Top Agriculture News

Applications are now open for the 2025 South Carolina Commissioner’s School for Agriculture.  Commissioner Weathers joins me to talk about why it’s so important.

Tobacco farmers are busy preparing for the 2025 season and as they begin readying transplants for production, it is also a good time to test the float bed water.  

Better connecting rural regions. Patrick Woodie is President and CEO of the North Carolina Rural Center. He says progress is being made, but still more needs to be done. “Making sure every home, every business in the state of North Carolina, regardless of where it’s located, has access to high speed, affordable broadband. We’re not […]

“America’s farmers and ranchers are no strangers to uncertainty, but the challenges they face today call for immediate attention and decisive leadership. “With the confirmation of Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture, USDA has the opportunity to continue its long history of working with farmers and ranchers to prioritize security and sustainability. “We are at […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal scholarship aimed at boosting students from underserved and rural areas attending historically Black colleges and universities has been put on hold. The U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended the 1890 Scholars Program, which provided recipients with full tuition and fees for students studying agriculture, food or natural resource sciences at one of 19 universities, known as the 1890 land grant institutions. It’s not clear exactly when the program was suspended, but some members of Congress first issued statements criticizing the suspension of the program on Thursday. A message seeking more detail was left Saturday with the Department of Agriculture.

Washington, D.C., Feb. 20, 2025—Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that USDA will release the first tranche of funding that was paused due to the review of funding in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In alignment with White House directives, Secretary Rollins will honor contracts that were already made directly to farmers.  Specifically, […]

Snow across much of the Carolinas here in the last couple of days. Corey Davis, Assistant State Climatologist for North Carolina, did this storm perform as you thought it was going to going into it? “Mike, especially in parts of the northeastern Piedmont of North Carolina and the northern coastal plain. Think this storm might […]

Encouraging news on the shipping front for agriculture, as the feuding parties in the longshoremans’ dispute along the Gulf and East coasts are moving forward to ratify a new contract. Mike Steenhoek, Executive Director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, says the recent vote out of committee bodes well. “What’s called the Wage Scale Committee of […]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has not been kind to college students and farming families for years, due to flaws in the program, farmers must label their machinery, land and small businesses as liquid assets, even though they’re not liquid enough to be converted into college funds. Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra […]

Brazil’s farmers have struggled with too much rain in the north and not enough in the south. Dr. Michael Cordonnier of Soybean and Corn Advisor, Inc., says the dry weather in Brazil stretches well into Argentina. “Oh yes, absolutely. You know, in Argentina, they did have some beneficial rains over about 40 percent of the […]