired up, he went to the house for a cup of coffee while the tractor warmed up. But in his absence, the tractor took off on it own, running through the farmyard fence, crossing a county road and into his pasture, scoring another fence, made a couple of circles in the pasture, then headed west into a neighboring pasture, making a couple of more circles before heading west toward a heavily traveled highway and a house. Fortunately, the tractor ran into a pile of logs and stumps, where it finally caught fire after struggling to drive over the log jam. Just goes to show you that we can’t trust those old geezer tractors.
Winston Churchill wrote, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
