A Chinese-owned glass plant in Ohio is 'clobbering' its American competitors

Despite the economic boost that foreign investment can bring U.S. manufacturing, its outcomes can sometimes have negative consequences when a foreign-owned company "clobbers" its longtime American-owned competitor. 

"The rise of a Chinese automotive-glass plant in the Ohio heartland shows the risks when America’s biggest rival sets up shop," reports Gavin Bade of The Wall Street Journal.

Over the past decade, Fuyao Glass America has chipped away at its competitor's edge. "Vitro, the company that owns a plant in Crestline, Ohio, has spent the past year considering whether to shut down," Bade writes. "Fuyao is threatening about 250 jobs at the rival glass factory [that has been] operating since the 1950s."

When Chinese automotive glass maker, Fuyao, partnered with state and federal lawmakers to move into an abandoned General Motors factory in tiny Moraine, Ohio, the project "was hailed as a step to reviving a battered Rust Belt region," Bade explains. Ohio taxpayers, who supported Fuyao's move into the region, "now feel duped," according to the report.

Since 2019, Vitro has "shut three auto-glass plants in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana — decisions the company attributes in large part to Chinese competition," Bade reports. American companies like Vitro say they can't compete with Fuyao's pricing and accuse the company of unfair business and labor practices.

A federal raid on the Fuyao plant in 2024 led U.S. authorities to accuse dozens of Chinese business owners of colluding "to facilitate the harboring, transportation, and employment of illegal aliens at various factories,” including Fuyao, which allegedly funneled $126 million to companies in the scheme," Bade writes.

"Fuyao denies any wrongdoing," Bade adds. "Vitro and its Washington allies say Fuyao’s success reflects a way Beijing might try to hollow out American manufacturing capacity and undermine critical industries."

Despite concerns over lost sales and expenses, many farmers still support the Trump administration's tariffs

Like many farmers, Roberts supports the tariffs as a trade tool.
(Photo by Nick Judin, Mississippi Free Press)

Part of the Trump administration's tariffs target U.S. agricultural goods, but many U.S. farmers support the levies despite any current economic pain. "A May survey of 400 U.S. producers found that 70% believe the tariffs will strengthen their industry in the long term," report Illan Ireland and Nick Judin of the Mississippi Free Press. "The same poll found that just 43% of respondents think the levies will hurt their earnings this year, down from 56% a month earlier."

Many American farmers who favor the tariffs are thinking about longer-term trade benefits. Ireland and Judin explain, "China is a top destination for U.S. agricultural exports like soybeans, and getting it to buy a set amount of crops each year would guarantee a market for producers without the threat of competition, one economist explained. That certainty, in turn, would stabilize commodity crop prices."

The tariffs also pose risks, including helping South American producers grab a bigger share of the Chinese soybean market. That risk, along with high input costs and possible labor shortages has spurred concerns among some farmers. The Free Press reports, "Trump’s trade war has proven divisive for American farmers — a group that overwhelmingly backed the president during last year’s election, according to a county-level analysis by Investigate Midwest."

At present the tariffs between the U.S. and China remain in play. Ireland and Judin write, "As of June 11, the U.S. and China have reportedly reached a tentative accord to de-escalate their trade dispute without inking a significant deal. According to The New York Times, some tariffs will remain in place on both sides. . . . China has canceled mass shipments of American farm products, and industry groups warn that a lengthy trade dispute could further reduce demand for U.S. exports."

Mississippi farmer Pepper Roberts says he's planning for an uncertain season. Ireland and Judin add, "Roberts steadfastly supports the tariffs. He also has some savings from past years to fall back on if things go south." Roberts told reporters, "You can’t hit a grand slam every year. We all want the biggest profit we can ever make, but when I cross (the) break-even point, I’m ready to lock something in.”

U.S. farmers already had big worries. New tariffs, USDA cuts and funding freezes have hit them 'on all fronts.'

U.S. soybean farmers have yet to regain market share
with China after Trump's first-term tariffs. (A.S. photo)

 

U.S. farmers are getting squeezed from all sides by U.S. tariffs, crackdowns on undocumented workers and changes at the Department of Agriculture. Many of the new administration's policies have put farmers' livelihoods on the chopping block. Some farmers admit the pressure cooker of change and uncertain financial outlook is pushing them to reconsider their support for President Trump's policies and the actions of his appointed officials.

