Late spring and early summer are busy times for farmers, but they can also be dangerous times. Severe storms, tornadoes, lightning strikes, flooding and the like can interrupt business, damage or destroy crops, or kill or severely injure livestock. Now you have a new one – agroterrorism.

Certainly more emphasis has been put on agroterrorism in the last decade, but it’s now consider part-and-parcel of the threats that can befall an agriculture business. The terrorism threat is still, thankfully, just a potential threat and not a realized one, but agriculture agencies and the federal government are giving real credence to the potential. The USDA listed agroterrorism as one possible source of loss exposure that farms face. Read More…

The local farmer’s market is now in vogue. Farmers market surveys from across North America are uncovering surprising findings – the local farmers market has become a mecca for produce sales. Iowa Department of Agriculture’s 2009 Farmers Market Economic Impact Survey shows a 92 percent increase in sales over the last five years at Iowa’s farmers markets. That’s $59.4 million in sales for 2009 alone.

Adding to the good news is the number of jobs associated with the rise in popularity of the farmers markets. In Iowa alone, a surge in farmers markets consumers resulted in 374 direct jobs and 200 indirect jobs last year. Read More…

It’s hard to imagine that farmers and agribusiness owners wouldn’t embrace environmental sustainability. Yet plenty of agriculture operations are just as detrimental to the health of the ecology as a plant dumping toxins directly into a river.

That’s because today’s high-yield food needs often put farmers in the position of using chemicals and growth hormones in an attempt to keep up with demand. While most farmers take great care to run their businesses responsibly, sometimes the mere process of raising herds can create biohazards and cause additional stresses to our water sources. Read More…

Hard winters wreak havoc on humans, but the weather poses a deadly threat to livestock herds. With this season’s record snowfalls and frigid temperatures, agribusiness owners are forced to work harder to keep the herds safe and healthy. Warm spring temperatures followed by heavy snowfall will add more stress to already stressed herds.

Farmers facing higher feed prices due to poor feed crops may be tempted to cut back on the amount of feed supplied to field livestock. However, the danger to the livestock is more critical this year. Because of some unusual growing conditions this past season, forage crops could lack adequate nutrients for grazing livestock.

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Not too many agribusiness owners would argue to potential windfall that government approval of an ethanol blend would bring. That seems to be close to happening – the EPA announced in December that it was satisfied with the feasibility of ethanol, and contingent on further testing, it could soon approve 15 percent ethanol blends based on testing results, approval that could reach the industry by mid-2010.

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