Dean Foods seeks to get back money paid to dairy farmers before bankruptcy | Successful Farming

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Dean Foods seeks to get back money paid to dairy farmers before bankruptcy | Successful Farming

Hundreds of dairy farmers nationwide fear they could owe substantial sums to the bankrupt dairy processor Dean Foods after the company sent out letters attempting to claw back payments made to farmers in the months preceding the company’s Chapter 11 filing last year. Dean’s actions have been harshly criticized by farm groups and, for some, underscore the dangers of a heavily consolidated dairy industry that leaves farmers with few processing options.

Dean, once the largest milk processor in the country, filed for bankruptcy last November. Farmers began receiving letters from Dean representatives in late November of this year demanding that they return money that had been paid to them by Dean in the three months preceding the company’s bankruptcy filing. Some farmers were ordered to pay as much as 1 $50,000 by mid-December or face litigation.

NPR

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Pennsylvania Turns To Man’s Best Friend To Sniff Out Spotted Lanternfly Infestation : NPR

Spotted lanternflies are easy enough to spot, with ruby red streaks beneath black-and-white wings that blend like an abstract expressionist painting.

But six years after the first sightings of them, Pennsylvanians have been told to squash them on sight. They exact a huge toll on agriculture. The insects feed off 70 plant species, including fruit trees and grapevines, and they could cost Pennsylvania $324 million per year in lost crops and 2,800 agricultural jobs if left unchecked.

Squashing the adults won't solve the problem, however. Their eggs are odorless to humans and hard to find, tucked into wheel wells, tree trunks, pots and crates.

How To Make Polls Better

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How To Make Polls Better

12/3/20 by FiveThirtyEight, 538, ABC News, Nate Silver

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/116066212
Episode: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/ESP3484071767.mp3

Galen Druke speaks with two A+ rated pollsters, J. Ann Selzer and Patrick Murray, about how they view the challenges of polling and what can be done about them.

Lotteries!

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I think giving a NY Lottery ticket to anybody who completes both vaccines would be a free and very effective for the state way to encourage people to get vaccinated.

If you give people a free lottery ticket it cost nothing more than the paper it’s printed on because of its unlikely to discourage regular gamblers from participating and buying lottery tickets. And even if it does discourage gamblers, it’s off budget and the losses would be temporary at worse.

BF Skinner used to talk about how effective lotteries are in encouraging compliance – people and rats respond stronger to a chance to win a large prize rather than be guaranteed a small prize. Lotteries to reward good behavior is a very powerful but under utilized tool.