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ARC and PLC Program
March 16 Deadline Approaches
WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Farm Service Agency (FSA) is encouraging producers to enroll in
the Agriculture Risk (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs before the
March 16 deadline for the crop year 2019.
"Because of the importance and complexities of the ARC and PLC programs, please do not wait to start the enrollment process," said FSA Administrator Richard Fordyce. "Please call your FSA county office and make an appointment to ensure your elections are made and contracts signed ahead of the deadline." Until March 16, producers who have not yet enrolled in ARC or PLC for 2019 can enroll for both 2019 and 2020 during the same visit to an FSA county office. A one-time opportunity to update PLC payment yields could be beneficial to producers in some areas beginning with crop year 2020. Resources for producers including a yield update calculator can be found here or here under the 'Resources' tab. The programs cover the following commodities: barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium and short grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed, temperate japonica rice, and wheat. ARC and PLC election decision tools developed by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University, in conjunction with the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri, are available here. To enroll, contact your FSA county office for an appointment. |
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World Market Price
Group Meets at Conclusion of GAC
WASHINGTON, DC -- Following the
wrap-up of last week's USA Rice Government Affairs Conference, the USA Rice
World Market Price Subcommittee met here for the first of their three meetings
scheduled in 2020. The Subcommittee met with representatives from the
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Farm Production and
Conservation Mission Area, and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).
Because it is the middle of the annual marketing cycle and pre-planting season, discussions revolved around 2019 crop yields, predictions for 2020 planted acreage, and 2019/2020 marketing year exports. NASS reminded participants to encourage their friends and neighbors to complete the upcoming set of surveys to better inform the 2020 NASS Prospective Plantings Report. FAS staff shared that the World Market Price increase since the Subcommittee's October 2019 meeting can be attributed to increased prices by large exporters, including Thailand and Vietnam.
The Subcommittee is next scheduled to meet in May.
Because it is the middle of the annual marketing cycle and pre-planting season, discussions revolved around 2019 crop yields, predictions for 2020 planted acreage, and 2019/2020 marketing year exports. NASS reminded participants to encourage their friends and neighbors to complete the upcoming set of surveys to better inform the 2020 NASS Prospective Plantings Report. FAS staff shared that the World Market Price increase since the Subcommittee's October 2019 meeting can be attributed to increased prices by large exporters, including Thailand and Vietnam.
The Subcommittee is next scheduled to meet in May.
TikTok
user uses rice to show Jeff Bezos' enormous wealth
Humphrey Yang pretended that one grain of rice was equivalent to
$ 100,000 and then counted till $ 1 billion
One rice grain represented $ 100,000
·
·
TikTok user
Humphrey Yang took to the app to create an attention-grabbing visual
representation of Jeff Bezos' net worth with grains of rice. The video later
went viral on Twitter.
Yang is
a 32-year-old eCommerce consultant and freelancer from Silicon Valley,
California. To make the video, Yang asked users to imagine that one grain of
rice was equivalent to USD 100,000. He then counted ten such grains with
the total coming to USD 1 million. Yang then continued to count the grains by
hand till he reached 10,000, the representative amount now measuring up to USD
1 billion.
Yang
then took out a few grains from the USD 1 billion bunch, demonstrating how even
after taking out millions of dollars the billion-dollar pile of rice looked the
same.
After
his video went viral on Twitter, Yang decided to create a second video that
especially represented Jeff Bezos's net worth in rice form.
In the
video titled "Rice. Part Two," Yang used a digital scale to measure
the weight of the billion-dollar rice pile. He then goes to a shop to buys two
big bags of rice. He brings the bags homes and then begins to count to the
amount equivalent to Jezz Bezos's net worth.
"Once
I had that 10,000 grains of rice counted out I knew how much it weighed,"
Yang told Mashable in an email. "Then [I] multiplied it out to figure that
Jeff Bezos' approximate net worth was around 58 pounds of rice."
The 58
pounds of rice thus measured was equivalent to USD 122 Billion, which was Jeff
Bezos's net worth at the time of the shooting of the video. Bezo's pile was so
huge that Yang was easily able to horizontally bury a desktop keyboard in it.
Yang,
who started using TikTok at the end of 2019 because he "wanted to educate
Gen-Z and young millennials on financial literacy," often shares financial
and business-related advice with his followers. Yang said that he got the idea
to represent money using rice from a youtube video he saw many years ago. Yang
was satisfied with how his version turned out.
"The
process was tedious, the cleanup was a mess, but the video was great! I am glad
I got to tell a story, show viewers the scale of money, and hopefully educate
them on how much a billion vs 100+ billion is," he said.
