Farmers look to switchgrass as biofuel

The Associated Press

ASHLAND, Ky. -- Two Boyd County farmers look at switchgrass and see the color green -- the money they believe they can make by converting the crop into fuel for electric power.

The Ashland Daily Independent reports Glen Young and Danny Blevins are in the second year of a pilot project to grow the native prairie species and sell it as a biofuel that could be a more environmentally friendly alternative to coal, or at least a supplement.

"That's the age-old question for a farmer: Is it practical?" said Blevins, a retired teacher, environmentalist and conservationist who grows the grass on his family farm in Boyd County. "Can you make a profit? I think you can."

Among the most dominant grasses in the prairies that once covered the central plains, switchgrass is a perennial that grows to around six feet and can be harvested once or more per year for 10 years. It can survive extreme temperature swings and drought better than most traditional crops.

One advantage, Young says, is no special equipment is needed to grow or harvest it. He plants it with the same no-till drill he uses for grain, soybeans and other grasses and maintains it with the sprayers and harvesters found in his barn.

Even on marginal land, the grass has proven reliable. Even through dryness last year and excessive rainfall this year. Young and Blevins are among 20 farmers who are growing five-acre plots of the grass under a University of Kentucky test project.

Produce industry faces many challenges

Dec 4, 2009 10:12 AM, By Paul L. Hollis, Farm Press Editorial Staff

"Demands being made on the produce supply chain include quality assurance, traceability and third-party certification, with food safety being the primary factor in all of these demands."

The challenges facing the U.S. produce industry range from labor issues to the general state of the economy and everything in between, says Tim Woods, University of Kentucky.

“We continue to see the expansion of imported produce, and the supply chain situation with the consolidation of retailers continues to be a huge driving force for the produce industry,” says Woods.

Demands being made on the produce supply chain include quality assurance, traceability and third-party certification, with food safety being the primary factor in all of these demands, he says.

“Food safety is a driving force behind a lot of these things as consumers become more aware of these issues,” says Woods.

Looking back at the 2002 Ag Census, Woods says the distribution of produce acres in the United States has changed. “During that 10-year period up to the 2002 census, a lot of produce acres shifted out of the South, with the exception of Georgia. Since 2002, we continue to see a lot of movement of the really large-scale produce acreages out of the South. And a lot of the processing has moved either to other parts of the country or moved completely out of the United States,” he says.

For much of the past 20 years, the percentage of vegetables being imported into the United States market has risen, says Woods, with most of the produce coming from Mexico and also from Canada.

“This year, more than half of our bell peppers, about half of our tomatoes, more than half of our cucumbers, and about half of our squash was imported. This leads us to ask where we will be in the next 10 years,” he says. “How will this impact the opportunities for our producers?”

The markets are changing, and the sources of supply are changing, says Woods. Despite exchange rates that were going against them, Mexico continues to have a major impact on the produce market, and it’s due to the labor situation.

In Kentucky, says Woods, growers are looking at a wider variety of marketing options for their produce. “Kentucky is not a really big produce state, but we’re seeing this shift in a diversification of market channels for produce. We have a lot of emphasis on direct markets, farmer’s markets and on-farm retailing. We’ve had a fall-off in cooperatives and a resurgent interest in wholesaling.

“We’re seeing a lot of direct-to-grocery and direct-to-restaurant sales, in addition to produce auctions. Producers are looking for innovative ways to sell their produce. This is spinning out of the renewed interest in local products for local markets that we’re now seeing not just in produce, but in a lot of food products,” he says.

Many producers, he adds, are positioning their production systems and marketing programs to try and take advantage of the current opportunities to change consumers’ preferences.

“This demand for local products is certainly a major driver in our food system today. Looking at the attributes consumers assign to the preference with respect to the different types of food items, and ‘locally grown’ is at the top of their list. Those of us in Extension are working with chefs at restaurants in trying to help the industry make better connections with our growers,” says Woods.

