Free Republic

North Dakota’s hog and dairy industries are hoping voters will bless state lawmakers’ decision to allow non-family corporations to own operations, but it could be a tough sell in a state that has safeguarded its family farming heritage for nearly a century. Up for vote in the June 14 election is whether to uphold the 2015 Legislature’s move to loosen North Dakota’s corporate farming ban, which has tried to keep crop and pasture in the hands of small-operation farmers and away from large out-of-state businesses that some believe might have little regard for the land. “Family farming agriculture has delivered...

Net income for farmers is expected to fall by nearly 32 percent this year as corn and soybean prices remain low and expenses creep higher, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report. While some farmers renting land at higher prices will find it an unprofitable year, the statistics are not as dire as they may sound for farmers in general, since just two years ago income was at a record high, farm economists said. "It's neither happy times nor is the sky falling in terms of agriculture incomes," said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of...

From our fields to our forks, huge corporations have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply every step of the way. Right now there are more than 313 million people living in the United States, and the job of feeding all of those people is almost entirely in the hands of just a few dozen monolithic companies. If you do not like how our food is produced or you don't believe that it is healthy enough, it isn't very hard to figure out who is to blame. These mammoth corporations are not in business to look out for...

Ron Stidmon sells more than 20 varieties of garlic and grows about 40 on the Darlington Township farm he purchased with his wife, Rosemary, in 2003. They left behind white-collar jobs and a condo in New York after re-evaluating their priorities. Ron worked as an executive coach and consultant. Rosemary was a manager in the securities division of JPMorgan. The decision was prompted in part by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Ron lost one of his best friends that day. In Cleveland for a business venture at the time, he had trouble getting in touch with Rosemary and had to...

Almost 80 percent of the Senate’s proposed farm bill — a $955 billion measure — will be used to pay for food stamps in the coming decade. “The trillion-dollar farm and food stamp bill should not be called the ‘Farm Bill,” said Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham, to Breitbart. “Washington doesn’t want Americans to know that 80 percent of the spending in the bill goes to fund Obama’s big-government, food stamp agenda.” As for the remaining 20 percent? That goes for price supports for farmers — an “equally disturbing” federal disbursement, Mr. Needham said, in the Breitbart report....

New legislation that jumps the death tax to 55 percent of estates exceeding $1 million threatens 526,421 family farms, of about 25 percent of all farms in America. ... Farm values are largely tied up in non-liquid assets like land, buildings, and livestock. Many farm and ranch families would be forced to sell their assets to satisfy Washington Democrats' insatiable appetite for tax money. Up to 24 percent of America's farm and ranch families could be forced to hand over a large chunk of their heritage to the Internal Revenue Service when a family member dies. This would economically devastate...

Because of the importance of the US market, chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland are submitting to Uncle Sam’s intrusion in their factories but they are not happy about it. “The fact that a foreign authority is involved in our Swiss businesses is unseemly,” Daniel Bloch, of Chocolats Camille Bloch, told Handelszeitung, the German-language business journal. The newspaper has discovered that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to inspect 21 chocolate factories and 18 dairies in Switzerland. The move is part of the implementation of America’s Food Safety Modernization Act, new legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama last...

Years worth of work could be washed away upon approval of a proposal to flood the wetland WINTER LAKE — Every resident learns to live with the flood. Each year, with cruel seasonality, this peat-land is transformed into a 1,700-acre soup. But this year, emotions have piqued over a different deluge. Next year, earthworks are slated to begin on a $3.5 million project to restore 400 acres of pasture to wetland. Sarah Crawford, an organic farmer on Garden Valley Road, worries that new body of water will radically alter the valley's water table. 'That would ruin us," Crawford said. 'That...

Considering that every economic theory agrees that living standards and worker compensation are closely correlated with the amount of capital in an economy (this picture is a compelling illustration of the relationship), one would think that politicians – particularly those who say they want to improve wages – would be very anxious not to create tax penalties on saving and investment. Yet the United States imposes very harsh tax burdens on capital formation, largely thanks to multiple layers of tax on income that is saved and invested.But we compound the damage with very high tax rates, including the highest corporate...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Labor today issued the following statement regarding the withdrawal of a proposed rule dealing with children who work in agricultural vocations: "The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations. The Obama administration is also deeply committed to listening and responding to what Americans across the country have to say about proposed rules and regulations. "As a result, the Department of Labor is announcing today the withdrawal of...

