Specialty crops: Supporters in Congress are trying to increase market access, research and nutrition programs for the state's fruit and vegetable producers. Farm bill: Michigan agriculture is anticipating Congress' work on the federal farm bill, which gives farmers payments and other help to supplement their incomes, support crop prices and manage supplies. Research funding for specialty crops is among the dozens of proposals that will be considered in the legislation, which was last...

TDA issued 2,202 ballots to cotton producers who were eligible to vote in the referendum. A total of 913 valid ballots were postmarked by the May 8 deadline and counted. AUSTIN - The Texas Department of Agriculture has announced that cotton producers in the Northern Rolling Plains Boll Weevil Eradication Zone have voted to continue program operations.

Cotton and other crops, which are set as obligatory to farmers by the government, do not give much profit to farmers as their prices are really low, and the cotton industry is monopolized by the government. The reason is that rice, comparing to cotton that makes the majority of the agriculture in the country, is the only plant that you can sell in a bazaar for a really good price, and the government had not controlled it before. Third presumption is that it will cause the raise of the rice...

Nine export promotion councils, which together account for over 50 per cent of the country s exports, have expressed their inability to meet the targets set for them by the government for 2007-08 due to the rise in the value of the rupee against the dollar. Downstream firms to suffer as oil price peaks. Nine export promotion councils, which together account for over 50 per cent of the country s exports, have expressed their inability to meet the targets set for them by the government for...

Research funding for specialty crops is among the dozens of proposals that will be considered in the legislation, which was last written in 2002 and gives farmers payments and other help to supplement their incomes, support crop prices and manage supplies. Shown among his peonies, Mayer, 40, a fifth-generation farmer, is the largest producer of fresh-cut gladiolus in the country. Shown among his peonies, Mayer, 40, a fifth-generation farmer, is the largest producer of fresh-cut gladiolus...

Can any type of agricultural product become certified organic? Yes, any agricultural product that meets third-party or state-certification requirements may be considered organic. Nonfood organic products (personal care products, nutritional supplements, household cleaners, flowers, pet food and clothing, bedding and other products from organic fibers such as flax, wool and cotton) grew 32. Pollution and climate change are now drawing worldwide attention, and one result of increasing...

Editor's note: This is Part 2 in an Associated Press series on ethanol, whose fortunes as a gasoline additive have risen and fallen with the price of oil, and is now in the middle of a boom. Still, some experts warn that the price has nowhere to go but down if the market is flooded, and not everyone has forgotten how prices wilted after a massive grain deal with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s and the 1996 drought in China shot corn prices to record highs. On farms across the nation,...

food and agricultural products, including shipping and banking costs, Alvarez said in an interview Tuesday. At an agribusiness fair in 2002, he fed milk in a baby bottle to a buffalo calf from Minnesota, greeted then-governor Jesse Ventura and penned some of the contracts to buy American goods. In recent weeks he has written a string of essays on international affairs, often denouncing the use of food crops to produce ethanol. But the 80-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since...

So while food prices appear inexpensive, there is the hidden cost of subsidies-- 72 percent of which is paid to the top ten percent of farmers according to statistics provided by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an independent think tank on agriculture and environmental issues. So while food prices appear inexpensive, there is the hidden cost of subsidies-- 72 percent of which is paid to the top ten percent of farmers according to statistics provided by the Environmental Working...