Before the new administration began making dramatic policy changes and cuts, farmers were "already struggling with low prices, high expenses and unpredictable — and at times, destructive— weather," reports Kristina Peterson of The Wall Street Journal. "But now, farmers — traditionally a key block of support for Trump — are also contending with USDA and foreign-aid funding that is frozen or in limbo," plus deportations "in an already tight agricultural-labor market" and the possibility of "another crippling trade war."

Jim Hartman is a military veteran turned North Carolina honey bee farmer who has already lost roughly $100,000 in expected farm revenue from USDA program cuts. The lifelong Republican voter told Peterson, “Stuff like this is pushing me left."

Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association and a soy farmer in Magnolia, Ky., told Peterson, "“It’s hitting us on all fronts. You’re talking about the potential of a flat-out crisis in rural America and the farm economy.”

A recent AgWeb poll shows that a majority of farmers do not approve of Trump's current use of tariffs. "Just over half of farmers, 54%, said they didn’t support Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool, according to a poll of nearly 3,000 farmers," Peterson reports. "Farmers accustomed to dealing with uncertainty from the weather and the markets said the federal government, which spends tens of billions of dollars to support them each year, is usually a force helping them offset that instability."

Trump's enthusiasm for using and increasing tariffs "has many in rural America nervous," Peterson writes. "Trump’s first trade war led to more than $27 billion in losses of agricultural export. In response, China started importing more soybeans from Brazil, and U.S. soybean farmers have yet to regain their market share."

Hartman believes USDA changes will cut his yearly predicted revenue in half. He told Peterson, "This has fallen on the backs of small farmers. . . . The people Trump's appointed and the way they’re going about things, it’s not OK."

Reflecting on the pandemic as Covid-19 comes back, Iowa editor writes: 'This is a lot for any nation to absorb'

Art Cullen

As U.S. pharmacies roll out updated Covid-19 booster vaccines, it might be a good time to look at how much the pandemic still alters daily life around the planet. The trauma and changes brought on by Covid-19 still cast a long shadow, Iowa editor Art Cullen writes for his Storm Lake Times Pilot.

"It's impossible to forget: I was on the phone one dank morning in the spring of 2020 with brother John, who lives just a block east. We were isolating at home, trying to figure out what to do with the newspaper. Should we just shut it down? . . . We decided we couldn't quit. . . . . We're okay now, but the thought of it still traumatizes me. . . . People were dying every week. Some businesses never came back.

"We're still living it. The latest iteration of Covid spreads as classes resume. The psychological trauma persists. Friendships eroded through isolation and political extremity. Eating habits changed from dine-in to carry-out. Church attendance dropped even farther. . . . Shocks to the food system continue to ripple. . . The pork and poultry industries are beset by trouble as supply chains work out the huge whipsaws of the past four years. Food prices have moderated but continue to fire inflation sparked by the pandemic shutdown.

Cullen writes that changes go well beyond the United States. "The pandemic rewired world trade. China is reeling. Brazil has become the most-favored soybean trader with Asia. . . . These are huge changes that have not been fully digested. . . . 

"This is a lot for any nation to absorb. We are still working through it. . . . Early polling that confirms a general angst over everything — call it the blues or clinical depression. . . . The pandemic casts a shadow over our personal lives, our communities and politics. Supply shocks, inflation, rewriting world trade, and unkinking food supply chain links all are moving parts in this complex machinery. . . . American resilience is amazing. Democracy and justice have prevailed so far," Cullen writes.

"Still, we are not post-pandemic. It colors everything. Gov. [Kim] Reynolds last week rejected the idea of any more lockdowns. 'My answer—not on my watch,' she said. Not that anybody in Iowa was actually suggesting another shutdown. It just shows how the trauma of it still animates us."

New book illuminates challenges of family farming by following a Nebraska family for a year

The survival of traditional family farms – those large enough to financially support a family but small enough to be worked and managed almost entirely by family members – has been under pressure for several decades in the U.S.

A new book, This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm, by journalist and poet Ted Genoways, looks at the day-to-day challenges and financial realities of farming that exists on a scale somewhere between huge corporate agriculture and smaller, specialized ventures.

