Nearly two dozen states hope to overturn a court ruling on animal confinements. One company is looking up at the potential of vertical strawberries. And sweet potatoes are becoming gin in a place where cotton once grew.
Appealing Question 3
Massachusetts provides the landscape for animal rights supporters’ commitment for the better treatment of hogs vs. producers’ ability to sell pork in that state. Attorneys general in 22 states have signed on to support the appeal of a U.S. District Court ruling that upheld Massachusetts “Question 3.”
That ballot initiative stipulated that pork can’t be sold in or transported through Massachusetts unless it complies with the state’s hog-housing requirements. Neither can veal or eggs if the animals kept in confinement didn’t meet specific space requirements, regardless of whether they were raised in Massachusetts or elsewhere.
Question 3, otherwise known as the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, passed with 77% of the voters in 2016. It mandates that hogs have the ability to stand, lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs in their confinement space.
A district court ruling over the summer upheld the law. But 22 states are suing to block it.
RELATED: The Nebraska Examiner looks at complaints filed by the attorneys general that claims states shouldn’t set their own confinement rules and that those rules are costly for pork producers. See that story here.
Looking Up
Strawberries that use 97% less land and 90% less water can also pollinate more efficiently than bees by instead using artificial intelligence, a company claims.
Growers across the country are looking for ways to produce more efficiently, especially as access to water and shrinking available farmland become more of an issue.
Plenty Unlimited, Inc. began as a project led by students at the University of Wyoming a decade ago. The company now believes that its new technology will allow it grow a more sustainable berry as it has demonstrated in Chesterfield, Virginia.
The berries grow on 30-foot towers on the $300 million agricultural development. The company also uses vertical farming methods for lettuce.
RELATED: Axios Richmond explains how the vertical berry farm operates. Read that story here.
Making Moonshine
The word “moonshine” may conjure up images of people living out in the countryside, secretly making their own spirits, and hoping that they can avoid the law catching up with them.
In Helena, Arkansas, the Williams family uses land where their sharecropper ancestors once grew cotton (perhaps, some moonshine on the side, too) to instead turn sweet potatoes into their award-winning Delta Dirt spirits.
That might not be the recipe that many farmland owners across the country would use if they needed to switch crops. But for Harvey and Donna Williams, it has worked out as smoothly as their distillery’s cocktail longue that features their grapefruit mules made of vodka, lime juice, grapefruit juice, and ginger beer. Gimlets, too, are top shelf, featuring gin, lime juice, and simple syrup.
Do you know how to turn sweet potatoes, corn, and wheat from the farm into gin? The Williams do. And their distillery has become a prime attraction in their town of 9,500 residents.
RELATED: Find out about how the Williams family farm has transformed from cotton to spirits, the history of how the family overcame numerous obstacles, and the dedication that it took to create Delta Dirt Distillery. Read the profile in the Eater here.
