Not bad
OPINION: New Zealand may be a minnow on the global stage but here’s another example how our ag sector punches above its weight.
Tom Vilsack has been confirmed to take up his old role as the head of the US Department of Agriculture.
Former US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack has been confirmed to take up to his old role as the head of the US Department of Agriculture.
Following a Senate vote last month, Vilsack returns to the job he held under the Obama administration in new President Joe Biden’s cabinet. His nomination met little resistance in the Senate, which only set aside 20 minutes for debate over his nomination.
While farm groups welcomed the nomination of Vilsack, Biden faces some political headwinds in the US farm sector.
In the first Farm Journal Pulse to gauge support for the Biden Administration, only 14% of the 1,459 farmers surveyed said they approve of the job done by the new administration.
Of those surveyed, 75% said they strongly disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as President.
At his confirmation hearing, Vilsack noted that while he is returning to his former job, the circumstances are very different.
Vilsack served as USDA Secretary for nearly the entirety of the Obama administration, from 2009 until 2017.
After leaving USDA, he was chief executive of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
Prior to his first stint as agriculture secretary, Vilsack was Governor of Iowa from 1999-2007.
BNZ says it is backing aspiring dairy farmers through an innovative new initiative that helps make the first step to farm ownership or sharemilking a little easier.
LIC chief executive David Chin says meeting the revised methane reduction targets will rely on practical science, smart technology, and genuine collaboration across the sector.
Lincoln University Dairy Farm will be tweaking some management practices after an animal welfare complaint laid in mid-August, despite the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) investigation into the complaint finding no cause for action.
A large slice of the $3.2 billion proposed capital return for Fonterra farmer shareholders could end up with the banks.
Opening a new $3 million methane research barn in Waikato this month, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay called on the dairy sector to “go as fast as you can and prove the concepts”.
New Zealand’s trade with the European Union has jumped $2 billion since a free trade deal entered into force in May last year.

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