Genoways wanted to explore the world of farmers who are trying to pass on their land and way of life to the next generation while dealing with a range of political and market factors that affect their ability to make a living. Recognizing changes in consumer habits, he asked, "Is all of this really helping family farmers? How do they feel about a food movement that lionizes ideologically-driven operations like Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms, the pastoral curmudgeon made famous in Omnivore's Dilemma, and vilifies generations-old operations in the middle of the country, where many farmers have no choice but to raise commodity grains - principally corn and soybeans - just to keep their families afloat?"

The book follows Nebraska farmers Rick and Heidi Hammond and their daughter, Meghan, who raise corn, soybeans and cattle. The family began farming in Nebraska in the 1860s. "I saw firsthand conversations about what to do at a particular moment on a soybean farm in rural Nebraska that was directly influenced by what was happening at that moment in China," Genoways describes.

Lorraine Boissoneault writes for Smithsonian magazine, "Genoways says farmers follow everything from trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the debate over NAFTA and immigration from Mexico - to which the Mexican government has suggested it might stop imports of American corn."

In the face of these geopolitical issues and more traditional farm challenges, such as harsh weather, field pests and plant diseases, the Hammonds are trying like many other farm families to make a living and preserve their most precious resource: their land.

"He's not your typical 2017 farm hero, but, as Genoways artfully illustrates, [Rick] Hammond is working hard to pass his farm on to the next generation against the odds," Twilight Greenaway writes for Civil Eats. "And the myriad challenges family farms like his face – from unstable prices to a diminishing water supply and increasingly erratic weather – are worth our attention."

Genoways is also the author of the 2014 book, The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food.

One of five remaining U.S. aluminum smelters may survive, thanks to international trade loophole; trade experts warn of unintended effects

Century Aluminum (Photo from The Washington Post)

Twice in the past five years, the Century Aluminum plant at Hawesville, Ky., has served legal notice that it would shut down permanently before pulling its business back from the brink of financial collapse, typical in an industry where a glut of cheap metal from China has flooded the market and forced many plants out of business.

Hawesville, on the Ohio River east of Owensboro, is in a region where jobs in the metal industry, ubiquitous for decades, have become a rapidly disappearing way of life, Ana Swanson writes for The Washington Post. Hope was restored in Hawesville in April, however, when President Trump announced that his administration was considering restricting imports of foreign-forged aluminum in the name of national security, arguing that the country can make its own war machines, some question possible outcomes. Century is the last U.S. smelter that makes the high-purity aluminum used in armored vehicles.

"A decision by the Trump administration to use national security to protect an industry would be among the most dramatic — and risky — moves in the president’s trade agenda, which seeks to limit what he regards as unfair foreign competition," Swanson writes. "While intervention could be a boon for Hawesville, it could raise prices for other customers and companies — including the federal government, which ultimately buys the armored vehicles and fighter jets made from the aluminum."

Amid debate over how far the government should go to protect certain industries in the era of global competition and technological innovation, some trade and industry experts question whether the administration is using national security as veiled economic protectionism. The decision, based on a Commerce Department investigation, will come out in June, Trump said in a tweet Saturday night: "Will take more action if necessary."

Click on maps to view larger versions

"The debate over aluminum’s future in the United States comes after 20 years of China flooding the global market with the metal, depressing prices to a level at which few American companies can compete. The U.S. has gone from having 23 operational aluminum smelters in 1993 to just five today, with only two running at full capacity," Swanson reports. The Hawesville plant has laid off more than 300 people in the last two years and has been scrapping unused machinery for extra cash. Another dip in global prices could close its doors permanently. The more than 200 jobs that remain, while they pay well for the area, are grueling ones: often 16 hours of physical labor in temperatures reaching 140 degrees.

"If the administration’s investigation finds that the country’s defense capabilities are being compromised by the decline of aluminum plants like the one in Hawesville, the president would have the power to impose tariffs or other restrictions on imports. Because it’s in the name of national security, Trump could circumvent a longer, more complicated process for changing trade policy at the World Trade Organization," Swanson explains. The Trump administration has relied on a rarely used trade measure, a Section 232 probe. Any resulting action could have unintended consequences. Past administrations have used Section 232 sparingly, because of the concern that this exception to international trade guidelines might become the new normal. "If we can use national security to block aluminum imports, other countries can and will use it to block agriculture and aviation imports," said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Widespread use of 232 by the United States won't just curb imports, it will curb trade."

