Agriculture

Michigan's Indigenous communities harvest wild rice, or manoomin, every year as part of their cultural heritage and modern-day work to restore the plant.

Federal food assistance has started to flow again after the government reopened. But the charitable food system is planning for continued need through the end of the year.

The federal funding package to reopen the government included a one-year extension of certain 2018 Farm Bill programs. Several expired Sept. 30 or would have been null by the end of the year.

Researchers at Michigan State University are working to create an outdoor lab that monitors the effects of solar arrays on farms and their crops across the state. The goal of the project is to use solar energy to improve agricultural production.

The decision comes after years of outcry from some farmers that the cost of labor, transportation and housing for H-2A workers was making it impossible to break even.

The U.S. agricultural industry depends on undocumented immigrants, but President Trump’s immigration crackdown is further depleting an already tight workforce. The labor crisis may be setting the stage for big changes to a federal program that allows foreign workers into the country legally.

Temperatures remained into the 80s well in the fall this year in parts of the Midwest. Agrivoltaics offers a respite to extreme heat and land access for new farmers.

Some Midwestern soybean farmers are selling their beans to be crushed and turned into soybean meal and oil. But economists say domestic processing won’t be enough to offset the drop in Chinese demand.

The government shutdown stops USDA from administering farm subsidies, raising the specter of growing farm foreclosures. It also delays a bailout President Trump had promised for farmers impacted by tariffs.

Ranchers, lawmakers and farmers’ unions are sounding the alarm over a Trump administration plan to increase beef imports from Argentina.