(IARN) — A coalition of lawmakers is asking the Health and Human Services Department to provide immediate assistance to rural hospitals and clinics. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, 122 lawmakers asked the Trump administration to provide financial aid included in the CARES Act to help rural hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak. The legislation includes new funding to provide financial relief for hospitals. The lawmakers point out that many rural hospitals have ceased performing elective procedures and seeing non-urgent patients. Read more
Novel Coronavirus Overshadowing African Swine Fever
(IARN) — COVID-19 dominates news headlines. It overshadows an issue, which remained at the forefront just months ago.
Additional cases of African Swine Fever continue to trickle in. “We have another country to add to the list of positive countries,” shares Dr. Dave Pyburn, senior vice president of science and technology at the National Pork Board (NPB). Read more
Managing Risk During Uncertain Times
(IARN) — Two-thousand-twenty came with a whirlwind of events, creating erratic movement in key markets. A risk management specialist encourages producers to start focusing on matters within their control to mitigate risk.
“In the current environment, there are a lot of things out of control,” shares Pat Kroese, director of sales and business development at GrainBridge. However, Kroese encourages producers to focus on matters within their control, such as understanding cost of production. Read more
USDA Estimates Corn Planted Are At 97 Million Acres
(IARN) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released its Prospective Plantings and Quarterly Grain Stocks reports. Two market analysts, featured on our Network weekly, join us to discuss these reports in-depth.
USDA’s Prospective Plantings report stunned market analysts, as it estimated corn planted area at 96.99 million acres. Matt Bennett, founding partner of Ag Market.Net, speaks to the shocking prediction. Read more
Red Meat Exports Rebound In Asian Markets
(IARN) — COVID-19, otherwise known as coronavirus, first emerged in 2019 in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, China. The disease rapidly spread, reaching across six continents.
Asian nations begin to mend, after battling the virus for several months, and United States red meat exports stand to benefit. Read more
Senator Grassley Addresses Livestock Producer Struggles During Pandemic
(IARN) — During this COVID-19 pandemic, we understand that it isn’t always business as usual. Our lives are not the same as they would normally be. This is the same for farmers as well as any other industry. However, there are some questions about how bad some of the situations have gotten. Some things just aren’t adding up, and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley talked about them on Tuesday morning. Read more