Agriculture/trade

A California slaughterhouse is under intense scrutiny after the Humane Society obtained video of workers using forklifts, electrocution, high-pressure water and sticks to get sick cattle to stand up on all four legs in order to pass USDA inspection. Hallmark Meat Packing then sold the beef to the Westland Meat Co., which is a major [...]

When people talk about the risks of global warming, the discussion usually centers around rising ocean levels.  We are all of us, skeptics and believers alike, aware of the images of Florida half-submerged, the Pacific islands obliterated, Louisiana gone.  Too much water will flood coastlines throughout the world, bringing destruction in its wake.

But the effect [...]

OK, that headline will be the last of the side-show banter, I promise, but I do want to welcome you to the annual Joe Kimball State Fair Blog, a compendium of the interesting and odd, the unusual and quirky, the tasty and the smelly — and all the other aspects of the 12-day spectacle that [...]

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will ask for federal aid for farmers facing a loss of crops due to drought, according to a release from the governor’s office.

Pawlenty, a Republican, made the statement after visiting Morrison county in north-central Minnesota.

“Minnesota farmers are among the best in the world at what they do, but they can’t make [...]

If it looks like a grain bin and it smells like a grain bin, it gets taxed as a grain bin. The Minnesota Supreme Court agreed with a lower court’s decision that Custom Ag Service of Montevideo’s grain bins should be subject to use tax.

The bins were purchased from out of state to be used [...]

Giving to your congressman does pay off, but measuring the results is not that simple

It stands to reason that those politicians whose districts most benefit from agriculture receive the most political contributions from the agribusiness sector. But how can we prove that?

Thanks to the Environmental Working Group and opensecrets.org, Minnesota Monitor has been able to [...]

In the coming weeks Minnesota Monitor will be looking at farm policy. We will attempt — and this is a grand challenge — to make this information understandable to regular folks living in the city, whose knowledge of these issues extends not much further than the produce section of their local Lunds, Byerly’s, Cub, Rainbow, [...]

The wailing and gnashing-of-teeth reaction to the Federal Railroad Administration’s rejection of a proposed $2.3 billion loan for the DM&E railroad has strangely not come from Powder River Basin coal interests or coal-fired utilities in the nation’s midsection, both of whom would have the most to gain had the loan been approved. No, the loudest [...]

That was the question before the Minnesota Supreme Court Thursday in the case of Custom Ag Service vs. Commissioner of Revenue. The commissioner had taxed Custom Ag for a use tax on bins that had been brought in from outside the state. A use tax is charged on all taxable items that were not taxed [...]

Part I: Election 2008, Farm Subsidies

Lots of Minnesota related news today, so this will be a series of short takes in several parts:

Robert Novak reports on the 2008 Senate race and the 1st Congressional District race in his Feb. 1 edition of the Evans-Novak Political Report. Conclusions? Novak terms Coleman “perhaps the most endangered incumbent [...]