USDA is planning to severely slash its county Service Center offices around the country that house local staff for the Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, potentially consolidating county staff into state committees, according to a report published Tuesday.
Read MoreThe Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival is just weeks away, and preparations for the highly anticipated event are well underway. As the heart of festival season unfolds in Louisiana, the city of Breaux Bridge is preparing to welcome thousands for its annual celebration of culture, music, and crawfish.
Read MoreThe Farmers Freedom Act of 2025 would provide a permanent definition of prior converted cropland (PCC) under the Clean Water Act. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has used this authority to issue Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rulemakings, which regulates navigable waterways in the United States.
For the last several decades, wetlands converted to cropland before 1985 have remained exempt from WOTUS regulation. Under the Biden administration ruling, previously-converted cropland could revert to a wetland status if it becomes unavailable for commodity production due to circumstances like flooding.
Read MoreThe Ouachita River is continuing to rise and could be up to 45 feet by Wednesday, April 23, which is five feet above the flood stage according to the National Weather Service.
“The partners of Ouachita Parish are doing everything we can for weeks now to try and get ahead of this, and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to protect the citizens,” said Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Ouachita Parish Director Rodger McConnell.
Read MoreCongressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) and Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr. (D-LA) introduced H.R. 2715, the Destruction of Hazardous Imports Act, which grants the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to destroy imported products that pose a significant public health concern.
This legislation would ensure that contaminated seafood imports don’t reach American consumers and cause harm. The bill grants the FDA additional authority to destroy food products that don’t pass initial inspection, which prevents importers from port shopping their products.
Read MoreFor this edition of ArkLaTex Made, Rick Rowe features C6 Farms.
It provides customers with the highest quality nutrient dense pasture raised meats & eggs, raised sustainably and transparently from its farm in DeSoto Parish.
Read MoreSoybean contracts jumped 20 cents in midday trading on Wednesday, April 9th, joining other commodities in a sharp rebound, after President Donald Trump took to social media to again raise tariffs on the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans- China. New Chinese tariffs (125%), set Wednesday, April 9th, more than double the cost for Chinese buyers to import U.S. soybeans, but that didn't stop soy-bean futures from climbing higher.
Read MoreAs the weather warms up, insects become more active. Over the past week, our team visited several parishes to check for insect pests on areas near to row crop fields. Some of these fields have already been planted with corn, while most are yet to be planted with soybean or cotton. We used sweep nets to collect insects in various vegetations including mixed grasses, white clovers, and crimson clovers at different sites in each
Read MoreIt looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA train will make a stop in Capitoland.
President Donald Trump’s health secretary is expected to visit Baton Rouge to promote Senate Bill 14, a bill inspired by Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Read MoreIn Louisiana, there are numerous invasive species, including both plants and animals, that can cause significant problems.
Invasive species in Louisiana often pose threats to agriculture, human health and the environment.
Read MoreLouisiana’s sugarcane industry isn’t just a part of the state’s history—it’s a driving force in its economy, generating roughly $4 billion annually and providing jobs across farms, research facilities, and raw sugar factories.
Sustaining this vital industry requires continuous innovation and a partnership between the LSU AgCenter, the USDA, and the American Sugarcane League plays a pivotal role.
Read MoreOrlando F. McMeans, Ph.D., Chancellor-Dean of the Southern University Ag Center and the College of Agricultural, Human and Environmental Sciences, has been named one of three 2025 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) Career Achievement Award recipients.
The award is presented to alumni who have demonstrated exceptional professional achievements and/or made extraordinary humanitarian contributions resulting in meaningful or life-changing impacts on a significant population.
Read MoreFebruary statewide rainfall averaged 5.24” for the month (preliminary estimate), less than 1.00” above the norm (p. 7) and falling within the middle third of all February totals over the past 130 years. While not far from the norm, February 2025 is the “wettest” February statewide since 2020. Monthly totals were generally above the mean, particularly in the northern and western parishes. By contrast, every station in the East Central Climate Division reported.
Read MoreLast week, in its monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates Report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates India is expected to surpass China as the largest rice producing nation in the world this marketing year (MY2024/25).
Over the last nine years, India has experienced an unprecedented back-to-back record-breaking rice harvest.
Read MoreU.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the cancellation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). Following a thorough line by line review of each of these Biden era partnerships, it became clear that the majority of these projects had sky-high administration fees which in many instances provided less than half of the federal funding directly to farmers.
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