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Odisha
Government Organises Krushi Odisha To Empower Its Farmers
1st March,
2020
‘Krushi Odisha’,
the annual flagship five-day exhibition cum agriculture fair was organised by
the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha in
collaboration with FICCI. The fair was held from 20-24th January 2020 at Janata
Maidan, Bhubaneswar. The mega program envisages leading farmers to
profitability. Krushi Odisha takes into consideration various aspects of
agriculture including farm income, implements, modern technology in farming,
financial assistance to farmers and capacity building. The second day of Krushi
Odisha is being celebrated as Cooperation and Banking Day.
The highlight of
the Cooperation and Banking Day was that it was celebrated in the evening in
presence of Dr Arun Kumar Sahoo, Hon’ble Minister for Agriculture and Farmers’
Empowerment, Fisheries and Animal Resources Development and Higher Education,
Government of Odisha. A user guide, as well as a website on e-licensing for
farmers, was launched by the Government of Odisha on the occasion.
The Hon’ble
Minister said that Krushi Odisha is an opportune platform for development and
awareness of farmers in the state and that the Naveen Patnaik-led government is
working tirelessly towards enhancing the farmers’ income. The e-licensing
website launched today will immensely help our farmer brothers. Dr. Arun Kumar
Sahoo also visited the exhibition and stalls.
“A user guide, as well as a website on e-licensing for farmers,
was launched by the Government of Odisha on the occasion.”
The Chief Guest
of the occasion, Sri Ranendra Pratap Swain, Hon’ble Minister for Food Supplies
and Consumer Welfare Co-operation, invoked the Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi
while addressing the gathering. He said that Gandhiji always talked about empowering the
farmers. He then went on to say that discussion on farmer suicide mitigation
and decreasing dependence on imports for potato and onions should be made at
forums like Krushi Odisha. He extended full support of his department towards
farmer welfare. He also pointed out that while farmers over the country are facing
losses,
farmers in Odisha are seeing an upward trend in their income and lifestyle,
thanks to the farmer-friendly policies of the state government.
The day
consisted of two seminars and two pathshaalas running
simultaneously from 10-1 pm and then 2-5 pm respectively. The first seminar of
the day was on ‘Climate Smart Technology’ and ‘Water Resources Management for
Improved Productivity in Agriculture’. The session was moderated by Mr Tapan
Padhy, Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC.
J.K. Rath,
Chairman, FICCI MSME Committee, Odisha, introduced the panel, which included
Tapan Padhy, Director of Water and Forestry Programme, RCDC, Mr Anjan Mandal, Chief
of Sales and Marketing, SkyMet Weather, Dr Sangita Ladha, VP-Marketing and
Business Development, Jain Irrigation and Pushpendra Johari, Sr VP, RMSI Noida.
Tapan Padhy
discussed how climate change has outsmarted all of us and suggested ways and
means of carrying out sustainable agriculture in the time of climate change.
Similarly, Anjan Mandal focused on forecasting technologies for
agriculture supply chain management. He elaborated on the app developed by
SkyMet Weather, SkyMitra, which helps in giving local farmers advance weather
forecast in seven languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi,
Telugu, Odia and Punjabi. He also informed that SkyMet has put up than 7,000
Automated Weather Stations (AWS) across the country, with over 100 AWS located
in Odisha in Bhadrak, Balasore and Ganjam districts.
Dr Sangita Ladha
is an M. Tech from IIT Kharagpur. She delved on the issues of greenhouse
technology and precision farming. She displayed a video where her team planted
a grapevine across 600 hectares of desert in Israel by using drip irrigation
methods. The first paathshala of
the day was on ‘Farm Mechanisation and Micro Irrigation for Minimising
Production Cost’. The paathshala enlightened
the audience on important facts like how Odisha uses power tillers more than
any other state in the country. The paathshala lay
stress on the fact that in order to increase production, we have to increase
usage of farm machine tools from the existing 40 percent to a more advanced 90
percent, like the USA.
The second
seminar of the day was on the topic: Sustainable Solutions for Agriculture in
India with Special Focus on Odisha. Dr M Muthukumar, Director of Agriculture
and Food Production, Govt. of Odisha was present on the occasion. He said that
industrialisation and urbanisation have led to loss of farmland. He also
pointed that Odisha has achieved doubling of farm income, but as we see, farm
income has lessened while non-farm income has increased.