This same trend is being seen in the grocery industry, he says, where big retailers are trying to establish a beachhead with the local producers of the products they need.

“It’s being done to an even greater extent by the smaller, independent chains that don’t have the massive supply chains. They actually have a competitive advantage in merchandizing these local products. They’re shaking up the traditional distribution system of a lot our large retailers.”

The latest surveys, he says, show a growth in direct market sales of fresh vegetables and melons. “We’ve seen growth in farmers’ markets, agrotourism and on-farm direct marketing. We Extension folks have all we can do to provide help with the marketing programs and quality assurance programs. We’ve had new legislation in Kentucky now for a few years that allows on-farm processing. Our farmers’ markets in Kentucky are expanding, and we’re seeing other products showing up in addition to fresh produce. Farmers’ markets are reverting to the old European-style markets that were popular a century ago.”

Another interesting phenomenon in the produce market, says Woods, is the emergence of produce auctions. “This is an interesting business model from the Amish Mennonite producers. They’ve done a great job. It’s like a cattle auction where relatively small-scale producers bring in their products three or four times a week and they’re auctioned off. You have restaurant buyers and on-farm retailers looking to supplement their inventory. We provide them with price reports on the products there and quality assurance information. Another business model — the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) — is also growing in popularity.”

When producers in Kentucky and throughout the South were asked about the major challenges facing the produce industry, labor management and labor availability are at the top of the list, says Woods. “Harvest labor is a chronic problem for our produce growers. We have a lot of labor-related problems throughout the South.”

Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches

By Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Anthony DeBarros, USA TODAY

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders— KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

TOUGH, STRINGY: Old-hen meat fed to pets and schoolkids

TABLE: Fast-food safety rules trump those for school lunches

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"We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants," says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. "We are not using those same standards."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt "the highest standards" for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that "the disparity would exist no more."

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department's minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers.

Morris, who used to run the USDA office that investigates food-borne illnesses, says the department's purchases of meat that doesn't satisfy higher-end commercial standards are especially worrisome because the meat goes to schools. It's not just that children are more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses because of their fledgling immune systems; it's also because there's less assurance that school cafeteria workers will cook the meat well enough to kill any pathogens that might slip through the USDA's less stringent safety checks.

USDA-purchased meat is donated to almost every school district in the country and served to 31 million students a day, 62% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals. President Obama noted earlier this year that, for many children, school lunches are "their most nutritious meal — sometimes their only meal — of the day."

Next year, Congress will revisit the Child Nutrition Act, which governs the lunch program.

"If there are higher quality and safety standards, the government should set them," says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. "Ensuring the safety of food in schools is something we'll look at closely."

Officials with the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the USDA agency that buys meat for the school lunch program, insist that schools get top-notch products.

AMS standards for meat sent to schools have been "extremely successful in protecting against food-borne pathogens," AMS Administrator Rayne Pegg says in a written statement. She notes that AMS oversight, inspections and tests of that meat exceed those required for meat sold to the general public.

The AMS also has a "zero-tolerance" policy that requires rejection of meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, pathogens that can cause serious illness or death.

Still, after USA TODAY presented USDA officials with its findings, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack promised an independent review of testing requirements for ground beef that the AMS sends to schools. The review, set for next year, is meant "to ensure the food served to our school children is as safe as possible," Vilsack says in a statement.

Tougher standards for school meat would better protect students, experts say. Today's AMS program "is a sort of snapshot of the way things were in (2000), whereas the industry has continued to clamp down," says James Marsden, a Kansas State University professor who advises the meat industry on safety. "It needs to be modernized."

The difference

USA TODAY examined about 150,000 tests on beef purchased by the AMS for the school lunch program. The agency buys more than 100 million pounds of beef a year for schools, and the vast majority of it would satisfy the standards of most commercial buyers. But USA TODAY also found cases in which the agency bought meat that retailers and fast-food chains would have rejected.

