Free Republic

Dark earth, the strange patches of black soil rich in nutrients that cause plants to grow at accelerated rates, while also capturing unusually high amounts of carbon from the air, is one of the Amazon rainforest’s greatest mysteries. Since these patches of dark earth were first discovered by European colonizers in the 1880s, debate has raged over their origins, with ideas ranging from the natural to the artificial. Variants of this dark, nutrient-rich soil have been found in a range of locations around the world, and are most often associated with the accumulation of materials in soil after long periods...

[...] “You may still be seeing the inflationary impact of food industry costs for the next 12 to 15 months,” he said. [...] If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the importance of fertiliser. Some 40-50 per cent of the world’s food production depends on artificial nitrogen-based fertiliser, which is created by combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen from natural gas to make ammonia. In turn, this is combined with either nitric acid or carbon dioxide to produce ammonium nitrate, or urea. The problem is that 34 per cent of global urea passes through the Strait of Hormuz, having been produced...

Today, just four companies — JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef — control roughly 85% of the cattle processing market. That level of concentration has surged from just 25% in 1977 to 71% by 1992, and now to an astonishing 85%. Together, these companies operate through dozens of subsidiary businesses, creating a landscape that leaves many of our cattle producers with limited marketing options. For some ranchers this means less marketing opportunities, complicating an already challenging marketplace. We must work to address this to protect our ranchers and consumers. @POTUS and this administration are focused on promoting fairness and...

Phys.org reports that wheat for baking bread (Triticum aestivum) may have first been grown some 8,000 years ago in Georgia. Genetic studies of modern wheat plants and wild grasses indicate that domesticated wheat and wild goat grass were mixed in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region. This hybrid plant eventually became bread wheat, explained Nana Rusishvili of the Georgia National Museum and her colleagues. They examined charred grains recovered from Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, two Neolithic village sites in Georgia. Because charred grains of bread wheat look similar to durum wheat and other wheat seeds, the team...

Paleoanthropologists from the University of Vienna and Harvard University have analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from Eurasian archaeological sites... They've discovered a previously unknown group, called Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) people, and found out that this population can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations.Indo-European languages, which number over 400 and include major groups such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic, are spoken by nearly half the world's population today...These migrations out of the steppes had the largest effect on European human genomes of any demographic event in the last 5,000 years and are widely regarded as the probable vector...

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — A long-time cattle rancher said Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration understands his industry and what it needs to continue producing quality beef for the American people. Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) Director Steve Sikes told Breitbart News that under past administrations, ranchers were pressured by rules that made their work more difficult, but things have since changed. “We’ve got the EPA that is run pretty well, and in the past that was always a deterrent for ranchers because they were putting in rules that were almost impossible to cope with. They had a...

Four hundred inquiries from American farmers poured in after a single interview. Not for a John Deere. Not for a Case IH. For a tractor built in Alberta with a remanufactured 1990s diesel engine and zero electronics. Ursa Ag, a small Canadian manufacturer, is assembling tractors powered by 12-valve Cummins engines — the same mechanically injected workhorses that powered combines and pickup trucks decades ago — and selling them for roughly half the price of comparable machines from established brands. The 150-horsepower model starts at $129,900 CAD, about $95,000 USD. The range-topping 260-hp version runs $199,900 CAD, around $146,000. Try...

Fourth-generation Iowa farmer Mark Mueller is no stranger to the ups and downs of the agriculture industry. But right now, he thinks America is on the cusp of a farm crisis. “I am more concerned now than I have been in my 30 years of farming,” Mueller told NBC News. Even before the Iran war, Mueller said, many farmers felt they were being squeezed. Consolidation in the fertilizer industry and increased competition from abroad have resulted in higher prices for fertilizer and feed — and smaller returns on Mueller’s corn and soybean crops. Many farmers who couldn’t pay their bills...

Democrats have made it very clear that one of the reasons they support unfettered illegal immigration is that they want to import a slave-labor class that they can pay cheaply and keep in deplorable working conditions. They prove this every time they argue that, sans illegals, we wouldn't have anyone to clean our toilets or cut our grass and the price of our produce would go up because farmers would have to pay people a living wage to harvest crops (a lot of which is automated these days, anyway). Now the New York Times is playing that card again, this...

The global energy shock triggered by the ongoing Iran war is rippling through the United States farm sector, where soaring input costs are placing US farmers under severe financial strain and raising concerns about future food prices... The closure and instability around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global oil and fertilizer shipments, have pushed fuel prices sharply higher and tightened supplies of key agricultural inputs. The result is a double blow for US farmers already dealing with tight margins. Higher input costs reduce profitability, while uncertainty about supply availability complicates planting decisions. In some cases, farmers are...

