TIMBER COMPANIES SUE FOREST SERVICE, BLM OVER LOGGING SHUTDOWN

Western timber companies have gone to court to lift the logging ban on national forests due to the government shutdown, arguing the government has no authority under timber sale contracts to force loggers to stop working. Three wood products companies and a timber industry association filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Medford against the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order lifting the logging shutdown, arguing direction from the (Read more...)

NEW SPRAY CONCEPT PROVES FEASIBLE

Source: Good Fruit Grower

If we had to irrigate orchards by pulling tanks of water down the alleys, would we do it? We do that now with pesticides and plant growth regulators, hauling loads of water with small amounts of chemicals in them, then blasting the mixtures into the trees. Only about a year ago, researchers at land grant universities across the United States obtained funding to investigate the feasibility of using a fixed-in-place system of pipes and nozzles – like a solid-set (Read more...)

THE OCEAN IS BROKEN

It was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it. Not the absence of sound, exactly. The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull. And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris. What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat. The birds (Read more...)

BANNED FEED ADDITIVE FOUND IN U.S. BEEF DELIVERY

Source: allaboutfeed.net

South Korean authorities have suspended some beef imports from the United States following the discovery of the feed additive zilpaterol in a consignment of beef, supplied by a unit of JBS USA Holdings. Zilmax, a zilpaterol-based drug, is mixed into cattle feed and is used to bulk up the animals before slaughter. Its use can help feedyards get roughly 25 more pounds of beef from each carcass. The drug came into focus this year when Tyson Foods, the (Read more...)

U.S.: H-2A DELAYS THREATEN WINTER VEGETABLE HARVEST

Source: capitalpress.com 

America’s nearly $4 billion winter vegetable harvest is in jeopardy if the Obama administration doesn’t immediately speed up foreign guest worker visa applications that have been stalled during the government shutdown, the Western Growers Association warns. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification at the U.S. Department of Labor had been closed since Oct. 1 and processing of H-2A guest worker applications was halted just when the growing season for (Read more...)