Like the AMS, many big commercial buyers reject meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7. But many fast-food chains and premium retailers set tougher limits than the AMS on so-called indicator bacteria. Although not necessarily dangerous themselves, high levels of the bacteria can suggest an increased likelihood that meat may have pathogens that tests might miss.

From 2005 to this year, the AMS purchased six orders of ground beef that exceeded the limits some commercial buyers set for indicator bacteria. The meat came from five companies: Beef Packers of Fresno, which filled two of the orders; Skylark Meats of Omaha; Duerson Foods of Pleasant Prairie, Wis.; N'Genuity Enterprises of Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Palo Duro Meat Processing of Amarillo, Texas.

Palo Duro is the largest provider of ground beef to schools. Beef Packers is one of the most troubled; it has been suspended as an AMS supplier three times, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called this week for the plant to be closed temporarily in the wake of two recalls.

From late November 2008 through January this year, the AMS bought nearly 500,000 pounds of ground beef from Beef Packers and Skylark with unusually high levels of an indicator bacteria known as "generic E. coli." The organism is considered an indicator of whether potential contaminants from the intestines of cattle have gotten into slaughtered meat — a source of the far more dangerous E. coli O157:H7.

The indicator bacteria are measured in CFUs, or colony-forming units. Jack in the Box, which pioneered many of the safety standards now used across the fast-food industry, won't accept beef with generic E. coli levels of more than 100 CFUs per gram. The AMS, on the other hand, will buy beef for the school lunch program with generic E. coli counts of up to 1,000 CFUs per gram — 10 times the Jack in the Box limit.

"That's a significant difference," says Marsden, the professor and beef industry adviser.

The shipments of beef that the AMS bought a year ago had generic E. coli levels up to four times higher than what Jack in the Box would accept. "Most higher-end companies certainly would reject that," Marsden says. Those bacteria levels "would be a yellow light (that) something's not right."

E. coli isn't the only indicator bacteria that the AMS allows at higher levels. The government also accepts beef with more than double the limit set by many fast-food chains for total coliform, which is used to assess whether a beef producer is minimizing fecal contamination in its meat.

"We look at those (measures) to gauge how a supplier is doing," says David Theno, who developed the safety program at Jack in the Box before retiring last year. If shipments regularly exceed the company's limits on indicator bacteria, "we'd stop doing business with them," he says.

AMS officials say the differences between the agency's bacteria limits and those of private industry are inconsequential. They note that there isn't even a requirement that beef sold in a typical grocery store has to be tested for the organisms.

"We remain confident, based upon past benchmarking activities, that our testing and standards are similar to or exceed those of most major large volume buyers," AMS chief Pegg says.

Suspect samples

The biggest disparity between the AMS and other big buyers of ground beef may not be in the levels of bacteria they allow but in the effort they make to detect such contamination.

On a given manufacturing day, AMS workers testing ground beef bound for schools sample the meat eight times, regardless of how long the production lines are running. Those samples are combined into a single composite sample for testing.

Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King and other more selective buyers sample the ground beef on their production lines every 15 minutes. Some, such as Jack in the Box, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every hour during the production run. Others, such as McDonald's and Burger King, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every two hours.

That means Jack in the Box would test at least 10 composite samples during a typical 10-hour production run, which could yield 100,000 pounds or more of ground beef. The AMS would test just one sample for the entire 100,000-pound run.

The AMS approach to sampling "is not robust enough to find anything," says Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle-based food safety consultant and microbiologist.

Fast-food chains aren't the only ones with better sampling. Other beef buyers, such as Costco and afa Foods, a Pennsylvania firm that supplies beef to restaurants, use similar programs.

AMS officials say the agency accounts for less frequent sampling by being more aggressive in rejecting meat that fails to meet its standards. When a test shows salmonella, for instance, the AMS rejects all the meat produced by that supplier during that production run — tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But the AMS approach doesn't resonate with some scientists.

