Top Agriculture News

(Washington, D.C., March 28, 2025) — U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins will visit six international markets in her first six months as Secretary to expand markets and boost American agricultural exports. At a time when the agricultural trade deficit is at nearly $50 billion following the previous administration’s little to no action in the international […]

This is the SFN Market Report with Brooks Schaffer of Palmetto Grain. Reach him at [email protected] or 843-540-4540. Volume in the grain markets has been extremely low. It has the feel of a holiday market but there is no holiday. Harvest is over the hump in Brazil and getting rolling in Argentina with no major […]

At least a half-dozen large wildfires continue to burn in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina and North Carolina. Nicole Taylor had to leave her home with the porch that overlooks Table Rock Mountain in South Carolina. She took video of the smoke pouring off the ridge until an evacuation order came Tuesday. She says she doesn’t know when she can go home. So far no one has been hurt in the fires that have burned more than 20 square miles of mostly rugged remote forests. The firefighting is slow. Water sources are scarce, so crews depend on building fire breaks.

More people have been asked to leave their homes in the North Carolina and South Carolina mountains as wildfires spread and the forecast for the rest of the week isn’t encouraging. A half-dozen large fires are burning in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Millions of fallen trees from September’s Hurricane Helene are both providing fuel for the wildfires and blocking the logging roads and paths firefighters use to fight the blazes and create fire breaks. The forecast for this week is dry and windy. There’s a chance of rain over the weekend, but forecasters say it isn’t likely to be the kind of downpour that can knock a fire out on its own.

Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced USDA is issuing up to $10 billion directly to agricultural producers through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program for the 2024 crop year. That’s welcome news to American farmers challenged by low prices and high costs, but uncertainty remains. In a Farmers for Free Trade webinar, Jordan Dux, […]

Cattle producers face a complex market as economic signals and drought conditions create uncertainty. Ben Brown, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri, says they are closely watching consumer economic signals and are concerned about potential declines impacting meat prices. “Quite a few people are nervous that some of the consumer and macro-economic signals […]

Dry conditions, wind and trees downed by Hurricane Helene are fueling wildfires in North and South Carolina. Officials say evacuation orders are in effect Tuesday in some parts of the states while they continue to monitor the blazes. Three fires are burning in a rural North Carolina county about 80 miles west of Charlotte. At least one of the fires was caused by a downed power line. In South Carolina, two fires are burning in a mountainous region and both have no containment so far. A forestry professor says trees downed during last year’s Hurricane Helene dropped tons of fuel on the ground for the fires.

This is the SFN Market Report with Brooks Schaffer of Palmetto Grain. Reach him at [email protected] or 843-540-4540. Today, Tuesday March 25th, is only 6 days away from the all important Prospective Planting and Quarterly Stocks Report that USDA will release Monday March 31st at 12 noon. I will be able to include all the […]

We know agriculture is a cornerstone of the American economy. But on National Ag Day last week, we got some specifics. Tell us about this, Commissioner. We are members of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), which works with 35 other groups to commission the annual Feeding the Economy report. This report […]

Every March, we join N.C. A&T State University to celebrate the 39th Annual Small Farms Week and the contributions small farms make to their communities and the state. North Carolina is a small farm state with over 81 % of farms being 200 acres or less and 50 % being under 50 acres. Many of […]