Two mayors from Maine wrote a blog piece this week in The Hill as part of a nation-wide effort to block a proposed provision in the new Farm Bill. The House and Senate passed different versions of the bill, and members of both houses (and parties) are working together in a conference committee to develop a […]
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Does the excerpt below from the September 10th issue of Politico’s Morning Agriculture e-newsletter sound familiar? It echoes sentiments on Hygeia in an “Endnote” to our August 20, 2018 post on the Lee Johnson verdict and award, which states — Endnote: The first half of August 2018 will go down in the history of pesticide use and regulation […]
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Herbicide-resistant weeds are a common topic around here, so we were interested in this new science out of Argentina identifying a new “superweed” resistant to glyphosate, dicamba, and 2,4-D. Plus, the researchers learned more about the mechanism of herbicide resistance in one of the most common weed families – the Amaranths (Amaranthus species). Farmers throughout the croplands of the […]
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Answer — What to do about dicamba? Larry Steckel is a widely respected extension weed scientist who has worked for 30+ years for the University of Tennessee. He welcomed and enjoyed the wondrous years, 1996 through about 2004, when one or two applications of Roundup worked flawlessly on almost all corn, soybean, and cotton farms. […]
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Dicamba drift is in the news again, this time with a detailed story in Reuters about a strong, unusual statement by two large seed companies that urges the EPA to end post-emergent use of dicamba. Tom Polansek’s piece details the latest in damage estimates – over 1 million acres of soybeans alone have reportedly been injured by […]
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Dr. Larry Steckel, a weed scientist from Tennessee with 30+ years experience working with farmers on pesticide issues, has written a thoughtful piece in the Delta Farm Press about the ongoing dicamba-drift crisis. Steckel is quoted in our Dicamba Watch dynamic presentation and has been an important voice throughout this crisis, now in its third year. […]
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A decades-long trend of lowering sperm counts in American men is in the news these days. The July 25, 2018 New York Times ran a lengthy story about the issue. It touches on possible causes, while reviewing the societal and personal implications of the changing spermatozoal landscape. The Times piece, authored by Nellie Bowles, is motivated […]
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Few people engaged today in the important debates over regulation of agricultural biotechnology know or remember much about the critical debates that unfolded when the gen-one wave of ag biotechnologies first hit the beach. Today, as CRISPR-driven, largely untested technology rolls on shore, attention to lessons learned in the past (but thus far unheeded) might […]
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In an in-depth piece that ran in The Oregonian and online at Oregon Live, writer Julia Rosen with High Country News tells the sorry tale of how glyphosate resistant creeping bentgrass meant for high-dollar golf courses has become a thorn in the side of high-desert farmers and ranchers along the Oregon-Washington-Idaho border. Starting in the 1990s, two […]
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Yes, you heard us right. Robotics is coming to agriculture. Companies around the world are racing to develop new tools in this rapidly growing field. China just launched a seven-year program to develop “autonomous agriculture” (Minter, 2018), and organic farmers in Australia are getting a $250,000 government grant to use robotic weeders on their organic […]
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