"AMS is saying once they detect, they take drastic action," says Ewen Todd, a professor at Michigan State University, "but if they are less likely to detect, the risk is still higher."

Adds Theno: "If you do more sampling and you do it on smaller lots, you have a better chance of finding problems."

Theno helped pioneer the sampling and testing standards now used widely in the fast-food world after he arrived at Jack in the Box in the wake of the industry's most notorious safety lapse.

In 1993, an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 at Jack in the Box restaurants left hundreds sick and four children dead. Victims, most from the West, won more than $50 million from the company and its suppliers. Reverberations from the event rippled across the fast-food industry.

In the aftermath, Theno says, Jack in the Box asked him to build a food safety program that would "set a new (industry) standard."

Today, most fast-food companies and premium grocery chains have safety programs built on the same pillars Theno set up at Jack in the Box: frequent sampling requirements, tight limits on indicator bacteria, and zero tolerance for dangerous pathogens.

Food safety officials from fast-food chains and other big beef buyers share ideas and information about their programs, says Dane Bernard, vice president for food safety at Keystone Foods, a ground beef supplier to McDonald's. "Our testing programs are constantly evolving. We watch the science closely."

Raising the bar

The AMS could "very easily" raise the standards for federally purchased school lunch meat, says Barry Carpenter, a former AMS official who helped set up the current sampling and testing requirements in 2000. "If I was still at AMS, I'd say, 'Where are we (with today's rules) and where do we need to tighten them?' "

Carpenter, now head of the National Meat Association, notes that raising AMS standards "wouldn't cost much," and it would help combat perceptions that the school lunch program is "a market of last resort" for meat that can't pass muster with commercial buyers.

That perception could be reinforced by the reality of how AMS makes its purchasing decision: Contracts go to the lowest qualified bidders. Orders are placed on a computer system that can be accessed by all of the agency's suppliers — those certified as able to meet the special sampling and testing requirements set for school lunch food. When an order is placed, suppliers enter bids into the system, and the computer automatically awards contracts to low bidders.

Industry experts say tougher standards would not significantly add to the agency's costs for school meat. Theno says the safety requirements set by Jack in the Box added less than a penny a pound to its beef costs. Other big buyers outside the school program say it's a worthwhile investment in safety.

"It's not about transactional cost; it's about value," says Justin Malvick, a vice president at Keystone, the McDonald's supplier.

Carpenter says the meat industry that he now represents would have no problem with a decision to modernize — and toughen — AMS standards for school lunch meat.

Most major beef suppliers and processors already have procedures in place to ensure that their products can satisfy the tougher sampling and testing requirements set by many commercial buyers, he adds. If the AMS followed, he says, "I don't think the industry would have any hiccup at all."

Some lawmakers say a change is overdue. "Why are we even looking at giving (schools) … food that wouldn't be accepted by a restaurant?," asks Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. "That's absolutely crazy."

Contributing: Elizabeth Weise

Berry Urges Need for Local Economies of Farming and Forestry

Berry Urges Need for Local Economies of Farming and Forestry

December 7, 2009 — Speaking at the University of Virginia on Dec. 3, Wendell Berry, a poet and writer with a small farm in Kentucky, decried the industrialization of farming, forestry and mining that he said has damaged land and forest ecosystems and destroyed communities. He warned the present industrial systems cannot last.

An overflow crowd of more than 200 filled the auditorium of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature and Culture/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library to hear Berry's lecture, "Simple Solutions, Package Deals and a 50-Year Farm Bill." An estimated 200 more outside the library had to be turned away.

"Land, water and air cannot be healthful apart from a healthful human economy," said Berry, the author of more than 40 books, from poetry to essays on environmental topics such as the local food movement.

"It is becoming harder to remember – especially, it seems, for most economists – that our lives depend upon the economies of land use, and that the land-using economies depend, in turn, on the ecosphere."

