The average price of a Thanksgiving feast for 10 people is $53.31, up $6.41 from last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual price survey. The higher prices are pretty much across the board: turkey, cranberries, frozen dinner rolls and pie crusts.... Read more»
Obtaining water has been a constant source of worry for farmers in Pinal County, and with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a Tier 1 shortage on the Colorado River in August, farmers will receive one-third of the water supply that would normally be available.... Read more»
Despite the federal government’s unprecedented efforts to aid businesses threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic, small farms are being left further behind, according to one local small farm owner. ... Read more»
Nearly 15% of Arizona households were considered food insecure four years ago. But a report last year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that figure has dropped to 12.4%.... Read more»
A House committee gave preliminary approval Thursday to a bill that would add 20,000 farmworker visas and let some workers apply for permanent legal residency, despite Republican concerns that it could open the door to more illegal immigration.... Read more»
Arizona farm groups said a proposal to expand the immigrant workforce and make it easier for those workers to stay in the U.S. is an important first step toward solving the problem of getting and keeping reliable workers.... Read more»
About 45 percent of the farmers in Arizona are women, making it the state with the highest proportion of women farmers in a declining industry, according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture.
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With winter lettuce season starting in November, Arizona farms are rushing to find workers for harvest. A difficult task, made more difficult with the anti-immigration rhetoric coming from the current administration.... Read more»
Immigration advocates are unsure what the merit-based immigration system President Donald Trump called for last week would do for the country – mostly because they don’t know exactly what the president meant.... Read more»
The federal government outlined new safety measures Monday that will protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure by banning pesticide use by minors and sharply increasing training requirements, among other changes.... Read more»
With no funding and facing a July deadline to gather 173,000 signatures, a Tucson man is out to require labels telling consumers whether food products are genetically engineered or made with genetically engineered ingredients.... Read more»
This month’s federal government shutdown caused a backup in seasonal farmworkers’ visa applications that some groups say could lead to a labor shortage during the coming winter vegetable harvest.... Read more»
The budget was not the only significant legislation that died Monday between a deadlocked House and Senate – the farm bill also expired at midnight, leaving farm programs, crop supports and food stamps up in the air.... Read more»
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has targeted hundreds of thousands of acres in Arizona and New Mexico that it wants to designate as critical habitat for two endangered gartersnakes. The service said that the northern Mexican gartersnake and the narrow-headed gartersnake need to be protected because they are threatened by loss of habitat and by competition from nonnative species.... Read more»
Arizona farmers are cautiously optimistic at the Senate’s passage this week of a five-year farm bill, even though it cuts $24 billion from current spending levels.
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After being in a severe to extreme drought for more than eight weeks, farmers in 12 Arizona counties may qualify for emergency loans, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week.... Read more»
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