Ep. 241: Farmer Sues the USDA, A Race to the Bottom, and the Screwworm Arrives!
About this episode
This episode discusses the FTC's antitrust investigation into fertilizer pricing, a farmer's legal victory against the USDA, and the implications of record cattle prices and the screwworm threat in agriculture.
This week's lineup is loaded. The FTC just opened its first real antitrust investigation into fertilizer pricing, a Wisconsin farmer took the USDA to court over discrimination and won, and cattle prices are sitting at record highs while the screwworm threat creeps toward the border. Plus AI moving into the field, a hard look at why everybody copying everybody is killing small ag, and our Made in America pick. In this episode we get into the FTC fertilizer antitrust investigation, including why prices jumped overnight with no supply change and how that seems dirty. We break down the USDA discrimination settlement and how dairy farmer Adam Faust ended race- and sex-based preferences in federal farm programs like EQIP, loan guarantees, and Dairy Margin Coverage. We talk record cattle prices and the New World screwworm, with beef at all-time highs, the herd at a 75-year low, and the parasite Texas declared a disaster over. We dig into AI in agriculture, from cutting herbicide use 70% in the field to the data center land grab eating up rural farmland, water, and power. We get into why an oversaturated market is a race to the bottom for small farm operations and how to actually stand…
People in this episode
Host: Logan Hanks
Topics covered
- fertilizer pricing
- USDA discrimination
- cattle prices
- screwworm threat
- AI in agriculture
- small farm operations
- Made in America
Keywords
- fertilizer
- USDA
- cattle prices
- screwworm
- AI agriculture
- small farms
- discrimination
- Made in America
- Crocodile Cloth
- glyphosate
Sponsors
Crocodile Cloth
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: FTC, USDA
Products: Crocodile Cloth
Books & works: glyphosate
Places: Wisconsin, Texas
More episodes of Talk Dirt to Me
- Ep. 247: Eat More Beef, The Salad's the One Trying to Kill You
- Ep. 246: The John Deere Lawsuit, Relay Cropping & Funeral Playlists
- Ep. 245: Glyphosate, MAHA, and the Attack on American Farming Feat. Rusty Grills and Stefan Maupin
- Ep. 244: Should We Eliminate Row Crop Farming? We Did the Math.
- Ep. 243: Ticks, Antibiotics & The Future of Cattle Production | Nick Patterson & Dale Parker
- Ep. 242: Who Let the Screwworm In? | Listener Q&A
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