He argued that too often we look for simple solutions instead of thinking about the consequences of choices.

"We like to believe that all choices are simple, as between an obvious good and an obvious evil. ... But in the economies of land use there are no simple choices and consequences that do not ramify perhaps endlessly," he said.

"The same interests and forces that have brought about our centralized, long-distance agricultural economy have also brought about a centralized, long-distance forest economy. The economic principle is everywhere the same: a domestic colonialism that extracts an immense wealth from our rural landscapes, returning as near nothing as possible ... or worse than nothing," said Berry, whose visit was sponsored by the Brown College Visiting Environmental Writers and Scholars Lecture Series.

Money doesn't produce goods, and consumption is not "as vital an economic activity as production," he said.

"We tolerate fabulous capitalists who think a bet on a debt is an asset."

Recent changes toward local economies are taking place because of individuals' and communities' decisions, not from top political leadership, Wall Street or the media, he noted.

"Given the growing demand for local food, and the increasing numbers of farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture farms, it is becoming possible to imagine the development of local farm and food economies in which communities and localities produce, process, market and consume local farm products, marketing any surpluses to outside demand," he said.

When communities primarily export local raw materials, they lose the jobs that would go with manufacturing the raw materials. It forces young people to move to where the jobs are, hence destroying the communities, he said.

He also pointed out that making the economy local would make it diverse. People would establish small businesses to take care of local needs, including those of farmers.

"If we attempt to make our versatile landscapes as responsive as possible to the diversity of local needs, then we would be solving, not one, but many problems," he said, mentioning the agrarian ideal of Thomas Jefferson.

Local economies promise "not luxury or extravagance for a few, but a modest, decent, sustainable prosperity for many. I doubt it would produce one billionaire," he said.

"We don't have to be consenting victims of agribusiness-as-usual," Berry said, describing a plan the Land Institute has proposed to the U.S. secretary of agriculture: a 50-year farm bill. The proposal would help restore health to the soil and land, and eventually farm communities, by increasing the acreage of perennial plants to produce pastures, forage crops and, in 10 years, grain crops.

Replacing annual monoculture farming of crops like corn and soybeans with perennial grasses and legumes would make the soil healthier, he said.

"It would take cattle, hogs and poultry out of the animal factories and put them back on farms, where they belong," Berry said. "Diversification would tend to reduce the size and increase the number of farms; it would bring more people into agriculture, where at least some of them belong."

He said he worried about how to get more people – "skilled in physical work, who have workable minds" – to choose farming and living in small communities. He would not want to see continued dependence on migrant workers. The "settled families" in communities should include "people of any race or origin who are willing to accept the actual responsibilities and do the actual work that go with the ownership and good use of land. The people who do the land's work should own the land."

The Brown College spring lineup of writers includes: Michael Lundblad (Feb. 4), an assistant professor of English at Colorado State University and director of animality studies, an interdisciplinary approach to studying the animal nature of humans and the cultural and literary treatment of animals; Rebecca Solnit (Feb. 23-26), a contributing editor at Orion Magazine and best-selling author of 10 books of essays, among them her latest, "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster"; and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder (April 13-14), whose writing blends nature, America's native past and Zen Buddhism.

— By Anne Bromley

Kentucky agriculture takes hit from recession

By BRUCE SCHREINER (AP) – 15 hours ago

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky's slumping horse industry appears on pace to be overtaken by poultry farming as the king of the state's agricultural sector, economists said Thursday.

In a state where horses are a mainstay of the cultural and economic lifeblood, the new top perch for chickens in the pecking order of Kentucky agriculture once seemed unlikely.

But the equine sector has been battered by deep recession, and the poultry industry has enjoyed years of steady growth. As a result, University of Kentucky agricultural economist Lee Meyer predicted that receipts from the poultry sector this year would outpace those from the horse industry by about $180 million.

