Latest news with #U.S.DepartmentofAgriculture
Time of India
14 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Why is US breeding flies in Texas, near Mexico border
The U.S. government has announced plans to open a facility in Texas by year's end to breed millions of sterile New World screwworm flies, aiming to protect American cattle from a flesh-eating parasite that has reemerged in southern Mexico. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The $8.5 million facility, to be built at Moore Air Base near the Mexican border, will release sterile male flies to mate with females, preventing the production of larvae that feed on living tissue. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, speaking at a news conference alongside Texas and cattle industry officials, emphasized the urgency of the initiative. 'The United States has defeated NWS before, and we will do it again,' she said, referencing the successful eradication of the screwworm in the U.S. during the 1960s. The new facility will be only the second of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, joining one in Panama that produces about 100 million sterile flies weekly. The screwworm's recent spread in southern Mexico, detected as close as 700 miles from the U.S. border, prompted the U.S. to suspend imports of live cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico last month. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also plans to invest $21 million to convert a fruit fly-breeding facility near Mexico's border with Guatemala into one for screwworm flies, though it won't be operational for 18 months. The Texas facility could produce up to 300 million flies per week, significantly bolstering efforts to curb the parasite's northward migration. The National Beef Cattlemen's Association president, Buck Wehrbein, underscored the economic threat to ranchers, noting that Moore Air Base previously hosted a similar facility in the 1960s. 'The only way to protect the American cattle herd from the devastating threat of New World screwworm is by having a sufficient supply of sterile flies to push this pest away from our border,' he said. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué welcomed the plan, calling it a 'positive step' for U.S.-Mexico cooperation in a post on X. He expressed optimism that cattle exports could resume soon based on USDA inspections. The screwworm, which can infest any mammal including pets and occasionally humans, poses a broader risk. Kansas Animal Health Commissioner Justin Smith highlighted concerns about wildlife, such as feral pigs and deer, potentially carrying the parasite across borders unchecked. Texas officials praised the federal response, while other states remain vigilant, emphasizing the need for sterile flies to outnumber fertile ones to halt the pest's advance.
19 hours ago
- Politics
US plans to open fly factory in Texas as part of fight against flesh-eating parasite
The U.S. government plans to open what amounts to a fly factory by the end of the year, announcing its intent Wednesday to breed millions of the insects in Texas near the border with Mexico as part of an effort to keep a flesh-eating parasite from infesting American cattle. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said sterile male New World screwworm flies bred at the $8.5 million facility would be released into the wild to mate with females and prevent them from laying the eggs in wounds that become flesh-eating larva. It would be only the second facility for breeding such flies in the Western Hemisphere, joining one in Panama that had largely kept the flies from migrating further north until last year. The fly's appearance in southern Mexico late last year has worried agriculture and cattle industry officials and veterinarians' groups, and the U.S. last month suspended imports of live cattle, horses and bison from Mexico. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also plans to spend $21 million to convert a facility for breeding fruit flies near Mexico's southernmost border with Guatemala into one for breeding sterile New World screwworm flies, but it won't be ready for 18 months. The U.S. bred and released sterile New World screwworm flies into the wild decades ago, and it was largely banished from the country in the 1960s. Previously, it had been an annual scourge for cattle ranchers and dairy farmers, particularly in the Southeast. 'The United States has defeated NWS before, and we will do it again," Rollins said. She held a news conference at Moore Air Base with Texas and cattle industry officials. Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said in a post Wednesday on X that Rollins' plan 'seems to us a positive step in different aspects, it will strengthen the joint Mexico-US work.' 'We trust the enthusiasm for cooperation that Secretary Rollins mentioned, and based on objective results and the reports from the USDA mission visiting us this week, we will be able to restart exports of our cattle as soon as possible," he said. The new Texas facility would be built at Moore Air Base, less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Mexico border, and the USDA said it would also consider building a companion fly-breeding center there so that up to 300 million flies could be produced a week. The Panama facility breeds about 100 million a week, and the one in Mexico could breed as many as 100 million as well. The USDA has said the flies have been detected as close as 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) from the U.S. border, and some U.S. agriculture and cattle industry officials have worried that if the migration isn't checked, the flies could reach the border by the end of summer. Pressure from the U.S. prompted Mexico to step up efforts to control the fly's spread. Buck Wehrbein, a Nebraska cattle rancher and the president of the National Beef Cattlemen's Association, said Moore Air Base had a fly-breeding facility in the 1960s that helped eradicate it in the U.S. While there are treatments for New World screwworm infestations, cattle industry officials still worry that farmers and ranchers could see huge economic losses. They, agriculture officials and scientists also said the larva can infest any mammal, including household pets, and it has occasionally been seen in humans. 'The only way to protect the American cattle herd from the devastating threat of New World screwworm is by having a sufficient supply of sterile flies to push this pest away from our border,' Wehrbein said. Texas officials said they are grateful that the U.S. is taking the screwworm threat serious and pleased with the plans for combating it, including the new facility in Texas. Officials in other states are watching the fly's migration as well and see having sterile male flies outnumber the non-sterile one is crucial to checking its migration. 'We have a real concern about wildlife because of their ability to cross the border unchecked somewhat, whether it's feral pigs, deer, wild cattle, whatever the case may be,' Kansas Animal Health Commissioner Justin Smith said in a recent interview. 'There's an opportunity for them to be our exposure risk.'