Post series on rural death rates end in another town that says 'This isn't the place it used to be'

A billboard on US 23 in Chillicothe offers help. Locals say the road
brings dealers from the north; it leads south to Portsmouth, site of
Dreamland, Sam Quinones' book about how "pill mills" helped create
the opioid epidemic. (Washington Post photo by Bonnie Jo Mount)

The Washington Post ended its year-long series about "an epidemic of self-destruction in small-town and rural America" with a visit by Joel Achenbach to Chillicothe, Ohio, where 40 people died of overdoses in 2015, three times the number recorded in 2012.

"Chillicothe was once protected from urban pathologies by its very remoteness. Today, everyone lives in a wired, networked, smaller world," Achenbach reports. "Addiction is like termite rot, eating at the foundation of a community. This cultural self-destruction is particularly pernicious when women with children can’t function as mothers."

In an accompanying piece, Achenbach takes a broader look: "It’s a national phenomenon without a single, simple explanation. A study by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, published in late 2015, brought national attention to the spike in the white death rate. Our data analysis showed that this was driven largely by increased mortality in white women, and we also found a geographical gradient: The death rates had jumped most significantly outside big cities."

Achenbach drove US 50, "the backbone of America," and found people "falling victim to drugs, drink and suicide — the so-called diseases of despair. . . . They’ve found a great deal of traction in places facing economic decline and social stagnation. That describes much of rural and small-town America and certainly the industrial areas of the so-called Rust Belt. . . . As globalization took hold, factory jobs grew scarcer in small cities as well. The U.S. economy began to concentrate wealth in big cities and along the coasts. Unions lost power, and unskilled labor jobs saw little or no wage growth. Now add to this the prescription painkillers heavily marketed since the 1990s. There arose a pill economy, with pills as good as cash. The opioid epidemic exploded in places that are far away, physically and culturally, from the neighborhoods where lawmakers and media figures typically live."

Achenbach writes, "Along the road, I talked to judges, police officers, truant officers, addiction recovery counselors, addicts, and ordinary people coming and going. There was a common theme: This isn’t the place it used to be."

Social problems in rural areas change nature of USDA and its concept of rural development

Pomeroy, Ohio (Bloomberg News photo by Ty Wright)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is "becoming Uncle Sam’s lead tool to fight a social emergency -- soaring drug use, rising suicide rates and deepening poverty -- spreading across the heartland," Alan Bjerga reports for Bloomberg News.

“We’re charged with the responsibility of filling the gap to make sure rural America hasn’t been forgotten,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Bjerga, who reported from Pomeroy, Ohio, "a town of about 1,800 people about 200 miles south of Cleveland, where . . . the opioid epidemic has accompanied an ebbing-away of jobs and, among some demographics, an unprecedented drop in life expectancy. Any Norman Rockwell idyll of white-picket fences and unlocked front doors has long since been upended by globalization."

"Such social problems have changed the government’s conception of rural development, says Vilsack, who’s under consideration by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as a possible running mate. Five years ago, “We might have made a grant for a fire station,” he said in an interview. “Now it might be a substance-abuse center.” (As a candidate in 1982007, Clinton said she favored renaming the Agriculture Department the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.)

“Most people in cities are now several generations away from life on the farm, and some even think of rural areas as our dumping ground,” eminent Cornell University sociologist Daniel Lichter told Bjega. “It’s where we send our prisoners, our garbage and our toxic waste.”

Bjerga says USDA's role illustrates a point not often made: "The government, like the wider culture, is much more attuned to the problems of urban areas where most Americans live. That’s why Donald Trump’s message -- repeated at the Republican National Convention up the road in Cleveland, where he accepted the nomination last night -- of fighting for the small-town folks has resonated so much in rural parts of swing states like Ohio."

Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies, told Bjerga, “When your government is based on the assumption that the country is going to be 90 percent urban, you’re going to concentrate resources on urban areas,” Davis said. “The USDA becomes the ‘rural’ agency that’s left with this wide mandate, even if it’s not always the best fit.” (Read more)

War on Poverty was declared 50 years ago tomorrow

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's declaration of the War on Poverty as part of his Great Society program, in his first State of the Union speech, so it's time for retrospectives.

The latest is an op-ed piece in The New York Times from Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economist for Vice President Biden. "Much of what we've done to reduce poverty has been highly successful," but that started with Social Security, which started in the 1930s and was expended in the 1960s, he writes. "Yet I suspect that if I could sit President Johnson down and explain to him all we’ve done to maintain and expand the policy arsenal he helped to introduce half a century ago, he’d be surprised that there’s still so much economic hardship." Bernstein explores the reasons for that: "globalization, deunionization, lower minimum wages, slack labor markets and decreasing returns to lower-end jobs," as well as "not getting enough schooling, single parenthood, or having children out of wedlock." The answer, he says, is strengthening the underlying economy.

Unfortunately, the Times has tripped on some rural nuances of the beginning of the poverty war. Annie Lowrey had a good, relatively short story on Sunday, but it was marred by the line that "parts of Appalachia lacked electricity and indoor plumbing." No parts did, but many homes did. The next day, the newspaper published a written debate about the need for another poverty war, illustrated with a photo of Johnson visiting "the Inez family of Kentucky." That was the family of Tom Fletcher, who lived near Inez.

Poverty is disproportionately rural. "While showing the limits of government intervention to create economic opportunity, the War on Poverty also changed rural America for the better," the Daily Yonder says in an introduction to a retrospective by Timothy Collins, assistant director for research, policy, outreach, and sustainability at the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University in Macomb.

Collins includes excerpts from Johnson's speech and notes that his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, was planning a major effort to fight poverty. Hours before he was assassinated, the White House confirmed for Kentucky officials that he would visit the state in early December. Johnson made the trip, including a visit with the Fletchers, in April 1964. Here's a video of it and other stops on his "poverty tours" from the LBJ Presidential Library:

Interactive maps show counties' global connections: language, employment, heritage and more

Did you ever wonder what percentage of people in your county or state speak a language other than English when they're at home? How many students in your state are studying abroad? How many foreign born people live in your state? How many people work for import or export companies? These, and other answers about language, education, and economics are available at the click of a button on a website called Mapping the Nation.

The interactive map is easy to use. By clicking on a state, users can see county-by-county data. For example, the map above shows the number of postsecondary students studying Spanish in Pennsylvania. Below a map showing percentage categories of people who speak languages other than English in Kentucky. Similar maps are available for specific languages.

"The map was modeled on one developed for North Carolina’s 100 counties last year by (software company) SAS and the University of North Carolina’s Center for International Understanding," Renee Schoof reports for McClatchy Newspapers. "Its intended users are policymakers interested in learning more about the economic potential of global connections and students thinking about what kind of international skills might help them find jobs." Not all the factors are available on the county level; here's a map showing percentages of foreign-born in Tennessee, and one showing the number of employees at foreign-owned companies in North Carolina:

Caroline McCullen, director of education initiatives at SAS in North Carolina, said "about 6,000 SAS employees work in the state’s Research Triangle out of nearly 14,000 company employees worldwide. Being prepared for a global economy means not only being able to speak other languages, but also knowing how to work comfortably in other cultures, she said," Schoof writes. "Jennifer Manise, executive director of the Longview Foundation, said that the data was meant to help show the need for students who fit that profile." (Read more)

Contest invites rural teachers, students to submit videos comparing their community with another

March 15 is the deadline for teachers and students in rural America to submit videos comparing and contrasting their community with a rural community in another part of the country or the world. Discovery Education and the Foundation for Rural Service have launched the Connected Community Contest "to demonstrate the power of broadband and digital resources in bringing the world to classrooms and providing students with skills needed to be college and career ready," the groups said in a news release. The grand prize is a grant for classroom technology. (Photo: Discovery Education, a unit of the Discovery Channel)

“Rural schools are increasingly feeling pressure to keep pace with their urban counterparts, which traditionally have had better access to learning technology and high-speed broadband,” foundation President Elizabeth Crocker said in the release. “This contest serves as another way to highlight the unique challenges rural communities face in providing cutting-edge technologies to their students and provides an opportunity for us to reward the innovations that those challenges have spurred.” The foundation was created by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association.

