From the category archives:

Farm Economics

Agriculture Exported From America

by Staff on February 16, 2012

Do you know which country has purchased $20 billion in goods in 2011 to become the top market for U.S. agricultural goods? If you guessed China, you’d be right. Nearly 160,000 American jobs were supported in 2011 by farm exports.

This trend is not going unnoticed by world leaders. Today in DesMoines Iowa, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and China’s Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu signed an historic Plan of Strategic Cooperation which is designed to guide agricultural relations between the two countries for the next 5 years.

Topics of mutual concern between China and the US include sustainable farming practices, food security, organic farming, animal and plant health, and trade practices. You can learn more about this agricultural agreement by clicking here for details.

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Retail Beef Prices Net More for Farmers

by Staff on February 10, 2012

The U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture has released some statistics about the price of beef in December. For the 4th month in a row, beef prices rose, reaching $5.02 per lb in December. That brought the 2011 average price to $4.83/lb. The good news for farmers is that the farmer’s share of the price also rose…. to 49.9%.

HERE’S site where you can see more details. The chart below is provided by the USDA.

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Another Use For Hay

by Staff January 31, 2012

Here’s an idea that seems to be working in Maine, so maybe it can work other places too? How about producing hay logs? Farmers in Maine are now taking the portion of their hay fields that become degraded – – for instance, when the weather is so rainy that the nutritional value of the wet [...]

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Oil Crop For Virginia Farmers?

by Staff January 19, 2012

Knock knock. Who’s there? Oil Farmer who? Some farmers in central VA can expect a knock on the door from an oil executive who has a motive. If some oil companies have estimated correctly… there’s an abundance of oil and natural gas under Virginia farms. Already, farmers in Caroline, Essex, King George and Westmoreland counties are [...]

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Ever Thought About Growing Wheat?

by Gayle January 2, 2012

While you don’t think of Virginia as a wheat producing state, there are areas where wheat is produced. I found an article from the USDA Economic Research Service about commercial wheat production to be extremely interesting. In 2009, organic and commercial wheat producers had very similar production yields. The organic producer received $110/acre higher return than the [...]

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Fencing off Your Streams in Virginia

by Gayle January 1, 2012

Since back in the late ’70′s & early ’80′s there has been a movement to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The first initiative that I remember was to fence off the creeks from livestock and install automatic waterers. With the government cost-share programs available then, I always thought that this was a no-brainer. Here we [...]

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