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| Ag Matters Online |
Monday, March 24, there will be a seminar about horse boarding and the New Jersey Sales Tax. It will be 6:30 – 8:30 at Northstar VETS, 315 Robbinsville-Allentown Rd., Robbinsville, NJ 08691
Congratulations! We finally made it! Here we are on the first day of spring. Not that this means you can go outside and plant everything you want, or that Ol’ Man Winter won’t revisit our neighborhoods. But at least there’s the sense that the end of winter is marked on our calendar!
And of course everyone knows that the first holiday of the spring season is National Ag Day, celebrated on Tuesday, March 25. What’s that? You say you’ve never heard of National Ag Day? Well, we’re about to change all that.
On February 26, 2014, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) released his proposal for tax reform. The draft lowers tax rates for individuals and businesses and broadens the tax base by eliminating over 220 tax credits, deductions and exclusions.
Farmers call them “flying rats” or “deer with wings.”
They gather by the tens of thousands every year about this time to graze on sprouting winter wheat, rye, alfalfa, and barley.
They’re voracious, persistent, and dirty, leaving behind a trail of droppings.
Canada geese.
Click here to read the rest of the story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mitchell Jones grew up knowing he wanted to be a farmer.
“I started in high school as an after-school activity,” Jones said. “I helped work on my neighbor’s farm.”
With his father working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and a grandfather in farming, it was inevitable that Jones would end up in the fields.
WASHINGTON (AP) – American agriculture has experienced a boom, with market values of crops, livestock and total agricultural products reaching record highs even as the amount of U.S. farmland declined, according to a new government survey.
Up before the sun, out in the fields all day and sometimes well into the night, tractor headlights illuminating rows of grain. West Windsor farmer Steve Jany has been doing that for 50 years.
But as if farming 1,800 acres at Rustin Farms wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Jany also devotes a significant amount of time and energy to the agriculture community, serving on a variety of boards and committees at the local and state levels.
Click here to read the rest of the story from the Trenton Times.
Held in conjunction with the New Jersey Vegetable Growers meeting, the state agricultural convention will be held February 4-6 at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.
There will be many worthwhile seminars. For a complete listing of the educational seminars, click here.
Lorraine Merrill, New Hampshire commissioner of agriculture, food and markets, expresses her view on GMO labeling in this OpEd piece in the Concord Monitor.
We hear a lot of comments and concerns from people on both sides of the debate about GMO labeling and House Bill 660, a bill that would require labeling of genetically engineered foods and agricultural commodities. And we get a lot of questions about the state Department of Agriculture’s position on the bill.
Advocates assert the public right to know what is in their food. It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. But what useful or verifiable information would the proposed labeling requirement provide? “Produced with Genetic Engineering” or “Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering” labels would merely convey the information that the food contains or may contain some ingredient from a crop that was derived through biotechnology. By whatever preferred name – biotechnology, genetic engineering, genetically modified – this describes a broad category of plant-breeding techniques. Each engineered plant variety is different – the label only identifies the use of GE, not the genetic traits or characteristics of the crop.
While workers trimmed peach trees at his Mullica Hill farm this month, Tom Holtzhauser was reluctantly mulling trims of another kind – to his workforce.
His labor costs will soar after the November passage of the constitutional amendment raising the state’s minimum wage $1 to $8.25 an hour and implementing annual cost-of-living adjustments that could increase it even more.
Click here to read the full story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