Meyer said that poultry production, concentrated in western Kentucky, is expected to generate about $930 million in receipts this year. The equine sector is projected to generate about $750 million this year, down from a 2007 figure that exceeded $1.1 billion, he added.

That projection was seen by former Gov. Brereton Jones, owner of a Kentucky horse farm, as further proof that the state's horse industry is in decline and needs a boost.

"You can go anyplace around the world and tell people you're from Kentucky, and the first thing they want to talk about is the Kentucky Derby and the thoroughbred industry," he said. "We risk losing that if everybody refuses to pay attention."

Jones supports expanding gambling at Kentucky's horse racing tracks. A measure to allow video slot machines at tracks passed the Kentucky House but died in a Senate committee during this year's special session.

Thoroughbred sales and breeding stud fees are the two main income sources for the industry, but have taken a big hit from the global recession, UK economists said at a news conference Thursday that coincided with the Kentucky Farm Bureau's annual convention in Louisville.

Sale prices at the major thoroughbred auctions at Keeneland continued a downward spiral this year, especially at its premier yearling sale in September, where totals were down 41 percent from a year earlier. Results weren't quite as bad at November's breeding stock sale, which saw a 14 percent drop from 2008, but that sale was helped by a dispersal of 148 horses from the great Kentucky breeding operation Overbrook Farm.

Several prominent Kentucky horse farms also reported declines in the stud fees they charge for a live foal. Lane's End Farm announced it was cutting A.P. Indy's fee from $250,000 to $150,000. There are also major drops in stud fees for other top stallions, including Distorted Humor and Giant's Causeway.

The weak economy also has hurt demand for recreational and show horses, the economists said.

Poultry production, meanwhile, has been growing for years in Kentucky.

In 2001, poultry receipts totaled about $260 million but had doubled by 2003 and mushroomed to $918 million in 2008. Meyer projected poultry receipts of $976 million in 2010.

"I can't imagine a scenario where horses would come back to predominance for three years," he said.

The poultry sector has benefited from strong consumer demand, solid exports and the popularity of chicken products at fast-food restaurants, Meyer said.

"Usually you increase supply, prices come down," he said. "But if demand truly increases from a preference perspective, then you can have higher prices and higher production. And that's what happened."

He predicted that Kentucky equine receipts will reach an estimated $807 million in 2010.

Jones said those figures don't include the considerable tourist dollars generated by the horse industry.

"You don't get those tourism dollars from the chicken industry," he said in an interview. "If you counted all the dollars, I think the horse industry would still be ahead."

Longtime breeder Arthur Hancock, owner of Stone Farm in central Kentucky, said the horse industry faces a supply-and-demand problem.

"We don't need to be breeding so many horses," he said in an interview. "There are too many horses for the number of buyers out there."

Still, the horse industry has a special allure, Hancock said.

"Nobody's going to come to the state to see chickens. We're still a wonderful industry with a lot of beautiful farms, and we're going through some tough times."

Kenny Burdine, another UK ag economist, said the horse industry "tends to be much more cyclical with the economy" than the poultry industry. That offers hope for an eventual resurgence for equine interests, he said.

Burdine said equine receipts, once the economy bounces back, will probably approach their levels in 2007 and 2008.

Economists said that Kentucky's overall agricultural economy, which reached a historic high in cash receipts last year, appears on track for a drop in 2009 receipts due to the deep recession.

UK ag economist Craig Infanger predicted that Kentucky agriculture will produce nearly $4.3 billion in cash receipts in 2009, down from $4.8 billion the year before but on pace with the five-year average.

"That has obvious implication for the bottom line for a lot of farms in Kentucky and for the general economy," he said.

Farmers were hurt by big drops in prices for major commodities this year as well as declines in ag exports, Infanger said. Kentucky's net farm income for 2009 is estimated to be nearly $1.1 billion, down from $1.5 billion in 2008.

