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We bring you some of the best farm photos this Friday, December 8, 2023, from the week! Want to get listed in this weekly feature? Be sure to hashtag your Instagram pics with #agdaily.
The post Ag on Instagram: The week’s best photos on Dec. 8, 2023 appeared first on AGDAILY.
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Author: Heidi Crnkovic
A new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Hypoxia Task Force has good news for America’s farmers and ranchers.
The EPA indicates that hard work by farmers and ranchers to reduce nutrient losses in the Mississippi River watershed is paying off. The report reveals that the 12 participating states have met interim nitrogen reduction goals two years ahead of schedule and are also making considerable progress in bringing down phosphorus losses.
The goals, which are part of a comprehensive strategy established by state and federal agencies across the Mississippi River watershed region, tasked farmers, ranchers and trusted advisors with helping to reduce nutrient losses by 20 percent by 2025. Through dedication to the implementation of conservation and best management practices, nitrogen loss has already been reduced by 23 percent, which exceeds the goals established in the Gulf Hypoxia Action Plan 2008.
“Farmers are problem-solvers by nature, and the work being done in Mississippi River Basin to reduce nitrogen loads in the Gulf region is proof of what can happen when we come together to find solutions,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall. “I commend the farmers in each of the HTF states for their instrumental role in making these strides and encourage all stakeholders to continue working together to meet the 2035 goals.”
“There’s still work to be done in the Gulf region, and we stand ready to work with our partners at EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and within the task force states to continue the progress we’re making,” Duvall said.
While the interim goal of nitrogen loss has been met, the report also outlines the need for more progress in the reduction of phosphorous loss despite the contribution of farmers to a positive phosphorous trend. AFBF also acknowledges that economic factors, including planted acreage and associated fertilizer demand, can influence average nutrient load values within selected periods.
“AFBF encourages continued discussion on preventing natural sources of phosphorous losses, such as streambank erosion,” says an AFBF press release. “The long-term goal of the Action Plan calls for a 48 percent reduction in phosphorous loads by 2035.”
»Related: Infrastructure work on the Mississippi River should bolster grain shipping
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Author: Heidi Crnkovic
The latest cattlemen’s case of fraud and schemes reads a bit like a crime novel. Wayne Butikofer, a cattleman from Clayton County, Iowa, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1 to a flurry of deceitful schemes.
The U.S. Department of Justice convicted Butikofer, 53, of one count of theft of livestock, one count of wire fraud, and one count of false bankruptcy declaration.
Operating an unregistered cattle business known as Fawn Hollow, he sold cattle he didn’t own, snagged COVID-19 relief funds by falsely claiming cattle ownership, and even nabbed $1.5 million from the Small Business Administration.
It didn’t stop there, though. Butikofer also juggled fraudulent loan payments to his attorney and cooked up a financial statement that danced around the truth during his bankruptcy. Oh, and let’s not forget his inventive H-2A worker recruitment strategy — promises of ideal housing, work conditions, and reimbursements that were all smoke and mirrors.
At no time was Butikofer or Fawn Hollow registered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a “dealer” under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. Butikofer and another individual identified as “Individual-1” did participate in the so-called “H-2A” visa program and recruited agricultural workers from the Republic of South Africa to work at Fawn Hollow.
Between July 2020 and February 2022, Butikofer converted the proceeds of sales of cattle owned by six cattle investors to his own use. Butikofer had convinced the cattle investors to allow him to sell the cattle in his own name.
When Butikofer sold the cattle to the Wisconsin slaughterhouse, Butikofer falsely represented to the slaughterhouse that he had “good and merchantable title to” the cattle when he did not, in fact, own or otherwise have title to the cattle.
By convincing the cattle investors to permit Butikofer to sell their cattle in his own name and by fraudulently concealing the true ownership of the cattle from the slaughterhouse, Butikofer attempted to evade the requirements of the Packers and Stockyards Act and its regulations for registration, posting of a dealer bond, and prompt payment, which would have protected the cattle investors’ funds.
Between July 2020 and August 2020, Butikofer defrauded the USDA of more than $200,000 in emergency assistance funds designed to assist livestock producers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, applications were submitted in the name of Individual-1 and entitled “Coronavirus Food Assistance Program” payments.
A cattle producer qualified for CFAP payments on a per head basis based on the producer’s owned inventory of eligible beef cattle on a date selected by the producer between certain dates in calendar year 2020. It was part of Butikofer’s wire fraud scheme that the CFAP applications in Individual-1’s name falsely stated that Individual-1 owned cattle when, in truth, Individual-1 did not own any cattle.
Finally, it was part of the scheme that Butikofer would intercept or otherwise gain access to the CFAP funds once the USDA provided those funds to Individual-1 and then use those CFAP funds for his own purposes.
