Free Republic

The undocumented immigrant who allegedly killed college student Mollie Tibbetts had worked for years at a farm owned by a prominent Iowa Republican family, a report said Tuesday night. Cristhian Rivera — the 24-year-old man who is suspected of murdering Tibbetts while she was out jogging — was an “employee in good standing” at Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of former Iowa official Craig Lang, according to the Des Moines Register. Mollie Tibbetts Mollie Tibbetts, missing Iowa student, found dead In the statement, Craig’s brother Dane Lang said he was “shocked” to hear Rivera had been charged...

July 18, 2018 The owners of a Pennsylvania farm have been ordered by the Sewickley Heights Borough to cease and desist holding Bible studies on their private property. Borough leaders accused Scott and Terri Fetterolf of improperly using their 35-acre farm as a place of worship, a place of assembly and as a commercial venue. They were served a cease-and-desist order in October 2017, the Post-Gazette reported.

GOP seeks farm bill support amid immigration debate House Freedom Caucus members are trying to flex some muscle on immigration in exchange for support on the farm bill; A sprawling and subsidy-packed farm bill that also would have tightened food stamp rules failed in the House on Friday, in a dramatic defeat for GOP leaders who faced an uprising from conservatives over inaction on immigration. The farm bill, which was voted down 213-198, had been hanging in the balance as the conservative House Freedom Caucus threatened to withhold support without an agreement on an immigration bill vote. The GOP leadership,...

A North Carolina jury awarded $50 million to neighbors of a 15,000-hog farm in Eastern North Carolina in a case being closely watched across the country by environmentalists and the hog farm industry. The verdict, revealed late Thursday after a jury deliberated less than two days, is the first to come in a series of federal lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer. In this case decided in a federal courtroom in Raleigh, 10 neighbors contended that industrial-scale hog operations have known for decades that the open-air sewage pits on their properties were the source of noxious,...

If we had an actual, physical folder of evidence that the food labeling system in the United States is broken, it'd be full to bursting. And we'd be adding "skim milk????" to the list right about now. Maryland dairy farmers Randy and Karen Sowers are, with the help of the Institute for Justice (a non-profit libertarian-leaning law firm), suing the Food and Drug Administration for essentially doubling down on a very silly law. The gist: South Mountain Creamery, the dairy producer owned by the Sowerses, want to sell milk without the addition of any synthetic chemicals. To do this, they...

Be interesting to reread Orwell's "Animal Farm" based on Joseph Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution and fit today's political players into the book's characters. It is about a group of animals who rebel against the humans who run the farm they live on and run it themselves with hopes of being equal, free, and happy. In the end, however, the new rule becomes a cruel tyranny of its own led by the pigs.PigsOld Major – A prize-winning pig. He is the one who inspires all the animals to rebel against the humans. The character is based on Karl Marx...

For people who love bacon but hate everything it does to their diet, scientists in China may have created a way to have your pig and eat it too. A team of researchers have genetically altered pigs to carry nearly 24 percent less body fat. Using the CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing technique, the team reportedly modified a group of pigs which gave birth to much leaner piglets. The experiment, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is looking to make pigs less susceptible to the cold. Scientists noted that modern pigs, especially younger ones, lack the ability...

A rider limiting regulatory oversight of Amway and other multi-level marketers that was originally attached to a budget resolution was removed from the resolution prior to a Senate vote on the resolution, The Post has learned. Specifically, the rider curbs the ability of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether MLMs like Amway are pyramid schemes — potentially protecting Amway from costly regulations that have recently ensnared fellow MLMer Herbalife.

Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE: FPI) ("FPI") announced today that it has entered into agreements to acquire from Olam International Limited ("Olam") approximately 5,100 acres of permanent crop farmland in California for a purchase price of $110 million. The properties are located in California's Central Valley and are dedicated to the production of almonds, pistachios and walnuts. At closing of the acquisition, FPI will enter into a 25-year triple-net lease agreement with Olam on a revenue share basis. During the term of the agreement, Olam will operate and maintain the properties and improvements. Closing is subject to customary conditions.