Infanger predicted Kentucky farm cash receipts in 2010 in the range of $4.1 billion to $4.5 billion.

Associated Press Writer Jeffrey McMurray in the Lexington, Ky., bureau contributed to this report.

Family Farmers Call on Congress, USDA to Take Immediate Action on the Dairy Crisis

Farmers urge lawmakers to establish fair and competitive pricing system

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 100 dairy farmers from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee traveled to Washington, D.C., yesterday to meet with congressional representatives and other officials to present solutions that would end the worst dairy crisis to hit America's family dairy farmers since the Great Depression.

Dairy farmers met with members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Education and Labor Committee and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to urge immediate action to restore fairness in the dairy pricing system, enforce anti-trust laws and ensure that dairy farmers receive a fair price for their product and consumers have access to quality milk. Dairy farmers also called on the USDA to quickly distribute emergency assistance aid that was authorized by Congress and President Obama under the 2010 Agriculture Appropriations Bill in October.

Debbie Windecker, a dairy farmer from Frankfort, N.Y., and a member of United States Dairy Farmers and Friends, traveled overnight to participate in yesterday's meetings. "We want to know why there is such a large disparity between the price consumers pay for milk and the price paid to farmers -- except for the processors in the middle, we are all losing," said Windecker. "Dairy farmers have a message for the politicians who represent people living in rural areas and in urban areas. No matter where we come from we have a lot in common: We all eat and this crisis affects all of us."

Nationwide, the average cost of production is about $18.00 per hundredweight, far below the average $10.78 per hundredweight dairy farmers received in the first 10 months of 2009. For more than a year, America's dairy farmers have effectively paid to go to work, at times losing as much as $200 per cow per month. As a result, many farmers are facing record debts and many have either sold their herds or have been forced to leave the dairy business entirely.

"Our nation's dairy farmers have headed to Washington, D.C., not to beg for handouts, but to demand justice and overhaul a broken milk pricing system," said Joel Greeno, a dairy farmer from Kendall, Wis. "Yet too few will make the trip; a year of absolutely deplorable milk prices has left many with no financial resources to travel. Or like me, they're not able to find anyone to milk the cows and do the chores while they're gone. I want Congress to know that these farmers who were able to make the trip represent us all."

Farmers unable to travel to D.C. have committed to meet with their representatives in their home districts later this month when Congress adjourns for 2009.

Since the start of 2009, Farm Aid, along with the National Family Farm Coalition and other farmer organizations, has called attention to the dairy crisis, advocating for dairy pricing reform and anti-trust investigation. Farm Aid has met with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, delivering petitions signed by more than 13,000 consumers and farmers calling for the USDA to establish a floor price for milk that covers farmers' cost of production. Farm Aid also has made emergency assistance funds available to dairy farmers and has offered support to dairy farmers organizing local rallies to inform consumers and legislators about the impact that losing the country's remaining 60,000 dairy farmers will have on the U.S.

"The question being asked by these farmers, on behalf of all of us, is whether we are going to have a food system that allows a level playing field for family farmers and consumers or a system of increased consolidation that puts more power into the hands of powerful corporations," said Carolyn Mugar, executive director of Farm Aid. "Dairy farmers don't want a bailout -- they simply seek a fair and competitive pricing system that allows them to stay on the land and support their families, while producing safe, fresh milk and dairy products for all of us."

Farm Aid's mission is to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews host an annual concert to raise funds to support Farm Aid's work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family-farmed food. Since 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $36 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.

