More than $1 billion in assistance has been cut; millions of families could be affected.
It’s a time of uncertainty in the heartland as agricultural programs are cut. “It’s very unsettling and very stressful.”
Crop insurance puts pistachios, cherries and other vulnerable crops on life-support as rising temperatures threaten California agriculture.
A last-minute reversal by the USDA will allow schools to provide free meals to all students through 2020.
A new study, citing historical precedent, claims 42 percent of recent layoffs will result in permanently lost jobs.
Co-published by Fast Company
A new Congressional bill would reduce a broad range of agriculture workers to the status of “guest workers.” California’s dairy owners are ecstatic. Co-published by International Business Times.
For generations, Americans have relied on public service workers to inspect the food we eat. In fact, one major concern of the recent government shutdown was that food inspectors would be furloughed, endangering or shutting down the food supply chain across the country.
American public institutions have a long track record of keeping our food disease-free. Yet as this service is increasingly outsourced to for-profit corporations, it is leading to repeated oversight failures that have caused illness and even death. And too often, the for-profit entities that are now responsible for keeping our food safe have conflicts of interest that encourage them to rubber-stamp inspections rather than ensure our food is safe.
The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) has proposed a “Modernization of Poultry Inspection.” But “modernization” is just public relations babble for removing USDA inspectors from poultry lines and letting companies police themselves.
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