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Ag land values rise, USDA says
Agricultural land rose to an
average value of $1,510 per acre as of Jan. 1, 2005, versus the previous year,
reports USDA.
In its annual report released Aug. 5, USDA says last year's gain is the largest percentage increase since 1981, when values rose 11.1 percent. USDA reports the value of an average acre of land rose by $150, the largest dollar boost on record. The previous record was in 1980 when values rose $109 per acre.
Mexican cattle companies
fronts for drug money?
The U.S. Treasury Department has announced that two Mexican cattle companies are actually fronts for drug-trafficking cartels. The companies were set up as part of an elaborate money-laundering scheme, with some of the cattle moving to ranches in Texas.
The department warned that any cattle bought by Texas ranchers from the two Mexican companies after Aug. 19 are subject to seizure by the federal government. More information about the two companies and the brands on the cattle that were sold will be released in the near future.
Source: AFBF Executive Newswatch; Aug. 22, 2005
Creekstone bid for BSE
testing rejected again
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef LLC, a privately-owned beef producer and processor, has failed in its second attempt to gain authority to do its own testing of company-owned cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The company wants to use such testing as a marketing advantage to competition, especially in earning acceptance for shipping beef to Japan. The Agriculture Department recently rejected a revised second request, noting that national science-based testing programs must be enforced.
Source: AFBF Executive Newswatch, Aug.15, 2005
Catfish or Basa?
Taste test is fishy
The recent report that a small-scale preliminary study showed U.S. taste-testers prefer Vietnamese basa fish over American farm-raised catfish circled the world in light speed.
Officials at the Catfish Institute in Indianola, Miss., are wondering how such a public relations disaster occurred so fast. The preference of a small group of 58 untrained taste-testers was three to one in favor of basa.
It distresses some catfish farmers that the study was released by Mississippi State University food science and technology researchers. The taste-test concept began in 2002 when it was expected that farm-raised catfish would win a head-to-head taste test.
In the congressional debate for new labeling laws and tariffs on basa that occurred in 2002, the imported fish was continually referred to as inferior to catfish. Vietnamese officials have enjoyed spreading the study results worldwide as a type of payback for Congress passing labeling requirements and tariffs.
Source: AFBF Executive Newswatch, Aug. 16, 2005
DDT being used in China
Even though China supposedly banned DDT pesticide use in 1983, a research report from Baptist University in Hong Kong indicates the pesticide is still being used.
The basis for the conclusion is the presence of DDT in breast milk and fatty tissue of Hong Kong women eating high amounts of fish caught in Chinese waters. DDT is moving through the food chain from Chinese land to oceans, to fish, and finally to humans.
Source: AFBF Executive Newswatch, Aug. 15, 2005
Elephants and lions on the Great Plains, Oh My!
Ecologists have hatched a plan to relocate threatened species such as elephants and lions from Africa and Asia to the Great Plains of North America.
The scientists claim doing so would help save the animals and restore the "natural balance" that existed thousands of years ago.
One Montana naysayer of the plan is asking, "How many calves or lambs would it take to feed a family of lions for a month?"