In February 2022, Butikofer received over $1.5 million from the Small Business Administration as part of an Economic Injury Disaster Loan application. Butikofer falsely stated to the SBA that he would use the proceeds “solely as working capital to alleviate economic injury caused by” the COVID-19 pandemic. In truth, upon receiving the $1.5 million from the SBA, Butikofer used no less than $75,000 of the EIDL funds to pay an attorney known as Attorney-1 for services rendered in connection with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding that Butikofer filed on or about February 28, 2022, in In re Michael W. Butikofer et al., Case Number 22-00096, in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
In March 2022, Butikofer submitted a false and fraudulent statement of financial affairs in his bankruptcy case. In April 2022, Butikofer falsely testified under oath at a meeting of creditors and, in November 2022, repeatedly committed perjury before the bankruptcy court when asked questions about the ownership of his cattle operation.
From April 2023 to November 2023, while on federal pretrial release, Butikofer recruited and caused Individual-1 to recruit H-2A workers to the United States under false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.
The false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises included the housing conditions provided to the employees, the location of the employees’ work, the terms and timing of reimbursement for the employees’ work and expenses, and payment for injuries sustained during the employment.
Evidence at a detention hearing held on December 1 and December 4 showed that Butikofer attempted to tamper with the grand jury and trial witnesses. In 2020, a federal district court entered a default judgment against Butikofer in favor of H2A workers from the Republic of South Africa for civil violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and Trafficking Victims Protective Reauthorization Act in 2018.
As part of his plea agreement, Butikofer has agreed to voluntarily terminate and cease participation in foreign labor programs with respect to any program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor or U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Sentencing before U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Butikofer faces a possible maximum sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment, a $750,000 fine, and three years of supervised release following any imprisonment.
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Author: Heidi Crnkovic
If you look up the food trends that prevailed throughout 2023, many sources — in fact, almost all of them that I found — mentioned “climate conscious” or “eco-conscious” diet. The term “climatarian” exploded during the year.
You might wonder how one becomes a climatarian. The Climatarian Diet website states that the diet is healthy, climate and nature friendly, and if you just cut out beef and lamb altogether, you can save lots of carbon emissions a year.
Cue the eyebrow-raising.
The climatarian movement seems to have a one-track mind about meat. A climatarian’s plate is instead full of produce, nuts, grains, and plenty of plants and vegetables that contribute to soil health. Although a climatarian isn’t the same as a vegetarian or vegan, that is the way the diet often goes, as under the climatarian diet, beef and pork are poor choices since the movement claims beef and pork take more resources and emit more greenhouse gasses per unit.
This diet makes me think about a time when I was very young and my mom explained over dinner that we were eating a zero-mile meal, and we often do. Our dinners always had beef or pork that we raised and vegetables from a garden that my dad grew. If the meat on the table wasn’t raised in our backyard, it was from a neighbor or a friend — it never came from outside the county lines!
The beef and pork industries may have room to improve on their carbon footprint, but am I really contributing tons of carbon by eating beef we raised ourselves? Many sources claim that chicken is one of the “cleanest” meats for the climatarian diet, so what is worse? Buying commercial chicken, or eating zero-mile beef?
Climatarians believe that we need to be eating grains and vegetables that improve soil health, not hinder it. Typically this means long roots that aerate the soil, or legumes that fixate nitrogen. Climatarians don’t want to consume shallow rooted plants, or those that are invasive or take up too much water.
I grew up on the outskirts of the Sauerkraut Capital of the World, which means there’s a lot of cabbage grown in my dairy farm-dense hometown. Cabbage is a shallow rooted vegetable, and it takes a fair amount of water.
Yet, these cabbages play an integral role in crop rotations for local farmers. By increasing the variety of crop rotations in fields, we’re doing the soil a whole lot of good. Should I be writing off local cabbage and going for the beans from “who knows where” because they fixate nitrogen in the soil?
Reading snippets from climatarians interviewed in various articles — such as this one from The New York Times — I wonder how you can make climate smart choices just by reading a menu. Unless it’s specified, I don’t know how many miles my food options have traveled to get to my seat at the restaurant, and I also don’t know the standards that food was grown by.
In New York, we have a NYS Grown & Certified program that farmers can take part in, which puts a label on their food or fiber product stating that it was produced and processed in New York.
This local food initiative allows restaurants and stores to purchase certified NYS products to sell in New York state. This level of transparency makes it easy to be a “locavore,” which I think is the best way to start being a climatarian eater.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that being a climatarian is a great thing, and I strive to be a climatarian myself. But, I don’t agree with the mainstream definition of a diet rich in nuts and veggies and low in meat. To me, being a climatarian means cutting down on food miles and not wasting food. It also means not buying fresh produce out of season, and not consuming food that was imported to my area.
If you haven’t hopped on the climatarian bandwagon, hop on! But trust me, you’ll get sick of nuts pretty fast. Just focus on what’s local!
Elizabeth Maslyn is a born-and-raised dairy farmer from Upstate New York. Her passion for agriculture has driven her to share the stories of farmers with all consumers, and promote agriculture in everything she does. She works hard to increase food literacy in her community, and wants to share the stories of her local farmers.
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Author: Ryan Tipps
If you look up the food trends that prevailed throughout 2023, many sources — in fact, almost all of them that I found — mentioned “climate conscious” or “eco-conscious” diet. The term “climatarian” exploded during the year.