A 2009 study conducted by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited some alarming facts about Chinese farm-raised seafood.

To avoid the draconian locks that John Deere puts on the tractors they buy, farmers throughout America's heartland have started hacking their equipment with firmware that's cracked in Eastern Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums. Tractor hacking is growing increasingly popular because John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform "unauthorized" repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time. "When crunch time comes and we break down, chances are we don't have time...

Socialism is just great, isn’t it? Venezuela has been having a major food crisis for months and now might force its own people to do farm labor.   Vice News reported:Venezuela has a new ‘forced labor’ law that can require people to work in fieldsInternational human rights activists are complaining that new laws have introduced forced labour in Venezuela.   “A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A Mexican national charged with aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of three people at a rural Oregon blueberry farm had been deported six times, most recently in 2013, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez, 29, has no significant prior criminal convictions, but ICE asked Oregon authorities to turn him over to them if he's released from custody in the current case, the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday. Oseguera-Gonzalez pleaded not guilty to three counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted murder Tuesday in Marion...

TOWN OF WESTFIELD, Wis. - A Sauk County man and woman face multiple charges in connection with the death of hundreds of farm animals discovered in early March, the sheriff’s office said. A criminal complaint filed in Sauk County court Monday said 22-year-old Ashley Grage is facing 14 counts of mistreatment of animals in connection with the deaths of several hundred chickens, about 40 pigs and several dozen rabbits on a farm where she lived with her boyfriend. According to the complaint, Grage had been living with 27-year-old Bradley Kruse on a farm at S7004 Highway 23 where the animals...

East Setauket [Long Island, NY] farmer, Bob Benner and his family have learned to live off their 15 acres of land since 1977. "We learned, made, and had our own heat. We made our own food. We made our own clothing. We raised a garden," he said. With six mouths to feed on a tight budget, Benner began raising certain farm animals as a source of food. Over the years, Benner's farm has evolved into a popular attraction for strawberry picking, birthday parties, and class trips for kids. Which is how Kimberly Sherriton, a mother from Commack, got involved with...

Trump has been a man of last resort before. Right here in Georgia, in fact. And if his Republican presidential machine doesn’t seize upon the tale in the next few weeks, as he and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas battle for Southern votes, then someone in the Trump campaign will be guilty of gross incompetence. It happened in 1986, in the midst of the worst farm crisis since the Great Depression. In Burke County, on Georgia’s eastern border, farm after farm was folding... Trump told the Atlanta businessman that his wife, Ivana, had seen the report on the Hill...

Pepperidge Farm is suing Trader Joe's for infringing on the trademark of its popular Milano cookie. According to a complaint filed on Wednesday in New Haven, Connecticut federal court, the grocery chain's version of a sandwich cookie, called Trader Joe's Crispy Cookies, look too similar to the Milano cookie and the products' sale is "damaging its goodwill and confusing shoppers," reports Reuters. Milano cookies, which were first introduced to the market in 1956, are crispy oval-shaped vanilla cookies with a chocolate crème filling. Over the years, variations have been introduced, including mint chocolate, orange chocolate and even pumpkin spice. The...

It was September 1986, and Annabel Hill, 66, was facing an auction where she would lose the farm that had been in her family for five generations. Hill’s husband, Lenard, had committed suicide eight months earlier, 20 minutes before a scheduled auction, in a last-ditch attempt to save his property with life insurance money. The life insurance money wasn’t enough, covering only $175,000 of debts than ran in excess of $300,000, from two years of a drought that Hill said had ruined their livelihood. Even when several hundred acres of the 1,300-acre Waynesboro, Georgia, farm were sold, the now-widowed Annabel...

Randy Sowers built his dairy farm over three decades into a thriving business. After kick-starting with a $100,000 loan, today the South Mountain Creamery has 1,000 cows and 70 employees delivering milk, ice cream and other products to homes in the Washington, D.C., area.

Hope you like increasing prices, everyone! #ForTheMiddleClass https://twitter.com/WSJPolitics/status/627796768328183808 … It’s not like Americans weren’t warned. All in the name of fighting “climate change,” of course. Has that ever really been a barrier for this administration?