The Center for Food Integrity (CFI) has launched “Meet America’s Farmers,” a YouTube channel of videos featuring today’s farmers. The channel was developed to offer consumers the opportunity to observe the commitment of today’s farmers to raising safe, healthy and affordable food. Individual farmers and farm organizations are invited to create their own videos for the channel, using a shared values approach to connect with consumers.

American Agri-Women (AAW) recently drafted resolutions to address issues and threats to agriculture. Representatives from this all-volunteer coalition of more than 50,000 farm, ranch and agribusiness women will deliver these resolutions to elected officials in Washington, D.C., in early June. The group’s resolutions, which are reviewed each spring, cover ag business and economics, commodities and natural resources.

USDA Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. John Clifford answers a series of questions about the newly discovered BSE case in a California dairy cow.  

The USDA confirmed on Tuesday that an “atypical case” of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, was found and confirmed in a central California dairy cow headed for a rendering plant. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said it was the nation’s fourth case of BSE, and the animal is being held under state authority and will be destroyed.

The beef industry’s aggressive push to defend finely textured lean beef in the aftermath of “pink slime” reporting is completely warranted, even if it comes a day late and a dollar short. We could certainly blame social media, slipshod reporting or an uninformed consumer base. But that would ignore a fundamental modern-day reality. The uproar over lean trimmings in ground beef shows, yet again, that a seismic shift has hit the marketplace.

Many farmers and ranchers across the country face scores of similar problems – from huge swings in commodity prices, crushing environmental concerns, tremendous weather volatility and last, but certainly not least, the remarkable task of keeping the family farming business in the family.

With the momentum of several years of rapid growth, Indian beef and veal exports in 2012 are forecast to increase 16 percent in 2012 – to 1.275 million metric tons (MT) – says the USDA. This would see India placed third on a list of the world’s largest beef exporters for 2012, behind Australia and Brazil and just ahead of the U.S. India’s cattle herd in 2012 is expected to reach a massive 324.3 million head – a long way ahead of the next largest nation, Brazil (204 million head).

Often at cattleman seminars, a speaker will sound the alarm on gastrointestinal worm resistance to anthelmintics (dewormers). Is the alarm justified? Is there a resistance problem?

For Eric Evans of Celeste, Texas, 2011 was a tough year to be a cattleman. Like most beef producers in the southern U.S., record-low rainfall levels left the Hunt County, Texas, operation low on feedstuffs and searching for answers on how to keep the bottom line in the black.