The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) announced sugar loan rates for crop year 2024 (fiscal year 2025).
USDA offers commodity loans to processors of sugar beets and domestically grown sugarcane to provide interim financing to producers so that sugar can be stored after harvest when market prices are typically low and then sold later when price conditions are more favorable.
Read MoreIn February 2020, Kerry Heafner left his office in West Monroe and drove about an hour northwest to the Union Parish hamlet of Marion to carry out one of his ordinary duties as an LSU AgCenter horticulture agent: giving a talk to a garden club.
Heafner’s visit that day, however, took a turn for the extraordinary when a woman named Lula Shurtleff approached him after his presentation.
Read MoreSaddle up, because Southern's second annual Calf Roping on the Bluff is this weekend.
The roping event will be held on Sept. 29 at the Maurice A. Edmond Livestock Arena.
Read MoreThe 2024 growing season is wrapping up for the nation’s soybean growers. As focus turns to harvest, soybean conditions have fluctuated across the top 18 growing states.
Louisiana was the only state to report no soybeans in very poor shape. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s soybean crop was rated in good/excellent condition.
Read MoreU.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, slammed President Biden and Vice President Harris for failing to take action to prevent a strike of unionized dockworkers at the East and Gulf Coast ports. Since June, negotiations have stalled between the ports and union officials on a new collective bargaining agreement. The International Longshoremen’s Association indicated that their members may begin a strike following the end of their current contract on September 30 unless a new agreement is reached.
Read MoreThe USDA has imposed sanctions on four produce businesses for failing to meet contractual obligations to the sellers of produce they purchased and failing to pay reparation awards issued under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.
These sanctions include suspending the businesses’ PACA licenses and barring the principal operators of the businesses from engaging in PACA-licensed business or other activities without approval from USDA, according to a news release.
Read MoreSome say just two, but USDA has now given the market three consecutive bullish supply demand reports. Both world and U.S. stocks have come down to very manageable levels. New York is some six cents off its lows and has now ventured into the expected 72-75 cent trading range.
Yet, this market has bears lurking around every corner.
Read MoreJeff Durand has grown rice in St. Martinville Parish for decades, beginning in the 1980s when his family decided to clear the woodland surrounding his crawfish farm.
“We grew up eating rice,” he recalled.
Now, he takes pride in exporting the staple crop around the world.
Read MoreUSA Rice extends condolences to the family and friends of Larry Lawson, who passed away last Friday, September 20, one day before his 80th birthday.
A native of Crowley, Louisiana, Larry dedicated his life to farming rice, soybeans, and crawfish. He graduated from Crowley High School in 1962 and earned a Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness from the University of Southwest Louisiana.
When hurricanes and other natural disasters strike Louisiana, it’s usually not long before elected officials, industry leaders and reporters call the LSU AgCenter seeking expert insight into how widespread and serious the damage is to the state’s agriculture sector.
Read MoreA Central Louisiana resident took to the skies for his 90th birthday.
Horace Austin is a former pilot who worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“I owned an aircraft and did quite a bit of flying for the agency and in the work I did. I really enjoyed that very much,” he said.
Read MoreDozens of lathes buzzed under the grind of chisels. Sawdust drifted into small piles on the floor. The scene wasn’t a wood shop but the conference room at North Oaks Diagnostics Center in Hammond.
Artists in the medium of wood – some lifelong woodworkers, some relatively new wood turning hobbyists; some local, some from afar; one blind – toiled over their machines for hours, intent on crafting beautiful ink pens for soldiers stationed overseas.
Dillon Delaney, a 34-year-old waterfowl guide and outfitter, nervously stood just outside one end of a long, well-made blind placed on a rice field levee near Klondike, this past Monday afternoon. Inside was a long bench, where six hunters sat waiting — hoping — teal would soon be flying.
The Louisiana early teal season had opened over the weekend. What’s more, Delaney and his hunters had been slamming them both morning and afternoon the previous two days.
The sugarcane harvest begins today in Assumption Parish and surrounding areas, and officials are advising motorists to stay alert during the first few days of the harvest.
Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon said that there will be an increase in machinery and cane haulers using the highways to transport their products to market over the next few days. Falcon said that drivers can also expect foggy conditions for the first few days of the harvest, asking all to practice extra caution.
Read MoreA Natchitoches Parish man died Sunday afternoon during an accident that happened as he operated his farm tractor, Sheriff Stuart Wright said.
The sheriff's office identified the victim as Charles William Cruse, 53, of Marthaville. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
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