Business News

“We continue to believe that embracing new opportunities and markets will prove to be incredibly beneficial for Iowa agriculture,” entrepreneur Bruce Rastetter says.

Groups offer scholarships, seek policy changes to attract more workers

The Gazette’s Business Notes is a compendium of the week’s promotions, new hires, certifications, added business lines and business events, among other items, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the rest of the Corridor.

Policies protect against potential liability

Iowa farm groups are decrying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Thursday that upholds a California animal cruelty law that regulates livestock confinement practices. The law regulates the confinement practices of birthing sows, veal calves and egg-laying hens whose products are sold in California, including those produced outside the state.

Heidi Kühn was named the winner of the prize, which carries a $250,000 award, at an event featuring Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Terry Branstad, the World Food Prize Foundation president and former U.S. ambassador to China.

The case before the court involved California’s Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2018. It said that pork sold in the state needs to come from pigs whose mothers were raised with at least 24 square feet of space, with the ability to lie down and turn around. That rules out confined “gestation crates,” metal enclosures that are common in the pork industry. The Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation sued.