Stories

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a Minnesota-based non-profit organization advocating for organic and sustainable agriculture, has issued a list of six reasons why former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack should not be appointed Secretary of Agriculture by President-Elect Barack Obama.

A coalition of ethanol companies has formed a new organization with the goal of fighting back against groups like the Grocery Manufacturers Association that have been lobbying the government to roll back incentives for ethanol.
The organization, Growth Energy, is planning a national advertising campaign, starting in Wednesday’s New York Times, to defend the industry from [...]

Jewish rabbis were not paid Friday, and it was not the first time time. Other employees did receive paychecks, although some voiced concern that the checks may not clear. The rabbis were asked for patience and promised payments as soon as possible.

According to a source who attended a meeting Friday with upper management, the plant plans to concentrate on poultry production — particularly on chicken — in the near future. The plant’s beef line has operated only sporadically over the past two weeks.

Nearly six months after federal authorities swarmed the small town of Postville and detained roughly half of a kosher meatpacking plant’s workforce on suspected immigration violations, shock waves are still being felt throughout Iowa and the nation.

Corn and soybean prices dropped sharply Friday following the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s October crop production estimates.

A survey released this month by the Iowa chapter of the Realtors Land Institute (RLI) showed a 6.6 percent increase in farmland values in just the last six months. Farmland values rose 17.6 percent in Iowa throughout the course of the last year, and an incredible 70 percent over the last five years.

Thirteen Iowa companies have made nearly a quarter of a million dollars in donations to “Californians for SAFE Food – No on Prop2,” a coalition organized to fight a ballot measure amending the state’s health and safety code in relation to the confinement of livestock. The donations, most of which were only recently disclosed by the organization, have become the subject of a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

One of the nation’s leading authorities on humane livestock slaughtering told Iowa Independent in a phone interview today that the problems at Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, could be summed up in one word: “Sloppy.”

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama reaffirmed his support of the federal Renewable Fuels Standard on Tuesday. Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, opposes the fuel standard that mandates a specific amount of ethanol be used in the nation’s fuel supply.

The GOP started out the week by unanimously approving a platform that calls for an end to the federal renewable fuels standard. And in their convention speeches the party’s standard bearers — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska — hardly mentioned biofuels as part of the energy mix of the future.

The Iowa Independent conducted a telephone interview on Thursday afternoon with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, a Republican proponent of ethanol and biofuels who was at the convention all week.