Barack Obama is attacking the family farm – an American tradition. The administration’s Department of Labor implemented new regulations to restrict children from working on the family farm. This is despite the fact that farm accidents and injuries have decreased over the past several years. For generations children and adults have worked together on the family farm. Those days are over. Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced the Preserving America’s Family Farm Act, to prevent the Department of Labor (DOL) from enacting its controversial proposed restrictions that would ban children from working on family farms. Recently, Senator...

Marlene Stasinos believes the best food is local food. “It’s more healthy. It’s less processed,” she says as she walks from her farm stand toward her home in Haverhill, Mass. “It’s just better for you when you eat it.” Stasinos’ family has been farming in and around Haverhill for three generations, but she says backyard farming is under attack.

Regulation: For centuries, children have played an indispensable role in family farms. Their efforts have been and still are often essential to survival. But the nanny state wants to outlaw their contributions. What do the Labor Department bureaucrats in urban, elitist Washington who are writing the rule that would prohibit children under 18 from working on farms know about farm culture? How familiar are they with agricultural society and its age-old traditions and its timeless demands? Who are they to interfere with a way of life that has been the backbone of America? None of that matters to the busybodies...

The U.S. Department of Labor is withdrawing a rule that would have limited the sorts of work that children can do on farms.

Under pressure from farming advocates in rural communities, and following a report by The Daily Caller, the Obama administration withdrew a proposed rule Thursday that would have applied child labor laws to family farms. Critics complained that the regulation would have drastically changed the extent to which children could work on farms owned by family members. The U.S. Department of Labor cited public outcry as the reason for withdrawing the rule. “The decision to withdraw this rule — including provisions to define the ‘parental exemption’ — was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of...

The ISO to be imposed on April 1 considers all but eight breeds of hogs to be feral. Those eight breeds are used in confinement buildings. That means the DNR can drive onto farms and homesteads that raise other breeds of swine and kill them on the spot.

“If the federal government can regulate the relationshipbetween parents and their children on their own family’sfarm there is virtually nothing off limits” - Senator Jerry Moran Just when I thought Obama's big government couldn't get more intrusive we have this: (h/t Gateway Pundit and Allen Wall) The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing revisions to child labor regulations that will strengthen the safety requirements for young workers employed in agriculture and related fields. The agricultural hazardous occupations orders under the Fair Labor Standards Act that bar young workers from certain tasks have not been updated since they were promulgated in...

Barack Obama is committed to killing off the family farm – an American tradition. For generations children and adults have worked together on the family farm. Those days are over. Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) today introduced the Preserving America’s Family Farm Act, to prevent the Department of Labor (DOL) from enacting its controversial proposed restrictions that would ban children from working on family farms. Senator Thune spoke out against the Obama Administration’s proposed labor rules for youth who work on farms and ranches on the Senate floor. The Obama Administration’s rules are so strict they would...

Old MacDonald had a farm. Until the Marxists stepped in, that is. With the American dream of the Constitutional Republic fast fading from view, the family farm is next on the Obama regime’s ever expanding hit list. ...The agenda to wipe out the family farm is being set by a deadly duo, George Soros, who is buying up farmland like some folks buy Black Friday goodies, and the Communist-cheered Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. We the People can count on food being the new frontier for takeover by control seeking Marxists frontier for takeover by control seeking Marxists installed...

Let’s establish this right out of the gate so as not to confuse issues: It is wrong when corporations use child labor. Forgetting the law for a moment, whether it is here in the U.S. or overseas, children are children, and corporations should not exploit children. Got it? With that said, this is not about corporations, this is about families and farms. More specifically, family farms and the overreach of the federal government. For centuries, even before there was Willie Nelson and FarmAid, farming throughout the world (including here in the United States) has largely been a family affair. That...