Ag News: NPPC Pushes Pork to China and Composting Romaine
**Securing zero-tariff access to China for U.S. pork would be an economic boon for American agriculture, according to the National Pork Producers Council.
NPPC says unrestricted access to the Chinese chilled and frozen market would reduce the overall trade deficit with China by nearly 6% and generate 184,000 new U.S. jobs over ten years.
NPPC has launched a digital campaign to spotlight the importance of opening the Chinese market to U.S. pork as negotiations continue.
**In a different viewpoint not often considered when sending tons of fresh produce to landfills, the U.S. Composting Council is urging the industry to divert Salinas, California romaine, linked to an E. coli outbreak, to compost.
Council executive director, Frank Franciosi says industrial-scale composting, whether private or municipal, achieves the temperatures and holding times to eliminate human pathogens.
He says there’s no reason to put it in a landfill, where it will generate methane.
**Portable livestock pens have been deployed to seven California fairgrounds to help house displaced farm animals during disasters.
The pens, purchased through a partnership between the California Farm Bureau Federation’s charitable foundation and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, were formally dedicated recently during a ceremony at the Yuba-Sutter Fairgrounds in Yuba City.
After the Camp Fire ravaged part of rural California last year, the California Bountiful Foundation created a Farm and Rural Disaster Fund.