The teacher-led contest is open to classes in grades 4-12 from schools located in rural communities of 50,000 or less as defined by the Department of Agriculture. To participate in the program, classes visit the contest website, where they will get access to Discovery Education's videostreaming service and other digital resources to identify rural communities around the world; research and explore their culture, lifestyle and economy; and create a submission that educates others about their own community and demonstrates how it is similar or different from a rural community in a different part of the country or world. Submissions can include images, video, audio, graphics or informational text and are to be in the final form of a produced video or video-captured presentation.

U.S., U.K., China, Arabs among buyers of farmland in other countries, mostly in Africa, Asia

In response to increasing world population and food prices, and shrinking supplies of fresh water, a number of countries and investors are buying up foreign farmland "in an apparent attempt to acquire as much precious soil and water as possible," Brad Plumer of The Washington Post reports. It's been called "land grabbing," and it's been accelerating since grain prices increased in 2007. Between 0.7 and 1.75 percent of the world's agricultural land is being transferred to foreign investors from local landholders, according to a major new study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. (Map from the study shows locations of buyers and sellers; click on it for a larger version)

The total area of agricultural land being transferred is larger than France and Germany combined, Plumer writes. Big buyers include the U.S., the U.K., China, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, South Africa, Israel, India and Egypt. They mostly buy land in Africa and Asia, particularly in less-developed nations. The study, "Global Land and Water Grabbing," shows that investors typically buy land with plenty of fresh water. After it's bought, the land is turned over to large commercial farming. About 37 percent of the land is used to grow food, 21 percent is used to for other cash crops, and 21 percent is used to grow biofuels, according to a 2010 World Bank study. (Read more)

Coal poised to beat oil as top world energy source, but U.S. demand and production will drop, IEA says

Demand for coal will increase in every world region except the U.S. through 2017, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. The trend is attributed to cheap natural gas providing stiff competition to coal in the U.S. The "Medium-Term Coal Market Report" says coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world's top energy source within the next five years, with developing countries burning about 1.2 billion more metric tons of coal per year by 2017.

The report says coal demand will drop in the U.S. by 97 million metric tons of coal equivalent by 2017, and that production will be down 20 percent, to 771 MTCE from the current 967. Predictions about coal's decline in the U.S. "conform with numerous other forecasts of coal use and production," Manuel Quinones of Energy & Environment News reports. The report says cheap gas, retirement of coal-fired power plants and environmental regulation are the leading factors in coal's U.S. decline. (Read more)

Drought's short-term impact on food prices pales in comparison to global, long-term factors

The massive drought that hindered much of the Midwest's food production caused food prices to rise this summer, and they will probably rise more, but Science Daily reports much broader factors will have a longer and heavier impact on rising food costs than any U.S. drought.

Food marketing professor John Stanton told Science Daily that price increases from drought are short-term, while increasing demand from the rest of the world for crops including corn will affect prices for years. "The biggest cost in a box of corn flakes isn't the corn," Stanton says. "It's everything from the price of oil to transport the product to the marketing and the packaging. So something like the cost of oil will have a much more lasting effect on the price of your cereal than the supply of crops." (Read more)

Report: Rural manufacturing, once so hard hit, looks to be rebounding with global growth

According to the Census Bureau, rural communities have lost roughly a third of their factory jobs since 1995. The recent recession has only made this worse, with one out of every eight rural factory jobs disappearing in 2009 alone. But, writes Jason Henderson in The Main Street Economist's report: Rebuilding Rural Manufacturing, rural manufacturing has rebounded  with a vengeance in the past two years. "Stronger global economic growth and a drop in the value of the dollar from its highs a decade ago has boosted U.S. manufactured exports. Rural factories have tapped global markets and a booming agricultural sector to spur rising employment and incomes. While the prospect of additional strength at rural factories remains promising, the rebuilding of rural America's manufacturing base rests on the retooling of rural factories with skilled workers for competition in global markets," Henderson writes.

