Voters in one key state rejected a plan that could be critical for a Midwest company hoping to connect ethanol plants with an underground pipeline to carry away carbon emissions. A farm that once promised the hope of a new way of growing produce instead shut down operations. And an advocacy group warned that agriculture is getting controlled by too few companies.
Buried in South Dakota
The Iowa-based company trying to gain the necessary regulatory approval to build its $8 billion hazardous liquid carbon pipeline through the upper Midwest got clogged again. About six out of ten South Dakota voters opposed Referred Law 21 on Election Day.
The law would have established guidelines for pipeline operators and property owners. Under the law, Summit Carbon Solutions -- the company planning the pipeline -- could have received legal authority that would trump all local rules restricting where it could lay the pipeline.
The law would have granted certain property rights for impacted landowners, including tax relief.
Summit said that it is not giving up on its 2,500-mile pipeline project, a project cheered by ethanol producers for its potential to lower their carbon intensity and allow them to potentially qualify for federal tax credits.
RELATED: Read what could be next for Summit Carbon Solutions in this story from the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Futuristic Farm Closes
Strawberries, leafy greens, and herbs that were supposed to offer new life – and 100 jobs – to a Pennsylvania community in a modern farming operation will no longer get that chance. Bowery Farming shut down its operation in Bethlehem.
As of Thursday night, American Farmland Owner could not find any information on the company’s website about its plans for the Bethlehem site.
The farm was not only a project to demonstrate the concept of vertical farming. But it was also a second chance for the site that once housed Bethlehem Steel.
The operations had featured hydroponic technology to grow crops in giant stacks in an indoor facility, where managers could regulate the climate. Supporters believed something like that could be a way to farm for the future.
RELATED: WMFZ-TV in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has the story about Bowery Farming shutting down its 150,000-square-foot facility, as well as details about other operations.
Ag Consolidation
Big Sky Country is increasingly becoming home for big agricultural consolidation, a farm advocacy group warned. Farm Action released a report Wednesday that livestock, poultry, and seed operations have all been impacted as agricultural competition has shrunk.
“Waves of mergers and acquisitions across food and agriculture sectors have concentrated power into the hands of just a few dominant corporations. Unbridled integration by these corporations has led to a stark decrease in market competition, allowing them to amass unprecedented power and control over the way Americans farm, work, and eat,” the report stated.
The report laid out the percentage of the U.S. market that is controlled by top four corporations in several agricultural areas.
Farm Action contends that reduced competition, which has been taking place over the past few decades, has left farmers with “less and less compensation for their goods and consumers with sticky, ever-increasing prices that are quick to go up but slow to drop back down.”
RELATED: Farm Action released this report on Montana agricultural consolidation.
