Drought conditions are continuing to create issues for farmers throughout the central and mid-west states according to the latest data issued by climatology experts, reports Reuters.

Here’s a special message for the United Egg Producers: Get over yourselves.

The group is threatening consumers with a 25% hike in egg prices if cages are banned, while blaming animal-rights activists for snatching school breakfasts from the mouths of needy children.

The egg producers’ ultimate threat: importing eggs from overseas.

“I don't think American consumers really want to play Russian Roulette with every carton of eggs they buy, which is essentially what would happen if we allow special interest groups to force a ban on the most modern, sanitary egg housing systems in the world,” said UEP President Gene Gregory in a hyperbolic press release. “Those systems are used to produce 95% of the eggs that American consumers buy every day."

And therein lies the problem. California has already banned battery cages—a move that prompted Gregory to tell a U.K. audience that voters were “uninformed.”

I, for one, am willing to pay more for eggs that don’t require hens to be abused. As a child, I would accompany my mom to the local dairy farm in suburban New York, where we would buy our milk and eggs. Watching the chickens and cows roam free was the highlight of the trip. Somehow, the farm managed to get it right.

Am I willing to boycott egg producers who cage their hens? In a New York minute.

Want to get involved in the cause? Farm Sanctuary is pressing for national legislation to prevent animal cruelty.

During yesterday’s successful concert, Farm Aid leaders asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support measures that help family farmers thrive.

In the 1990s, broken farm policies and consolidated corporate food production forced nearly 80% of hog farmers out of business. According to Farm Aid, similar circumstances are causing dairy farmers to be paid less than half of what it costs to produce milk, and the United States risks losing thousands of dairy farmers this year alone.

At yesterday’s concert, Farm Aid representatives reiterated their request for the USDA to set a price for milk that covers the cost of production, which would guarantee dairy farmers a fair price that keeps them on their land. Farm Aid also asked the USDA to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund new and larger factory farms.

“Family farmers are the first rung of the economic ladder in this country,” said Farm Aid Founder and President Willie Nelson. “Against all odds, they have persevered and found ways to stay on their land, growing good food for all of us and creating strong communities. It’s time now for policy to rise to meet their needs with fair prices and support for their innovations.”

“We invite all Americans to join us in pressing for food production that protects our environment, our health and our economy,” added Executive Director Carolyn Mugar. “We are encouraged by the opportunity the new administration in Washington offers us all for making the needed changes.”

At the concert, USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan joined farmers and food advocates in a conversation about the many ways family farmers are rebuilding local and regional food systems and reenergizing the economy.

“Farmers face overwhelming challenges as they work each day to put food on our tables, and Farm Aid’s ongoing efforts on behalf of family farmers have helped put a human face on this vocation,” she said. “At the same time, there is a bright future for small- and mid-sized producers because there is an agricultural renaissance taking place in America. More and more consumers are wanting to better connect with their producers, and USDA’s new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative helps to accomplish that goal.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Farm Aid: A Song for America

Photo: Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve Inc. 2009

Country star Gretchen Wilson has joined the lineup of stars for the Oct. 4 Farm Aid concert in Maryland Heights, MO.

Already slated to appear are Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Wilco, Jamey Johnson, Phosphorescent, Billy Joe Shaver, Will Dailey, Ernie Isley & the Jam Band, Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses, The Blackwood Quartet, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, and Titty Bingo.

DIRECTV will exclusively broadcast the event live and in HD on The 101 Network, beginning 5 p.m. ET. The company has also pledged to match customer donations up to $50,000 through Oct. 31.

Farm Aid 2009 will also be webcast and streamed live on the organization’s website, beginning 5 p.m. ET. To make a $5 donation that helps family farmers, text FARMER to 90999 during the concert. Click here to donate online. To follow the event on Twitter, click here.

A limited number of tickets are still available at livenation.com, the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater Box Office (877-598-8703) and participating Blockbuster stores.

“Farm Aid has deep roots in the Midwest that reach back to our first concert in Illinois in 1985,” says Willie Nelson, the organization’s president. “I’m looking forward to bringing my friends together on the Farm Aid stage to celebrate family farmers and the crucial work they do. Farmers do so much more than bring us the good food we all want to eat. America needs family farmers to revitalize our economy and make our country healthy.”

Presented by Horizon Organic, the event will once again feature HOMEGROWN concessions, with foods from regional family farms and local organic growers. The HOMEGROWN Village will host hands-on activities that give concertgoers a chance to meet family farmers and get their hands dirty.

“Family farmers are innovative entrepreneurs who safeguard our food, environment and health,” says Carolyn Mugar, Farm Aid’s executive director. “Since the beginning, Farm Aid has worked with family farmers in the Midwest to keep them on the land, especially in the face of factory farms that have threatened to take over food production. At Farm Aid, concertgoers will reap the benefits of this work and will experience food grown by Missouri’s family farms.”

Click here for information on Farm Aid’s petition against funding for factory farms.

Compassion Over Killing (COK), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit animal advocacy group, has exposed cruelty at an egg factory farm owned by Michael Foods, one of the nation’s largest egg producers and a major supplier to Dunkin’ Donuts. (Click here to view the video.)

While employed at the facility in August, an investigator with a hidden camera shot footage of farm conditions for more than 1 million birds in battery cages, including:

• Hens immobilized in the wires of their cages, unable to access food or water
• Decomposing and “mummified” corpses left in cages alongside live birds
• Overcrowding
• Severe feather loss
• Untreated injuries
• An employee decapitating a hen

“No responsible company should support this animal cruelty,” says Erica Meier, COK’s executive director. “Dunkin’ Donuts can—and should—make the right decision by removing eggs from its doughnuts and offering more humane vegan menu items.”

