Free Republic

My family is in urgent need of prayers. Our landlord unexpectly sold the farm we had been renting with an eye toward rent-to-own. New owner will not even speak to us. Wants us out of his new weekend retreat before January 3. No compromise. He is completely within his legal rights to do this, btw. I am talking about 7 people, including 2 preschoolers, becoming homeless on a Kentucky Appalachian mountaintop in January. We have a cow ready to calve any day now, 3 horses, and farming hand tools we have been gathering for several years. If we and our...

BOSTON (CBS) — As soon as next summer, nuggets and other popular chicken products could be made with chicken processed in China, all because of a recent change in regulations. “Oh, it makes me a little nervous,” says mother of two, Katrina Lee. China has a long history of serving up unsafe food, including the industrial chemical melamine that was deliberately put in pet food and infant formula. There were also cases of tainted rat meat passed off as lamb. “To me it’s a big leap of faith for us to now have to accept that foods coming from china...

Obama Steals Food From The Poor To Pay For Michele’s ‘Let’s Move’ Program Posted 6 hours ago by Dave Jolly Filed under Entitlements, Ethics, Government Spending, Liberalism, Politics Millions of food stamp recipients are finding their government supplement smaller this month. The federal government made sizeable cuts to the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) otherwise known as food stamps. This cut will affect 47.6 million Americans or about 1 out of every 6 people. Under the new guidelines, a family of 4 will see their food stamps drop from $668 a month to $632 a month. While $36 dollars doesn’t...

Due to the buying spree in rural land, how much farmland has India lost? According to the ministry of agriculture, almost none. It says India lost 16,000 sq km, or 0.8% of her gross cropped area, in the 10-year period to 2010-11. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), in fact, says land under cultivation stayed constant in the last 10 years. Another number comes from the Census Department, which says area under urban use jumped by 24,000 sq km during the same period. Much of this would have been at the expense of rural land. "As cities grow, agricultural area...

AKITA – A new company aiming to mediate between rice producers, mass merchants and consumers was established Monday, led by agricultural corporations in Akita Prefecture and the city of Sendai. The move is part of efforts to prepare for rapid changes in the competitive environment for agriculture, including Japan’s participation in Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks and the planned abolition of rice production adjustments in five years. The new firm is based in the village of Ogata, Akita Prefecture. It was chiefly founded by Ogatamura Akitakomachi Seisansha Kyokai, an Ogata firm selling rice online to individual customers nationwide, and Butai...

The government plans to draw up guidelines to tackle dishonest menus and food labels that have been used by many hotels, restaurants and department stores across Japan. At a meeting Monday of officials from relevant agencies, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga asked for effective measures to ensure suitable representations of dishes and food products at such locations. The government will work out guidelines under the law against unjustified premiums and misleading representations, Suga said, urging the agencies to make sure inappropriate representations are corrected as soon as they are discovered. The dishonest labeling issue “could fundamentally undermine consumer trust in...

(Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund called on Thailand to scrap its pricy scheme to support rice farmers and scale back some other fiscal stimulus measures in order to balance the budget and contain rising public debt. In its annual review of Thailand's economy, the IMF also said the government should do a better job of supervising public banks and non-bank financial institutions, which pose growing financial risks. As Thailand continues to face risks from volatile capital flows and an uncertain global environment, the government should ensure it has enough money to respond to shocks, the IMF said, according to...

Daylight Saving Time, or DST, is a brilliant campaign to convince us that we’re getting more daylight each day, when in reality we’ve simply changed our clocks and then forgotten about it within two weeks. DST begins each year at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March in most of the United States and its territories, however there are some places that have not bought into this campaign: it is not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the city of South Bend, Indiana nor the state of Arizona except for the Navajo Indian Reservation,...

Mitch McConnell for Pres. 2016 and General of Counter-Terrorism for VP. I thought you would be interested in this story I found on news.msn.com: US ambassador summoned by Germany over NSA spying ( http://news.msn.com/world/us-ambassador-summoned-by-germany-over-nsa-spying#tscptme, ) Wait a second? Didn’t Snowden first go to China? Where China and their reverse-technology, was granted the rights to reproduce the Grundig SW radio? I hear people in American jails, know how to increase the band-with of small transistor radio’s. What could China do with a Grundig or cell phone, like the Samsung knock-off. Now didn’t Germany discredit our secrets, as found in the German...

Inclusive growth is what the Philippines needs. Most of the poor who are left behind in economic growth are in the countryside. They are the coconut farmers, small fishers, upland dwellers and landless farm workers. This article discusses the Malaysian experience in rural poverty reduction from the 1960s to the 1990s. Specifically, it focuses on two development models: the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda); and the Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (Felcra). Philippine experts confuse Felda and Felcra, and the two with the nucleus estate model of Indonesia. Let’s clarify the main difference: Felda develops government forest lands for...

