🛠 'Right to Repair' Is Coming + Bursting France's Champagne Bubbles, Fertile Kernels, and more...

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With the goal of hosting interesting jobs, internships, and even freelance gigs, we plan to highlight new opportunities for our 6,000+ readers alongside our digestible, witty ag news.

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Now to the news…

Bust Open That Toolbox
Fertile Kernels
Bursting France's Champagne Bubbles

Time to open the tool chest and hire an in-house mechanic.

Thanks to an executive order that will soon be signed by President Biden, farmers may be making fewer trips to the dealership for repairs.

The rundown: On Tuesday, The White House announced the president would soon be directing the Federal Trade Commission to establish new “right to repair” rules.

If implemented, farmers would likely have more options for repairing their own equipment.

A bit more context: Various equipment manufacturers essentially require some repairs to be completed at dealerships or authorized repair companies who use proprietary software, parts, and tools.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated new rules would increase competition in the industry and "give farmers the right to repair their own equipment how they like."

But equipment manufacturers, most notably Deere & Company, responded.

A soundbite: "When customers buy from John Deere, they own the equipment and can choose to personally maintain or repair the product… John Deere does not support the right to modify embedded software due to risks associated with [safety], emissions compliance, and engine performance,” noted a Deere & Co. company statement.

The green tractor folks stated they lead the industry in providing the tools and resources needed for repairs and maintenance. They also noted less than 2% of repairs require software updates, so a majority of repairs can be made by farmers themselves.

Where this goes: The details of the rules are still to be determined by the FTC. So change may be on the horizon, but hiring a new mechanic over the weekend may be a little premature.

Quick Hits

→ 2020’s cleanup bill ain’t cheap. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the 100+ major disaster declarations of hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts led to $3.6B in uncovered crop and rangeland losses last year.

→ Deadly heat. Farmworker advocates in Oregon are calling for the state to implement emergency rules to protect laborers following the heat-related death of a worker in 104-degree weather last weekend.

→ China’s corn comeback. Soybeans, sorghum, and small grains are out as Chinese corn production looks to jump 6% this year and domestic farmers chase record prices.

→ RIP dairy plants. Illinois-based Prairie Farms Cooperative is shuttering 12 processing facilities between Alabama and Georgia with no known reasoning for the shutdowns.

→ Solar leases eclipse carbon contracts. In recent Purdue University surveys, 2.6% of farmers polled noted they had signed solar leases versus 1% who had signed a carbon contract.

→ A U.S. fruity frenzy. January to May imports for fresh fruit to the U.S. are up 13% compared to 2020, with surges in citrus, berries, and mangoes leading the way.

→ The perfect fit. With 90%+ of its products utilizing cotton, Levi Strauss & Co will join the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol to source from 100% sustainable operations focused on water efficiency, cutting carbon emissions, and reducing fertilizer use.

→ Cashews need cash. Ivory Coast nut processors are asking for government aid: they could only purchase 15% of their capacity this season after struggling to compete with Asian competitors offering higher prices.

A new corn trait is in town, and farmers will say yes, please and thank you.

Counting the kernel: Pairwise, a new startup company from the Leaps by Bayer program, has created a new corn phenotype that will have farmers counting more than the usual 16 rows on an ear of corn – an exciting possibility for future yields.

They’re field-testing the corn now, and the company is optimistic farmers could see this trait offered in the pipeline in the next couple of years.

Soundbite: “So, the traits that we're working on are actually around increasing the amount of productivity per acre that a farmer would see on a per-plant basis in the field,” says Ryan Rapp, chief technology officer for Pairwise.

“That is pretty different than what's going on in agriculture. Historically, we've reached higher yield because we've used higher plant density. This is actually about making each individual plant produce better.”

Science says... Most of the time, new transgenes can take up to 10 years from testing to implementation in the field, but with proven science from Bayer and the focused approach from Pairwise, they’ve fast-tracked this to just two years.

This trait would be added to traditional corn hybrids through “stacking” – where scientists can offer a trait portfolio package to farmers to suit their specific needs. Talk about service.

Fields of the new high-count kernel corn plant are being tested in Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota.

We’re a little bit biased when it comes to smart, interesting ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’ in agriculture. And who could blame us? With the quick-shifting sands of agriculture and technology moving all around the industry, it’s mission-critical for those in ag to do some critical thinking.

Enter, Rhishi Pethe and his newsletter, Software is Feeding The World.

As a product manager at Project Mineral (focused on sustainable agriculture) at X, the moonshot factory, Rhishi 'gets it' when it comes to the intersection of tech and ag. His insightful weekly emails explore how software, technology, and data will transform the food and agriculture systems of the future.

Read by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, production agriculture experts, and more, it’s a weekly must-read for those ‘in-the-know.'

Some of our personal fave editions include:

Mark Young: Farmboy to Farmville to FieldView
Pollination-as-a-service
World's most expensive spice

Don’t wait. Subscribe today for free to Software is Feeding The World.

Russian sparkling winemakers are popping bottles, while the French champagne industry is fizzing in frustration.

Last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law granting Russian sparkling winemakers the exclusive use of the term shampanskoe (Russian for “champagne”) on the label.

But not everybody is raising a toast: French Ag Minister Julien Denormandie said “champagne” could only be used on sparkling wines from the specific region in France.

Champagne exporters grab a sharpie: Exports of the bubbly to Russia have come to a flat stop while champagne makers decide how to add the now required “sparkling wine” in Cyrillic characters on the back of the bottle.

Russia isn’t the heaviest champagne drinker (that would be the E.U. and the U.S.). But it did account for nearly 1.4% of Champagne’s total exports in 2020 — making Russia the 13th biggest market by volume there (and the only one banning the region’s name from the bottles).

What's ahead: It’s all hands on deck for France’s foreign affairs team as it works with Russian officials to reverse the new law. They are bringing out the big guns with escalation to the World Trade Organization if necessary.