Earlier this year, COK asked the donut chain about how the hens in its supply chain were treated and whether the company could offer egg-free donuts.

Dunkin’ took no action, so COK launched DunkinCruelty.com. You can protest the ongoing hen mistreatment by completing an email form.

Photo courtesy of DunkinCruelty.com

A former Miss Denmark, Helena Christensen is perhaps best known as a magazine cover model and Revlon spokesmodel.

Now a successful photographer and environmental activist, she recently traveled to Peru—her mother’s native country—to document the serious effects of global warming.

“The impacts of climate change are extremely severe in the areas we visited,” says Christensen, who traveled with Oxfam. “The farmers we met and talked to are already living very hard lives and are now being forced to adapt to the effects of the rapidly changing climate.

“One of the women I spoke to, Elizabeth Ayma, told me that because rainfall is less frequent now and impossible to predict due to the climate changes, this is having a huge effect on crop production,” she adds. “As a result, her family has less food to eat and less produce to sell, resulting in her not being able to afford her children’s school fees. The lack of nutritional vegetables also affects her family’s health.”

Christensen documented her trip through photographs, which will be exhibited in New York, Washington, London and at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen in December.

“Peru is on the frontline of climate change, along with other developing countries, which have played little part in causing the problem,” says Frank Boeren, Oxfam’s coordinator in Peru. “It is crucial that rich leaders do the right thing at Copenhagen so that we can begin to stop runaway climate change and protect vulnerable people around the world.”

“We are at a critical tipping point,” Christensen adds. “We need to put pressure on our governments in order for them to take the necessary, radical steps that are needed. There’s no time left; it is absolutely imperative to act now.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change

Photo courtesy of Oxfam America

Turkeys at two farms in Chile recently tested positive for the same strain of H1N1 (swine flu) that has been infecting humans, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 

Experts are concerned that other poultry farms around the world could be affected. 

FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Juan Lubroth, DVM, PhD, says the Chilean incidents pose no immediate threat to humans and that veterinarian-inspected turkey remains safe. 

“The reaction of the Chilean authorities to the discovery of H1N1 in turkeys—namely, prompt reporting to international organizations, establishing a temporary quarantine and the decision to allow infected birds to recover rather than culling them—is scientifically sound,” he says. “Once the sick birds have recovered, safe production and processing can continue. They do not pose a threat to the food chain.” 

 H1N1 is a mixture of human, pig and bird genes that has proved to be very contagious, but no more deadly than common seasonal flu viruses. It could, theoretically, become more virulent if it combines with H5N1 (avian flu)—more deadly, but harder to contract. 

“Chile does not have H5N1 flu,” Dr. Lubroth explains. “In Southeast Asia, where there is a lot of the virus circulating in poultry, the introduction of H1N1 in these populations would be of a greater concern.” 

Hygienic and safe farming practices must be followed, he says. This includes protecting farm workers who care for, or work near, sick animals. 

“We must monitor the situation in animals more closely and strengthen veterinary services in poor and in-transition countries,” Dr. Lubroth says. “They need adequate diagnostic capability and competent and suitably resourced field teams that can respond to emergency needs.”

Photo courtesy of the CDC

Farm Aid is sponsoring a petition that calls on the U.S. government to suspend taxpayer funding of factory farms.

As the petition states:

Factory farms pose a real danger to our communities, our natural resources and the livelihood of hardworking family farmers. A current USDA program is funneling taxpayer money to fund new and bigger factory farm operations that lead to the gross overproduction of hogs and poultry. So much livestock is being churned out that it has caused a long-term depression of producer prices, forcing family farmers out of business.

The longer the USDA continues this misguided policy, the greater the threat to small farmers who are already being squeezed in this economy.

By signing the petition, you’ll add your name to a letter that will be sent to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. It urges the USDA “to suspend all direct or guaranteed farm ownership or operating loans for the construction or expansion of specialized hog or poultry production facilities.”

In other Farm Aid news, there’s still time to order tickets to the Oct. 4 concert in St. Louis, where performers like Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews, Neil Young and Willie Nelson will rock the house. And if you’re a photography buff, consider entering the Farm Fresh Pics photo contest; the winner will receive an expenses-paid trip and two front-row concert tickets.

Farm Aid is sponsoring a photo contest, whose winner will receive an expenses-paid trip and two front-row tickets to the Oct. 4 concert in St. Louis.

Currently slated to appear are Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Wilco, Phosphorescent and Jamey Johnson.

The event will once again feature HOMEGROWN concessions, with foods from regional family farms and local organic growers. The HOMEGROWN Village will host hands-on activities that give concertgoers a chance to meet family farmers and get their hands dirty.

To enter the contest, shoot a photo of anything related to family farmers and the food they produce. Here are some ideas to get you started: farms, farmers, farm families, tractors, barns, a perfect crop of organic veggies or fruits from your local farmer’s market, your favorite farm animal—any image that shows the vibrancy and beauty of the American family farm.

Photos should be uploaded to the Farm Aid Farm Fresh Pics website by 11:59 p.m. (ET) Sept. 6. You may also vote for your favorite photos until 11:59 p.m. (ET) Sept. 20.

Click here to view contest rules. Click here to view the photos entered thus far.

Photo by Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve Inc. 2008; courtesy of Farm Aid