SOURCE Farm Aid

Find this article at: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/family-farmers-call-on-congress-usda-to-take-immediate-action-on-the-dairy-crisis-78400222.html

Kentucky no longer 'Sheepish' about Goats

from Business Lexington

by Tim Thornberry

December 01, 2009

FRANKFORT, KY. – In a state known for its tobacco and cattle, sheep and goat production is proving to be a viable option for farmers and has Kentucky emerging as a leader in the two industries. And many are beginning to take notice. Gov. Steve Beshear signed a proclamation declaring last October as Sheep and Goat Month. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, Kentucky producers raised 91,227 goats on 4,808 farms and 36,996 sheep on 1,436 farms. In September, the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board took note and approved $85,000 in state Agricultural Development Funds for the Kentucky Sheep & Goat Development Office. The money will be used for continuing services of the education, promotion, and marketing needs of Kentucky’s sheep and goat producers. The office opened in 2007.

“I am committed to creating opportunities that will make Kentucky’s agricultural community stronger,” said Beshear. “Projects like the Kentucky Sheep & Goat Development Office, supported by the Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund, play an integral role in achieving this goal.”

Ray Bowman, executive director of the office said the funds will put the organization in a position to continue to educate and promote the sheep and goat industry, while implementing new programs for our producers.

“It also allows us to continue work toward creating a self-sustaining entity, which we were challenged to do by the Board when we received the original grant," he said.

Bowman added that the office is currently handling the administrative arm of the American Goat Federation as well.

"It dovetails very neatly with what we do and we think that has a tremendous amount of possibilities in helping us not just sustain ourselves but possibly expand our organization," he said.

The industry is also getting attention through a weekly broadcast on America’s Web Radio. The program showcases the goat and sheep business through a variety of guests telling of their ventures with the animals.

It is the dedicated producers throughout the state that are at the heart of the growing ag industry. Kathy Meyer is one of those producers. In fact, the Bourbon County farmer has been in the lamb business for about 30 years.

Meyer, who serves as president of the Kentucky Sheep and Wool Producers Association said Kentucky is only one of six states in the U.S. that has seen a growth in sheep numbers.

“This is so because of a large number of people looking for alternative ways of making money on the farm besides growing tobacco and a lot of the ag development funds going toward programs to help you get into small ruminant production,” she said.

Meyer added that this part of the country is well suited for lamb and goat production rather than crops and in some cases cattle production. She also said the capital investment for sheep or goats is much less than for cattle.

With the growth of both industries in Kentucky, producers recently voted in favor of a check-off program to help with the growing need for such initiatives as research and marketing.

Bowman said this funding will help replace other revenue streams that have dried up.

“I think this is important because conventional sources of funding that we have seen in the past are continuing to dry up because of the economy. Those funding sources from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA) and the universities are going away,” he said. “If we are not willing to take care of ourselves then no body else should be expected to. This industry is growing and expanding and to keep it doing we’re going to have to spend some money on research, on promotion and on various other things.”

According to information from the KDA, in separate referenda held Oct. 1 in county Extension offices throughout the Commonwealth, goat producers approved check-offs by a 75-41 vote, and sheep producers approved by a 32-12 count.

The check-offs will be assessed at a rate of one-half of one percent (.50 percent) of the net market price of their animals and collection of funds will be mandatory, but reimbursement of funds paid will be an option to the producer.

The Kentucky Sheep and Wool Producers Association and the Kentucky Goat Producers Association will administer the funds.

Meyer said the time is right for the check-off noting that much of the work is already being done. The check-off dollars however will supply sustainability for what has been accomplished.

“There is better goat and sheep marketing in Kentucky than any state around us. We didn’t particularly have a lot of money to fund it,” she said. “Other states look at our infrastructure as a way of how things ought to be. Before this check-off program, we really never had a way of sustaining it. I think now we will improve on an already established organization.”

Meyer emphasized that most of the work associated with the program will be done by a volunteer board and no salaries will come out of check-off dollars.

A date has yet to be set for when collection of check-off funds will begin but Bowman said he hopes to have something in place by January.

For more information about the Kentucky Sheep & Goat Development Office, visit www.kysheepandgoat.org or contact Ray Bowman at (502) 352-2434 or info@kysheep.org.