Double-check all sources, experts say es are warning the public about a multi-state scam targeting the immigrant community, with some victims losing as much as $30,000. According to Claudia Abasto Rivilla, founder and executive director of Salinas-based Latin Advocacy Network (LATINAN), scammers target Spanish- and Indigenous-language speakers using information gleaned from social media. They then use stolen identities and fake legal credentials to appear legitimate, she said. With an already tenuous legal status, victims are often too afraid to seek help or report the crime. Abasto said victims typically seek help only after being defrauded. She also said she...

"Activist and trial lawyer attacks on herbicides imperil US and global health and nutrition" President Trump recently signed an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure increased domestic supplies of elemental phosphorus – a critical component of glyphosate-based herbicides that are vital for America’s non-organic crop productivity and thus national security. The EO has rekindled anti-pesticide activism and public concern about glyphosate, which used to be the primary ingredient in Roundup for home use but was changed following numerous class-action lawsuits. It’s also created internal conflicts within the “Make America Healthy Again” movement because the President and HHS...

President Donald Trump on Thursday said his administration will announce actions to help U.S. farmers on Friday, as the White House prepares to host hundreds of farmers, ranchers, and executives for an event highlighting the agricultural sector. The move comes as the administration is expected to release long-awaited biofuel blending quotas under the Renewable Fuel Standard, a policy closely watched by corn growers, ethanol producers and oil refiners that dictates how much renewable fuel must be mixed into the nation's gasoline and diesel supply. Reuters reported that the Trump administration will release its 2026-27 biofuel blending volume obligations this week,...

@FarmActionUS Rep. Thomas Massie is on the brink of securing a huge win for small farmers. His PRIME Act is officially included in the 2026 Farm Bill. If this passes, it will deliver a blow to Big Ag’s stranglehold on the meatpacking industry. “This would make it easier for local farmers to sell directly to local consumers using a local slaughterhouse.” How? It would cut the USDA out of inspections for local processing facilities. “You don’t need the USDA to inspect a facility that has seven employees.” “So what I’ve proposed is that you could just have the local health...

According to a statement released by Leiden University, a groundbreaking ancient DNA study has provided new information about a pivotal transitional period in prehistoric Europe. The research underscored the remarkable genetic stability in the Low Countries and shed new light on the mysterious origins of the so-called Bell Beaker culture. A team of geneticists and archaeologists analyzed the genomes of 112 individuals who lived in the Rhine–Meuse region of the Low Countries -- today's Netherlands, Belgium, and northwestern Germany -- between 8500 and 1700 b.c. The data revealed that when Europe's first farmers arrived from Anatolia around 4,500 years ago,...

Yunqing Jian, 33, first entered the country on a fraudulently obtained F1 student visa, the FBI says Fusarium graminearum creates "head blight," a disease of wheat, barley, maize and rice, and "is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year," according to the Department of Justice. It is also toxic to humans, and can cause vomiting, liver damage and "reproductive defects in humans and livestock." The affidavit, which said Jian has been attempting to smuggle the pathogen into the U.S. since she began post-doctoral studies funded by China in 2022, also accuses Jian of asking a third...

The O’Keefe Media Group went undercover at CattleCon in Nashville, Tennessee, and exposed how Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef secretly control America’s beef market. In November, President Trump said cattle prices were falling while beef prices kept rising and launched an investigation into price manipulation. Trump directed the DOJ to investigate the meat packing companies who are driving up the prices through illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation. pic.twitter.com/qybOyWN2bl — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 7, 2025 The O’Keefe Media Group went undercover at CattleCon and ranchers spilled the beans on how the “Big Four” control the beef...

Millions of acres of farmland across the country are privately owned, but a small share of it is foreign-owned land sitting idle in many areas. That’s according to new U.S. Department of Agriculture data which shows just how much of the nation’s agricultural land is owned by other countries. The USDA‘s online portal reveals that more than 45 million acres of land are owned by foreign countries, with an original purchase value of over $38 billion. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has the most agricultural acreage in the United States, at 15.35 million acres. John Hewlett, a farm and...

The cost of eggs for consumers is 34% lower than last year, according to January’s consumer price index. But for farmers, they have too many eggs selling at rock bottom prices.

The Most Socialist System in America Is the One Feeding Us—and It’s FailingAmerica loves to debate socialism. We argue about universal healthcare, guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness, and government dependency. We pride ourselves on our rugged independence and belief in free markets. We warn that socialism destroys innovation, freedom, and personal responsibility. But here’s the uncomfortable truth most Americans never stop to consider: the most centrally planned, government-dependent, subsidy-driven system in the United States isn’t medicine, housing, or energy—it’s food.Our food system is not a free market. It is not capitalism in any recognizable form. It is a government-engineered economy...