But for many businesses, the more nagging issue is who will fill some of the country's most physically demanding jobs, from picking fruit to slaughtering hogs. The Bush administration is trying to speed up processing for an existing and cumbersome agricultural guest worker program, which requires farmers to prove that no Americans want the jobs they're offering. Instead the country has become the unintentional site of a policy experiment: What happens when federal officials step up...

Oct 31, 2007 (CIDRAP News) Experiments with vaccine adjuvants have raised some hope of removing one of the great stumbling blocks to pandemic influenza preparedness: the impossibility of making a vaccine that protects against a pandemic virus before that virus actually emerges. Editor's note: This is the fifth in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Part 4...

The state struck a deal with Smithfield, the world's largest pork producer, in which the company would help fund projects to help remedy the environmental damage caused by hog lagoons. From staff reports Nearly $2 million in grants will g to improve the state's water quality and help farmers clean up hog lagoons as part of a deal reached with Smithfield Foods in 2000, the state attorney general's office announced today. Located at the headwaters of the New River Basin, these wetlands and...

Modern Nebraskan agriculture involves agri-businesses such as food packaging, meat processing and fertiliser production, as well as the traditional hog and crop farming. But Nebraska's agricultural potential was soon realised and farming became the backbone of the state's economy. Nebraska has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964. The 1990s brought growth and increased diversity to the rest of the economy. It is a religious, conservative heartland. This was seen as a...

Lean hogs are called mixed on withering pork cutout values and soft cash hog price calls against possible short covering and front-months' extremely oversold chart indicators. Pork imports for the first eight months of the year are down slightly from the same period last year but also on pace to be about 8. Such a scenario may become reality if a growing alliance of livestock and poultry producers, along with packing companies and retail and food service venders, has its way. The Toronto...

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Taiwanese traders willing to invest in fruits, meat By Joy Romares-Sevilla TAIWANESE businessmen who visited Davao City last week for a business matching activity and for the Taiwan Technology and Investment Forum have shown interest in fruit and meat products of the Davao Region. Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Taiwanese traders willing to invest in fruits, meat By Joy Romares-Sevilla TAIWANESE businessmen who visited Davao City last week for a business matching...