You might wonder how one becomes a climatarian. The Climatarian Diet website states that the diet is healthy, climate and nature friendly, and if you just cut out beef and lamb altogether, you can save lots of carbon emissions a year.
Cue the eyebrow-raising.
The climatarian movement seems to have a one-track mind about meat. A climatarian’s plate is instead full of produce, nuts, grains, and plenty of plants and vegetables that contribute to soil health. Although a climatarian isn’t the same as a vegetarian or vegan, that is the way the diet often goes, as under the climatarian diet, beef and pork are poor choices since the movement claims beef and pork take more resources and emit more greenhouse gasses per unit.
This diet makes me think about a time when I was very young and my mom explained over dinner that we were eating a zero-mile meal, and we often do. Our dinners always had beef or pork that we raised and vegetables from a garden that my dad grew. If the meat on the table wasn’t raised in our backyard, it was from a neighbor or a friend — it never came from outside the county lines!
The beef and pork industries may have room to improve on their carbon footprint, but am I really contributing tons of carbon by eating beef we raised ourselves? Many sources claim that chicken is one of the “cleanest” meats for the climatarian diet, so what is worse? Buying commercial chicken, or eating zero-mile beef?
Climatarians believe that we need to be eating grains and vegetables that improve soil health, not hinder it. Typically this means long roots that aerate the soil, or legumes that fixate nitrogen. Climatarians don’t want to consume shallow rooted plants, or those that are invasive or take up too much water.
I grew up on the outskirts of the Sauerkraut Capital of the World, which means there’s a lot of cabbage grown in my dairy farm-dense hometown. Cabbage is a shallow rooted vegetable, and it takes a fair amount of water.
Yet, these cabbages play an integral role in crop rotations for local farmers. By increasing the variety of crop rotations in fields, we’re doing the soil a whole lot of good. Should I be writing off local cabbage and going for the beans from “who knows where” because they fixate nitrogen in the soil?
Reading snippets from climatarians interviewed in various articles — such as this one from The New York Times — I wonder how you can make climate smart choices just by reading a menu. Unless it’s specified, I don’t know how many miles my food options have traveled to get to my seat at the restaurant, and I also don’t know the standards that food was grown by.
In New York, we have a NYS Grown & Certified program that farmers can take part in, which puts a label on their food or fiber product stating that it was produced and processed in New York.
This local food initiative allows restaurants and stores to purchase certified NYS products to sell in New York state. This level of transparency makes it easy to be a “locavore,” which I think is the best way to start being a climatarian eater.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that being a climatarian is a great thing, and I strive to be a climatarian myself. But, I don’t agree with the mainstream definition of a diet rich in nuts and veggies and low in meat. To me, being a climatarian means cutting down on food miles and not wasting food. It also means not buying fresh produce out of season, and not consuming food that was imported to my area.
If you haven’t hopped on the climatarian bandwagon, hop on! But trust me, you’ll get sick of nuts pretty fast. Just focus on what’s local!
Elizabeth Maslyn is a born-and-raised dairy farmer from Upstate New York. Her passion for agriculture has driven her to share the stories of farmers with all consumers, and promote agriculture in everything she does. She works hard to increase food literacy in her community, and wants to share the stories of her local farmers.
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Author: Ryan Tipps
It’s rarely a lose-lose situation when activists get caught in the act. While getting stuck with some jail time may prove inconvenient, it’s often a platform for martyrdom for their cause.
After days of discussion, California’s Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Laura Passaglia slapped a high-profile animal rights activist on the wrist with 90 days in jail, followed by an additional two years of probation for his trespassing and conspiracy convictions.
Wayne Hsiung, animal rights activist, lawyer, and co-founder of the group Direct Action Everywhere, was convicted in November for his extreme antics on poultry farms, and faced up to three years in jail for his convictions.
Hsiung will serve his time in the Sonoma County Jail. In an attempt to curb future actions, the judge ordered that after release, he would not be allowed within 50 yards of poultry farms. Hsiung is also prohibited from working with co-conspirators and cannot enter any animal feeding operations without permission.
All of those orders make sense … with people who abide by the law in the first place.
The charges against Hsiung came after protests at Sunrise Farms in May 2018 and Reichardt Duck Farms in June 201i.
During the protests, hundreds of animal welfare activists entered the properties and “rescued” poultry that the activists claimed were being mistreated. At Reichardt facility break-in, activists turned off machines and locked themselves to equipment.
Hsiung represented himself in court, arguing that his intentions were not criminal but aimed at raising awareness about the modern poultry industry. Passaglia disagreed, telling Hsiung that what he did was not activism, but breaking the law.
Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Robert Waner told Passaglia that the almost six-year case was not about limiting free speech or activism but reckless and dangerous behavior.
According to other sources, three additional extremists who were involved with Hsiung’s crimes were also arrested: Zoe Rosenberg, Conrad de Jesus, and Rocky Chau.
»Related: Animal welfare vs. animal rights: What’s the difference?
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Author: Heidi Crnkovic