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
'Amber waves of grain' recede in America's heartland as wheat farmers struggle
By Emily Schmall COLBY, Kansas (Reuters) -On a foggy morning in May, Dennis Schoenhals drove a carload of crop scouts around the wheat fields of northern Oklahoma, part of an annual tour to evaluate the health of the crop. But on some fields, Schoenhals and other farmers had already abandoned plans to harvest the grain for sale because prices had sunk to five-year lows. Farmers cut their losses early this year across the U.S. wheat belt, stretching from Texas to Montana. They were choosing to bale the wheat into hay, plow their fields under or turn them over to animals to graze. In Nebraska, wheat acreage is less than half of what it was in 2005. For farmers with crop insurance, damaged or unprofitable wheat fields can still earn revenue. But many agree that chasing insurance payouts is not the best business model. The Great Plains have long been celebrated for the "amber waves of grain" in the popular hymn "America the Beautiful." The region's states produce most of the U.S.-grown crop of hard red winter wheat, favored by bakers for bread. But with prices hovering around $5 per bushel, U.S. wheat farmers have reached an inflection point, with many forced to either lose money, feed wheat to cattle or kill off the crop. Interviews with more than a dozen farmers and analysts across Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, along with a review of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, revealed a vast disparity in profit for wheat compared to other crops. This has led farmers to abandon more fields before harvest. In parts of the region, prolonged drought has lowered yields in recent years. Farm revenue has also suffered in years with healthy rainfall, as abundant global supplies have weighed on prices. Many have pivoted to corn, soy or livestock, often after generations of their family growing wheat exclusively. "They can't sustain that," said Schoenhals, 68, who raises crops and cattle near Kremlin, Oklahoma, and is president of the state's wheat growers association. "Eventually you either change to other crops if you're able to, or you go out of business," he said. Two years ago, severe drought drove farmers to abandon about a third of the U.S. crop. This year, healthy green stalks shot through the cracked soil, and farmers had expected to harvest the most bushels per acre since 2016. But wheat prices hit a five-year low in May. Every year since 2020, farmers have abandoned between a fifth and a third of the winter wheat crop, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Nationwide, corn and soybeans dominate crop fields, with wheat a distant third in planted acreage. Hard red winter wheat exports hit historic lows in 2024 after drought and lower prices in other wheat-producing areas of the world squeezed the U.S. commodity's competitiveness. In Kansas, the leading U.S. producer of hard winter wheat, the disparity between acreage and value is particularly stark. About 1.3 million more farm acres in Kansas were planted with wheat than with corn in 2024, USDA data show, but corn's value of production was more than twice as high. Plentiful global supplies have kept benchmark U.S. prices stuck at lows that discourage farmers from growing wheat, producers and analysts told Reuters. Supplies are so ample that droughts in important grain-growing regions of China and Russia this year have barely budged prices. 'We're below profitable levels for these guys,' said Darin Fessler, an analyst with Lakefront Futures in Lincoln, Nebraska, who grew up on a row crop farm in nearby Sutton. The way things stand, he said, many farmers have "eaten a lot of their own money and burned up working capital. These bankers are going to say: 'show me some profits or we're going to have some farm sales.'" HERITAGE BUT NO PROFIT Ties to wheat farming run deep in the Plains. Historically, European settlers in Kansas struggled to find a foothold until Mennonites from Ukraine arrived with seeds of Turkey Red wheat, a variety that proved able to withstand the area's dry soil, harsh winters and extreme temperature swings. The seeds spread to neighboring Oklahoma and Nebraska, where pioneers established homesteads in the sandy, light earth in which wheat thrived but other crops struggled. Hard red winter wheat has remained the main variety of wheat sown in the U.S. Images of golden stalks adorn hotel lobbies and road signs, and towns include the word in their names. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather, a daughter of Red Cloud, Nebraska, wrote a celebrated poem describing "the miles of fresh-plowed soil, heavy and black, full of strength and harshness." Now, U.S. wheat growing is on a steady decline, with farmers finding surer profits from corn, soybeans or cattle. On the wheat quality tour in May, weeks before Nebraska wheat is usually harvested, no wheat could be seen for miles around Red Cloud. When Royce Schaneman joined Nebraska's wheat board 19 years ago, wheat fields stretched for 2.2 million acres across the state. Since then, acreage has shrunk to less than a million acres, he said. In Cheyenne County in southern Nebraska, the state's most productive wheat-growing land, about one in five fields was abandoned this year. "The feeling out in the country is not good," he said. Generations of farmers grew wheat because the crop thrived on rainfall alone. In recent decades, farmers have invested in pricey irrigation systems, experimented with hardier varieties and used fertilizer to improve yields. Agronomists have helped farmers grow more bushels per acre even as climate change has brought more drought and pests. Producers in the southern Plains have experimented with other types of wheat such as durum, the kind used for pasta, and a gluten-free variety, pursuing customers willing to pay more. Profits remain elusive. 