Farm labor wages have increased over the past year, according to the recent USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service in a report released May 30, 2019. 

Hoping to head off a “rapidly emerging forage crisis for livestock farmers across the Midwest,” a multistate coalition of agricultural organizations submitted a written request to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, June 6, seeking approval for emergency provisions allowing the planting and harvesting of forages on prevented plant acres without date restrictions.

Joy Hendrix has returned to Progressive Publishing full time to serve as an editor for Progressive Forage.

The National Alfalfa & Forage Alliance (NAFA) recently held a conference call with Class III hay associations, during which members moved that NAFA request alfalfa be included in the USDA aid package as a result of tariff issues. (They asked to be included in the first aid package and were not.) A key element was the need to easily identify alfalfa farmers – NAFA indicated the use of Farm Service Agency (FSA) records would be satisfactory.

Progressive Publishing welcomes Madison Anderson to the editorial team for the summer. She will be working with the Progressive Forage and Ag Proud editorial teams, writing feature stories and news articles.

When you don’t want to move, you don’t want to move. That’s the message being sent to Secretary Perdue and the leadership of the USDA by employees of the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), who recently voted to unionize 138-4.

What we still don’t know, is how much alfalfa suffered winterkill. (What we hear, is it could be 50% to 70% from the Midwest through the northeastern U.S.) 

U.S. farmers continue to replace tractors even as they face long-term uncertainty with reinvestments in their operations, according to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).

Hay inventories stored on farms as of May 1 were the lowest total for that date since 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Crop Production report, released May 10.