The Farm Post eNews

Friday eNews from the Pike and Scott County Farm Bureaus
 

DECEMBER 4, 2015

Highway bill heads to POTUS

Includes $3B for Crop Insurance

The president is expected to sign a highway funding bill that restores $3 billion in crop insurance funding cut from last month's budget deal. Farmers welcomed the news but AFBF's Mary Kay Thatcher warned in Thursday's Newsline that this issue is not going to go away. "It will be back in 2016 with a vengeance," she said. "More attacks on crop insurance are expected moving forward."

EPA sticks it to corn farmers
IFB President Richard Guebert commented on this week's decision by the US EPA to roll back ethanol use in the public fuel supply."At a public hearing in June, Illinois Farm Bureau called on EPA to put biofuels growth on a much steeper trajectory. And it appears the agency was listening to us. But only with one ear.
USDA Opens 49th CRP Period
December 2015 Marks 30th Anniversary for the Nation's Most Successful Voluntary Conservation Program. The  general enrollment period for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) began on Dec. 1, 2015, and ends on Feb. 26, 2016 according to the USDA. Contracts on 1.64 million acres of CRP are set to expire on Sept. 30, 2016. Producers with expiring contracts or producers with environmentally sensitive land are encouraged to evaluate their options under CRP.
Farm Bureau seeks input
Illinois Farm Bureau is eager to learn the opinions of its farmer members on emerging and priority issues. Please take a few moments to complete the attached 14-question survey. Your feedback helps us to determine organizational priorities and to better communicate with you on important issues. Thank you for your time!

Click here to complete the survey
  
TODAY IN HISTORY
DECEMBER 4, 1867
THE GRANGE BORN
(note: picture is from a Grange Rally near Winchester, IL)

On December 4, 1867 in a small Washington, D.C. building that housed the office of William Saunders, Superintendent of Propagating Gardens in the Department of Agriculture, the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, more commonly known as the Grange, was born.

The Granger movement succeeded in regulating the railroads and grain warehouses--Granger Laws.

The births of the Cooperative Extension Service, Rural Free Delivery, and the Farm Credit System were due largely to Grange lobbying. The peak of their political power was marked by their success in Munn v. Illinois (1877), which held that grain warehouses were a "private utility in the public interest," and so could be regulated by public law. However this achievement was overturned later by the Supreme Court in Wabash v. Illinois (1886).
  

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