farming

Today on Stateside, we touched base with agriculture workers, and what some farmers are doing to keep their seasonal employees safe. Plus, writer Donavan Hohn talks about the inner coast explored in his new essay collection.

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Listen to the full show above or find individual segments below.

The further we get into growing season, the more complex life becomes for Michigan's farmers and farmworkers. They're trying to plant and harvest at a time when the world is moving in slow-motion, if at all. 

Today on Stateside, dairy farms face an uncertain future in Michigan. We speak to a sixth-generation farmer, a pair of cheesemakers in Northern Michigan, and more about the obstacles farmers face and how they are adapting.

Today on Stateside, prosecutors say they are dismissing all charges against eight people charged in connection to the Flint water crisis and starting the investigation from scratch. Plus, how autonomous "smart ships" could be part of the future of commerce and research on the Great Lakes. 

President Trump's announcement of a limited bilateral trade agreement with Mexico to replace NAFTA is being closely watched by the farming community.

The deal is a not a finished product, and it still needs to clear Congress.

Farmers are expressing frustration over the fedearl government’s unclear policies on ethanol. 

As a candidate, Donald Trump promised corn growers he would support increased use of corn ethanol in fuel.

But in recent days, EPA chief Scott Pruitt has been criticized for his handling of renewable fuel standards, which requires oil refineries mix renewable fuels such as ethanol with gasoline.

Ever since the arrival of Europeans to Michigan, farming has been a key economic component for our state. However, without the life’s work of a Michigander from South Haven, farms in Michigan and across the nation might evolved quite differently.

Mark Harvey, State Archivist at the Michigan History Center, joined Stateside to discuss the life of pioneering botanist and horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, how his “agrarian ideology” of advanced technology was received at the time, and how he’s remembered today.

As winter bows out and spring steps in, it becomes maple syrup season.

Kirk Hedding, who owns H & H Sugarbush in Chelsea with his wife Michelle, joined Stateside to discuss how the 2018 season has been shaping up, what the ideal conditions for maple syrup production are, and whether he’s worried that climate change will interrupt his business.

Michigan's dairy cows are doing their job like rock stars. 

They're pumping out milk — so much milk, in fact, that Michigan is among the top milk-producing states in the country. 

Michigan fruit growers are nearing a crucial time of the year: harvest season. But those farmers are struggling to find enough labor to fill their needs.

People are no longer turning up at the farm looking for work, said Rob Steffens, owner of Steffens Orchard in Sparta, just north of Grand Rapids. Steffens needs more than 40 workers each year for his 280-acre orchard. He’s on track to have enough this year, but he says some workers have told him they aren’t returning.

State officials want hunters to shoot more deer in northeastern lower Michigan.

Infected deer in the area spread a disease called bovine tuberculosis. It can kill cows, and it can be passed to people through unpasteurized dairy products.

President Trump has throttled back on travel and trade with Cuba. 

"Therefore, effective immediately, I am cancelling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba," President Trump said last Friday to a cheering crowd in Miami.

Among the business groups watching that announcement with intense interest was the Michigan Bean Commission, which produces the beans that are a staple of the Cuban diet.

The Next Idea

What would it mean for smaller farmers and growers to sell their crops to big distributors or for consumers to know that the head of lettuce in their salad came from a nearby farm?

In this all-too-fast-paced era we live in, it's comforting to see something that's managed to stick around for 225 years – the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

What Massachusetts schoolteacher and bookseller Robert B. Thomas started in 1792 is still with us. The 2017 edition is now out.

There's an ancient variety of squash that was largely forgotten about. But it’s been rediscovered.

Tribes around the Great Lakes region are sharing the seeds of this squash with each other and with small farmers.

Sarah Hofman-Graham works at Eighth Day Farm in Holland, Michigan. She invited me to a dinner party featuring a soup made from an ancient squash. The soup tasted sweet and mild.

Fruit growers have a new problem: they can’t buy enough young trees to plant in their orchards.

This is especially true for cherry farmers in Michigan who depend on nurseries in the Pacific Northwest. It could get worse, and some farmers are preparing for a day when they can’t buy any trees.

It’s called a "discussion meet," and the Farm Bureau’s been doing it for decades. It's a way to bring young farmers together to talk about the challenges they face. And it's also a competition.

While the farmers are talking, they’re competing for a place at the state-level discussion meet, and then a shot at representing Michigan in the national competition.

I have a little bit of good news to start the week. The United States managed, barely, to avoid crippling sanctions that would have cost Michigan farmers hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years.

Several years ago, Congress passed a law that required “country of origin labeling,” known as COOL, for all meat products, no matter where they were from.

Thanks in part to Donald Trump, terrorism and pit bulls, here’s a story you may not have heard about, but which could have a major negative impact on our economy.

Two days ago, the World Trade Organization, or WTO, ruled that Canada was fully justified in going ahead and imposing $780 million dollars in retaliatory tariffs on American goods, primarily meat, because of unfair trade practices by the U.S. government.

One evening, while my husband and I were talking with a young couple who manage a Community Supported Agriculture business, we wandered onto the topic of summer interns. Because of the couple’s urban location, their CSA drew workers from the local college who were eager to build raised beds and weed beets.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is a big-deal writer who has won some fancy awards, including a Pushcart Prize, and she was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in fiction. Poor and working-class rural women are at the heart of many of her stories. Michigan Radio's Kyle Norris recently got a chance to ask her why she writes about these women.

Campbell is putting the finishing touches on her next book of stories. It will be called "Mothers, Tell Your Daughters," and will be published next fall.

The recent Toledo water crisis has farmers in Michigan and Ohio on the defensive. They’re pointing to a number of voluntary efforts they’re making to reduce phosphorus runoff to Lake Erie. That runoff is the main food source for the blooms of a kind of cyanobacteria that release a toxin that led to the water shutdown. But farm groups and environmentalists say a new state law in Ohio that will certify the use of fertilizers doesn't go far enough or happen fast enough. 

"Basically, the new law will require that all farmers and certified crop advisors who spread chemical fertilizer on fields go through a certification process where they will learn how to spread the fertilizer in the right place, at the right rate, at the right time of year," says Karen Schaefer, an Ohio reporter who is covering this issue. "And the problem with it is: right now it does not include manure and the law does not go into effect until 2017."