Henderson, who is vice president and Omaha branch executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, reports that "economic growth in developing countries has spawned demand for commodity-based products." Rural manufacturing jobs have jumped 3.8 percent in 2011, double the national rate, with workers putting in more than 40 hours a week through the first quarter of 2012. Such strong labor demand has fueled strong wage growth making weekly earning rise more than 7 percent over the past year. Read the report.

Scientists link bee colony collapses to fatal virus spread by mites

Reddish Varroa destructor mite on honeybee (Photo by Alamy)

The worldwide collapse of honeybee colonies may have finally been linked to a blood-sucking parasite that has successfully spread a fatal virus on a global scale. According to findings published in the journal Science, the researchers warned that the virus passed on by the varroa mite is now one of the "most widely distributed and contagious insect viruses on the planet."  Furthermore, writes Damian Carrington in The Guardian, the new dominance of the killer virus "poses an ongoing threat to colonies even after beekeepers have eradicated the mites from hives. Varroa destructor has spread from Asia across the entire world over the past 50 years."

Bees and other pollinators are vital in the production in up to a third of all the food eaten by humans, and a 2011 United Nations report estimated that bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles or birds do work worth $191 billion a year for the world economy. The role of mites in colony coll,apse disorder had been suspected but unclear; bacteria, fungi and pesticides had also been found in colonies along with the viruses. The disorder had proven difficult to study because the bees generally left the hive en masse to perish, making it difficult for effective post-mortems.  (Read more)

Writer: 70 percent increase in global food need is reason to embrace genetically modified crops

The Atlantic's Isobel Coleman takes on genetically modified crops and their potential to feed the world in the magazine's online international section. Accused of being too one-sided on the issue, the writer tries to balance "the reality that by 2050, the world will likely have another 2 billion mouths to feed and face an estimated 70 percent increase in global food demand" with the risks that many were throwing her way. (Reuters photo: Zimbabwean subsistence farmer)

Noting that no study has yet to show any harmful health effect from eating genetically altered food, Coleman begins with its costs, which are high. There's hardship in implementation, especially in developing countries; the method's expanded use of pesticides, as it tries to avoid the mistakes of industrialized, non-green agriculture that ultimately can destroy land long-term.

Making use of a proposal from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, Coleman writes that the solution is complicated and multi-faceted. Yet, with Western consumers throwing away one-third of the food they buy, and much food left to rot because it cannot get to consumers who need it, the questions remain about what is to be done. Coleman concludes she'd opt for the genetically manipulated: "I would take the unproven fears of Frankenstein over the inevitability of the Grim Reaper that promises the near certainty of continuing poverty and food crises in poor countries." 

U.S. beef industry optimistic about global sales despite a case of mad cow disease

The beef industry is optimistic about its prospects, despite the Tuesday discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in a California dairy cow at a rendering plant, Agri-Pulse reports.

"U.S. trade officials believe Washington has a narrow window of opportunity this year to negotiate additional beef market openings in key Asian countries this year worth approximately $3 billion annually to American producers," the Washington newsletter reports. Department of Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary Darci Vetter said expansion could happen in Japan, China and South Korea. The Koreans expressed the most wariness about the mad-cow discovery, details of which are here.

It was the first U.S. case of mad-cow disease since 2006, and the fourth ever in the country. The cow died at a dairy farm and was sent to a pet-food plant, where it was tested based on USDA guidelines: older than 30 months and a fresh corpse. A plant official said the cow showed no outward signs of the disease and testing was a random sample. Test results revealed the cow had atypical BSE, which means it was spontaneous and likely a genetic mutation, not an infection. Dead cows are never slaughtered for human consumption.

Agri-Pulse reports the finding "will not have any impact on the United States 'controlled risk' BSE classification through the World Organization for Animal Health and should not affect access for U.S. beef products in international markets, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation." USMEF President Philip Seng said the organization is reaching out to global trade contacts to assure them "the most important message is that U.S. beef is safe."

Agri-Pulse is available by subscription only, but a four-week free trial can be obtained here.

UPDATE: Rita Gabbett of Meatingplace reports international government officials will still import U.S. beef, but more closely inspect it. Agriculture officials in South Korea are implementing emergency measures, including tightening quarantine checks on U.S. beef imports. U.S. Meat Export Federation spokesman Joe Schuele said Japan, which is America's second-largest market, plans to continue imports, as well as Mexico, the largest market for U.S. beef. A similar tone came from Canada, Taiwan and Europe.