'It's heritage, but there's no profit," said Lon Frahm, the CEO of Frahm Farmland, a 40,000-acre operation in Colby, Kansas. Surrounding Thomas County is now dotted with wind farms. Farmers there once grew wheat exclusively, he said, but they have started to diversify due to more frequent drought and global competition depressing prices. Frahm himself now mainly plants corn. He irrigates, fertilizes and harvests the grain using multimillion-dollar machines, then stores it in gleaming, 80-foot steel grain bins. His 7,000 acres of wheat sometimes produce just 5 percent of his farm's total output. "There's certainly profit in corn," he said.
UPI
a day ago
- General
- UPI
USDA seeks to combat spread of New World screwworms into U.S.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has temporarily suspended the transport of live cattle from Mexico to stop the spread of the New World screwworm. Pictured are cattle on a ranch in Tapachula on May 22. Photo by Juan Manuel Blanco/EPA-EFE June 18 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on Wednesday announced a plan to enhance the agency's ability to detect, control and eliminate the New World screwworm, including an $8.5 million fly dispersal facility in South Texas. The screwworm, which affects livestock, wildlife, pets and, in rare cases, humans, has been eradicated from the United States for decades. But it has been detected in Mexico as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, about 700 miles away from the U.S. border. This led to the immediate suspension of live cattle, horse and bison imports through U.S. ports of entry along the southern border on May 11. When NWS maggots burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious and often deadly damage to the animal, USDA said. Mature screwworm larvae can grow up to two-thirds of an inch. "The United States has defeated NWS before and we will do it again," Rollins said. "We do not take lightly the threat NWS poses to our livestock industry, our economy and our food supply chain. The United States government will use all resources at its disposal to push back NWS, and today's announcement of a domestic strategy to bolster our border defenses is just the beginning. "We have the proven tools, strong domestic and international partnerships, and the grit needed to win this battle." Rollins appeared at the dispersal facility groundbreaking at Moore Air Base in Metapa. The agency plans to have the building completed later this year. The facility will provide an additional 60 million to 100 million sterile flies a week to stop the spread, on top of more than 100 million already produced in Panama. She met with cattle fever tick riders along the Rio Grande River. If the NWS advances northward into the United States, these tick riders "will play a crucial role in spotting and combating this pest," an agency news release said. "Texas is on the front lines of the threat posed by the New World screwworm," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said. "Proactive measures like this dispersal facility are a critical step to ensure our state and nation are prepared to respond swiftly and effectively to this challenge." The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association backs the USGA plan. "Today's announcement is pivotal in protecting the U.S. cattle industry," Stephen Diebel, executive vice president, said. "Sterile flies are the only known way to stop the reproduction and continued expansion of New World screwworm, and it's assuring to see Secretary Rollins follow through her early commitments to increasing production of sterile flies domestically." Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association told Brownfield Ag News: "We have some resources to slow that spread in Mexico. We need all of Mexico's cooperation in order to achieve that. That means not just allowing the planes to get down there and disperse the flies but the monitoring, the movement controls, the wildlife aspect of this." The USDA recently spent $21 million to help renovate an existing fruit fly production facility in Metapa, Mexico. USDA will support Mexico's strategic trapping along the shared border. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service cattle fever tick riders will work with U.S. Customs & Border Protection and state partners to intercept and treat stray and illegally introduced livestock. USDA plans to remove any federal regulatory hurdles for sufficient treatments and work with state officials on emergency management plans in states including Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Besides building the insect dispersal facility, the USDA is exploring other options to eradicate the insect. That includes using new technologies and also building another fly-production center at Moore Air Base. That facility could boost domestic sterile fly production by up to 300 million flies per week. The USGA also is studying the development of better traps and lures, as well as assessing strains or genetically modified versions of the pest that could help in eradication efforts.
Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
The US plans to open a fly factory in Texas as part of its fight against a flesh-eating parasite
The U.S. government plans to open what amounts to a fly factory by the end of the year, announcing its intent Wednesday to breed millions of the insects in Texas near the border with Mexico as part of an effort to keep a flesh-eating parasite from infesting American cattle. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said sterile male New World screwworm flies bred at the $8.5 million facility would be released into the wild to mate with females and prevent them from laying the eggs in wounds that become flesh-eating larva. It would be only the second facility for breeding such flies in the Western Hemisphere, joining one in Panama that had largely kept the flies from migrating further north until last year. The fly's appearance in southern Mexico late last year has worried agriculture and cattle industry officials and veterinarians' groups, and the U.S. last month suspended imports of live cattle, horses and bison from Mexico. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also plans to spend $21 million to convert a facility for breeding fruit flies near Mexico's southernmost border with Guatemala into one for breeding sterile New World screwworm flies, but it won't be ready for 18 months. The U.S. bred and released sterile New World screwworm flies into the wild decades ago, and it was largely banished from the country in the 1960s. Previously, it had been an annual scourge for cattle ranchers and dairy farmers, particularly in the Southeast. 'The United States has defeated NWS before, and we will do it again,' Rollins said. She held a news conference at Moore Air Base with Texas and cattle industry officials. Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said in a post Wednesday on X that Rollins' plan 'seems to us a positive step in different aspects, it will strengthen the joint Mexico-US work.' 'We trust the enthusiasm for cooperation that Secretary Rollins mentioned, and based on objective results and the reports from the USDA mission visiting us this week, we will be able to restart exports of our cattle as soon as possible,' he said. The new Texas facility would be built at Moore Air Base, less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Mexico border, and the USDA said it would also consider building a companion fly-breeding center there so that up to 300 million flies could be produced a week. The Panama facility breeds about 100 million a week, and the one in Mexico could breed as many as 100 million as well. The USDA has said the flies have been detected as close as 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) from the U.S. border, and some U.S. agriculture and cattle industry officials have worried that if the migration isn't checked, the flies could reach the border by the end of summer. Pressure from the U.S. prompted Mexico to step up efforts to control the fly's spread. Buck Wehrbein, a Nebraska cattle rancher and the president of the National Beef Cattlemen's Association, said Moore Air Base had a fly-breeding facility in the 1960s that helped eradicate it in the U.S. While there are treatments for New World screwworm infestations, cattle industry officials still worry that farmers and ranchers could see huge economic losses. They, agriculture officials and scientists also said the larva can infest any mammal, including household pets, and it has occasionally been seen in humans. 'The only way to protect the American cattle herd from the devastating threat of New World screwworm is by having a sufficient supply of sterile flies to push this pest away from our border,' Wehrbein said. Texas officials said they are grateful that the U.S. is taking the screwworm threat serious and pleased with the plans for combating it, including the new facility in Texas. Officials in other states are watching the fly's migration as well and see having sterile male flies outnumber the non-sterile one is crucial to checking its migration. 'We have a real concern about wildlife because of their ability to cross the border unchecked somewhat, whether it's feral pigs, deer, wild cattle, whatever the case may be,' Kansas Animal Health Commissioner Justin Smith said in a recent interview. 'There's an opportunity for them to be our exposure risk.'
