Legislation in Olympia would roll back recent gains farmworkers have made to receive overtime pay in Washington state. Senate Bill 5476 would allow agricultural employers to choose 12 weeks out of the year for which overtime rules would not apply until laborers had worked 50 hours. The 2021 overtime law is still phasing in, with time-and-a-half pay going into effect after 48 hours of work this year. .
Progressive agricultural growers returning this week from the Food not Feed Summit in Washington, D.C., are asking their fellow farmers to consider a big transition. The summit focused on shifting federal farm policies away from huge, corporate mega-farms and raising animal feed, to adopting more environmentally-friendly practices for growing food. In Iowa, at least 5,000 Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations dot the landscape. .
Watchdog groups say chickens used by Costco are bred to grow so quickly, many of them cannot stand under their own weight, and recent lawsuits against the company have put the spotlight once again on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. There are more than 3,000 such poultry operations in North Carolina, growing hundreds of millions of chickens a year. Chris Heaney, associate professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University, said breeding cheap chickens comes with a host of negative public health impacts. .
As more farm and food cooperatives pop up across North Carolina, advocates say they are creating a new model for food distribution and landownership that addresses long-standing inequities. Today, white Americans own and operate 94% of all U.S. farmland. .
As the fall harvest season takes shape in South Dakota, an agricultural specialist said there are many ways motorists and farmers can avoid crashes with large equipment on the roads. John Keimig, youth safety field specialist for South Dakota State University Extension, said the fall harvest typically runs through early November. And with dusk getting earlier, chances are rural-area motorists will see an extra tractor or other farm machinery, requiring more patience behind the wheel. .