Wendell Berry, in national lecture, calls for affection to community to counter pillage by 'industrialism'

Wendell Berry is a farmer, author, essayist and poet, and seems comfortable with those labels, but not so much with "philosopher." In last night's Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., he sounded very much like a philosopher, yet still grounded firmly in the hills along the Kentucky River in the Outer Bluegrass.

The National Endowment for the Humanities couldn't have picked a better speaker this year, reports Scott Carlson of the Chronicle of Higher Education, because Berry is the perfect person to be an eloquent, yet scathing, critic of the world's current industrial economy after the recent global economic crisis, unrest in society, and deterioration in the world's ecosystems. Berry said in his lecture that industrial society has taken "its toll on humanity."

"The two great aims of industrialism -- replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy -- seem close to fulfillment," Berry said. "At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny. Corporate industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given precedence to the common good."

Berry also spoke of place and community during the lecture, saying that "affection and its power bind people to community." Carlson writes that Berry's speech was "a meditation on place and those who 'stick' to it as caretakers and curators." Berry said "we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy" in affection. He called the opposite of a "sticker" a "boomer," or someone who comes into a community to profit and then leave. But he said it's not just the boomers who are responsible for the state of our economy: "We all are implicated."

The cure for our diminishing relationship to the land and to community is affection, connection and a broader definition of education, Berry said. He said we should appreciate "economy" for the original meaning of the word: household management, and that education should be broadened to include study and appreciation for practical skills, including land use, life support, healing, housekeeping and homemaking. "I am nominating economy for an equal standing among the arts and humanities," he said. "The making of the human household upon the earth: the arts of adapting kindly the many human households to the earth's many ecosystems and human neighborhoods. This is the economy that the most public and influential economists never talk about, the economy that is the primary vocation and responsibility of every one of us."

UPDATE, April 25: For Brad Bowman's story on the speech in the Henry County Local, Berry's hometown paper, click here. Mark Bittman reports on a visit to Berry's place, on the Opinionator blog of The New York Times:

"There is something about his attachment to nature — it’s not just the land but everything on the land — that is so profound that his observations and his judgments (Wendell is a kind but very judgmental man) can be jaw-dropping. If you read or listen to Wendell and aren’t filled with admiration and respect, it’s hard to believe that you might admire and respect the land or nature, or even humanity. . . . I doubt there is a more quotable man in the United States."

Bittman asked the big questions: “How are we going to change this?” and “What can city people do?”

Berry said change will come from “people at the bottom,” city and country, doing things differently. “[N]o great feat is going to happen to change all this; you’re going to have to humble yourself to be willing to do it one little bit at a time. You can’t make people do this. What you have to do is notice that they’re already doing it. . . . The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.” (Read more)

China buying more U.S. breeding hogs, but critics fear long-term decline of pork export market

In order to keep up with increasing demand for a protein-rich diet, China is buying millions of hogs raised in the U.S. as breeding stock and capitalizing on decades of U.S. agricultural research, P.J. Huffstutter and Niu Shuping of Reuters report. Americans are eating the least meat in 20 years, but the Chinese are eating almost 10 percent more than five years ago and pork is a staple of their diet. U.S. experts say China's purchases will shift its small-scale, backyard farm culture to large, consolidated operations to keep up with demand.

The U.S. exported $644 million worth of breeding livestock and genetic material in 2011, an 82 percent jump in two years, but concerns are being raised. While U.S. consumption falls, the price of producing protein is rising, which shrinks producers' profit margins.

Some critics say the short-term gains of exporting breeding stock will mean long-term loss of a key export market for producers because China has a history of importing technologies, apply them cheaper and emerge as "an aggressive competitor in the global market," report Huffstutter and Shuping.

China isn't the only country taking advantage of breeding exports. Russia and Turkey bought the most U.S. breeding exports last year. But, China was the biggest buyer by volume, with about 14 percent of all U.S. live animals were sent there. Huffstutter and Shuping report the impact of the market in China would have a great global impact. (Read more)