The biggest crop-related issue today is not what might happen in the upcoming farm bill; rather, it is what occurred yesterday at the Department of Justice. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the so-called Cole memo, issued by then Deputy Attorney General James Cole in 2013, and four other Obama-era directives dating back to 2009 that set guidelines of noninterference/nonenforcement regarding federal law within states where marijuana was legal. The chart below, detailing the 2016 per-pound crop prices in Colorado, shows why this is a big deal. The value of marijuana in this state was more than 24,000 times that of alfalfa hay.
Sessions’ memo puts recreational marijuana operations in jeopardy (e.g., the 40-acre operation that...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
