Ag News Roundup: Early-Mid June

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Keep up-to-date with the biggest news stories in agriculture from around the web!

What are the journalists at the major media outlets penning… or typing… these days?

In the past few weeks, we saw:

• Continued coverage of the Farm Bill (the Senate passed its version) and we reported on this in greater detail yesterday here;
• Bloomberg News reported on some limited halting of trade due to confirmation of genetically engineered wheat on a farm in Oregon (USDA press release here);
• Investigative research and reporting by Todd Neeley at DTN related to the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas provided insight into current ammonium nitrate (AN) stockpiles and future risks due to the location of AN stocks;
• Much ado was made about the bid by a Chinese meat processor to purchase Smithfield Foods (America’s biggest pork producer), including some policy analysis from the Institute of Agriculture at the University of Tennessee, and some reporting that sheds light on the complexity of this deal in terms of the players involved;
• The Environmental Protection Agency seems to be facing an uphill battle in regulating “factory farms” which has irked the New York Times editorial board;
• A soggy spring in the heartland made for reporting of concern about corn and soy crop yields alongside predictions of record yields in the same article (an interesting article from William Wiebold at the University of Missouri Cooperative Extension provides an overview of the science of how and why heavy rains in the Midwest are likely to impact crop yields).