Session
moderator Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Director, National Rice Research Institute
(NRRI) welcomed everyone, from scientists to students and farmers, to the
event. He said:
“In India, we have been cultivating paddy for the last 7,000
years. It has become a part not only of our food but also our culture. Rice is
not just a business, it’s our heritage. No social or community program is
complete without rice and it forms a big part of society in Odisha, India and
in fact the whole of Asia.”
Dr. Arvind
Kumar, Director, IRRI, International Rice Research Institute, South Asia
Regional Centre (ISARC), stressed on the need for transforming a food-deficit
Asia to a food secure one. He also said, “I don’t think there is a trade-off
between sustainable agriculture and farmer’s profitability.”
Likewise, the
second paathshala of
the day focused on ‘Risk in Agriculture – Management and Mitigation’. The paathshala educated
farmers on mitigation of problems faced by them right from sowing seeds, to
harvesting their crops, and the insurance policy of the government of Odisha.
The day was concluded by a cultural program that was thoroughly enjoyed by the
audience.
Featured image
provided by the author.
M&S
to expand scheme where shoppers bring their own containers to fill with coffee,
rice, pasta and cereal - after eco-friendly offerings outsold packaged products
·
Marks and Spencer announced plan to expand
'fill-your-own' container scheme
·
The news follows a popular trial in a Southampton
branch of the supermarket
·
Found 25 of 44 'fill-your-own' products
outsold the pre-packaged alternatives
·
Come as eco-friendly shoppers turn away from
throwaway plastic packaging
PUBLISHED: 14:28 GMT, 2 March 2020 | UPDATED: 20:32 GMT, 2 March
2020
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Marks
and Spencer have announced plans to expand an eco-friendly refill scheme which
allows shoppers to fill their containers with food from dispensers in their
stores after the offerings outsold packaged products.
The
retailer's initial 'fill-your-own' shopping scheme at it's Southampton store
has proved so popular with customers that it's now set to be expanded to
further stores around the UK.
Announcing
the news, M&S said that 25 of it's 44 'fill-your-own' products were
outselling the pre-packaged alternatives at the store, including porridge oats,
basmati rice and milk chocolate raisins.
The
efforts by M&S are evidence of a major shift across all the major
supermarkets - and other retailers - to reduce the use of throwaway plastic
packaging, which is seen as wasteful and a threat to the environment and
wildlife.
+3
·
Marks and Spencer have announced their eco-friendly
'fill-your-own' scheme will be expanded this month after a popular trial at a
store in Southampton (pictured, shoppers using their own containers to purchase
dried goods)
Fill-your-own
schemes have long-been popular at independent stores, where customers are
invited to bring a container to replenish dried-food or pantry-food
supplies.
However
in recent years, supermarket chains have taken to testing them in an effort to
reduce single-use plastics.
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The
original trial in Southampton, which launched in December, offered 44 plastic
packaging-free products from coffee and cereal to sweets and pasta at the Hedge
End retail park store.
It
offered free, widely recyclable paper bags for customers who arrive at the
store without containers to hand.
+3
·
The retailer announced they'd be expanding the initiative
to further stores after a successful trial at a store in
Southampton
Bestselling
products on the scheme include M&S’s Triple Chocolate Crunch cereal, Whole
Scottish Porridge Oats, Basmati Rice, Milk Chocolate Raisins, Single Origin
Brazil Coffee and Fiorelli Pasta.
After
the success of the initiative, the trial will be extended to the firm's
Manchester city centre store in March, before it looks at rolling the concept
out at other shops across the country.
M&S'
move to encourage more sustainable retail practices across more of it stores
highlights a clear shift in the UK's retail landscape towards sustainability as
of late.
Will
Broome, CEO and Founder of Ubamarket, an app which acts like a supermarket
sat-nav, called the move by M&S 'extremely encouraging'.
+3
·
The scheme allows shoppers to purchase dried goods, like
coffee, pasta and rice, at a reduced rate if they bring their own
container
He
revealed: 'It's extremely encouraging to see retailers such as M&S taking
major steps towards creating a more sustainable future for the food retail
sector, and retail across the board.
'Sustainability
is no longer just a buzzword; it is quickly becoming a necessity for retailers
wanting to prosper and develop into a more environmentally conscious society,
as widespread consumer demand and threat of impending legislation suggest that
there is no turning back.'
In
recent weeks some of Britain's biggest retailers, including Asda and Tesco, have
announced plans to cut down plastic waste, with Tesco removing plastic
packaging from multipack tins and the launch of Asda's 'sustainability store'.
And
in June last year, Waitrose launched a trial at a store in Oxford that
involved taking more than 200 products out of their packaging and selling them
loose to people who use their own containers.
Eco-friendly couple launch Britain's first
zero-waste supermarket
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