Former Australian cattle station manager Michael Sheehy has some singular advice for the Indonesian government if it wants to achieve self-sufficiency in beef: Follow the model of the booming palm oil industry and put cattle raising in corporate hands. As with most of Indonesia's agriculture, the livestock industry is largely confined to low- technology operations - backyard feedlots that mean a higher cost of production and higher prices for consumers as a result. The Indonesian government has used tariffs and quotas to protect local farmers from international competition. This is a short-term measure which, judging by the current beef price...

So I am thinking of simply leaving the job I work at now and heading to a Southern state, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Northern Florida, Tennessee, etc since I figure that, since I am one of those who does not have a reliable source of family aid of any kind, that this could be my only option. I am considering finding a church that has a sort of communal living situation, a farm, ranch, factory or other such source that could use additional workers and join one of them. I am thinking of it in light of a situation...

Katelyn Fossett / Foreign PolicyYou may not have heard of Gennady Onishchenko, but if his own accounts are to be believed, he’s the Russian government official who single-handedly averts major public health crises posed by foreign countries’ dangerously lax and unsophisticated food safety standards (including those in a certain country where the federal government has ground to a halt). To others, Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector, is also Russia’s chief manufacturer of elaborate food safety scares to wage geopolitically motivated trade wars with other countries, particularly former Soviet republics. On Wednesday, Onishchenko, the director of Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer-protection agency, announced...

The Yomiuri ShimbunThe government and ruling parties have started to consider scrapping tariffs on imported wine, an idea that would, in turn, call on other negotiators in the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks to eliminate tariffs on sake, government sources said. The move suggests that the government and ruling parties believe the mutual removal of tariffs would greatly benefit domestic consumers while also increasing sake exports from Japan, according to the sources. The idea to eliminate tariffs on wine was a Japanese response to a request made by Australia and New Zealand, the sources said. The government and the...

Authorities in Moscow are on high alert in the city's downtown core, following mass demonstrations there on Sunday. Over 200 people have been arrested after rioting broke out south of the Kremlin complex. Earlier in the day on Sunday, angry demonstrators stormed a vegetable market in the area, searching for the person they believe is responsible for a murder. When police showed up to try to restore order, demonstrators eventually turned on police. Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev is vowing to restore order. "Literally tomorrow, activate the work in relation to all of the vegetable warehouses, which are a constant...

(Reuters) - First it was sex, then casinos. Now, a Singapore diplomat has been charged with inflating the number of pineapple tarts and bottles of wine carried on official visits in the latest corruption case to hit the squeaky clean city-state. Lim Cheng Hoe, former chief of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, allegedly overbilled authorities by around S$89,000 ($71,100) by overstating the amount of gifts bought for official purposes between 2008 and 2012. Lim faces 60 charges and could be jailed for up to three years on each charge if found guilty. Singapore, a wealthy Asian finance and...

The country's transport minister is expected to formally agree the barter deal with Chinese premier Li Keqiang on Friday, according to the Nation. The project to link Bangkok with Nong Khai, close to the Laos border, is part of a proposed 2m baht ($30bn, £19bn) infrastructure investment programme to part-financed with agricultural products. The railway is one day envisaged to link Thailand with the Southern Chinese province of Kunming, via the Laos capital Vientiane. However, fine details remain to be thrashed out between the countries. The Bangkok Post says even the transport minister isn't optimistic of the scheme's success. It...

SEOUL/CHICAGO Oct 9 (Reuters) - South Korea has suspended some U.S. beef imports after detecting the cattle feed additive zilpaterol in meat supplied by a unit of JBS USA Holdings Inc , raising concerns that the controversial animal growth enhancer may still be in the supply chain weeks after Merck & Co halted sales of Zilmax, the top-selling zilpaterol-based drug. The South Korean claim of zilpaterol-tainted beef is the first to come to light since Merck suspended sales of Zilmax on Aug. 16 amidst concerns about its impact on the health of cattle. It also comes at a time when...

ost people think that Springtime is the time to start growing that vegetable or herb garden. But there are many types of plants that should mainly be grown during the cooler months. Fall is a great time to try your hand at growing leafy greens, and that makes this a great way to save some money on produce. If you end up with a good harvest, you'll have a bountiful source of vegetables while other people are paying higher prices for greens at the grocery store. Here are 6 cooler weather plants you may want to try your hand at...

Ningxia has also become a wine hub in China and, increasingly, wine experts are coming around to the idea of Chinese wine. In December 2011, a panel of 10 wine experts found, in a blind tasting, that of a total of 10 wines made in Ningxia and Bordeaux in France, four out of the top five were Ningxia reds. Ningxia is home to some of the country’s top wineries and they are really make an impact, including Helan Qing Xue and Silver Heights, while the Shanxi-based Grace Vineyard has wineries in Ningxia. “Grape planting is now our main income,” said...