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Jury Awards $265M to Farmer for Dicamba Damages

A federal jury in Missouri ruled in favor of a peach farmer, to the tune of $265 million, in a lawsuit against Bayer and BASF for damages attributed to offsite movement of dicamba. The lawsuit was brought by a farmer in Missouri claiming damage to his peach orchard from dicamba used by neighboring farmers in […]

Greenhouse Crop Insurance Study Begins to Take Shape

A major win in the 2018 Farm Bill for the industry is beginning to take shape. A feasibility study for federal greenhouse crop insurance, led by economic consulting firm Watts & Associates, is in the initial stages and AmericanHort is contributing to its development. The study will look at crafting an insurance policy based on […]

HRI Expands Boxwood Health Resources, Releases Landscape Management Guide

Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), the AmericanHort foundation, has created Best Management Practices for Boxwood Health in the Landscape, a set of practices aimed at dealing with boxwood blight in the landscape. The new BMPs feature new findings from ongoing boxwood blight research and are meant to provide guidance to landscape managers regarding practices and their risk […]

Breaking News! H-2B Cap Hit

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) just announced that it has received enough petitions to meet the congressionally mandated H-2B cap for the second half of fiscal year 2020. Feb. 18, 2020, was the final receipt date for new cap-subject H-2B worker petitions requesting an employment start date before Oct. 1, 2020. […]

H-2B Visa Announcement Imminent

The Wall Street Journal reported on February 21 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to release an additional 45,000 supplemental H-2B visas for fiscal year 2020, although the article does state that these are preliminary numbers and not final. While we are grateful that the Administration is considering releasing more supplemental visas than […]

Tips and Tricks for the Best Horticultural Internship

By Holly Scoggins, Director of Educational Programming, AmericanHort A good portion of my academic career has been spent advising horticulture undergraduates in both coursework and internship/career options. At Virginia Tech, literally hundreds of internship opportunities come through the “hortmajors” email listserv each semester – public horticulture, landscape design/build, greenhouse and nursery growers, garden retailers, interiorscapers, vegetable […]

Key Program Highlight: Speciality Crop Research Initiarive (SCRI)

By Tristan Daedalus & Jill Calabro, PhD What is SCRI and what does it do? The Specialty Crop Research Initiative, or SCRI, is a program housed in the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).  The program supports the range of specialty crops (defined by federal law as including horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture, fruits and vegetables, […]

HRI’s 2020 Funded Grant Projects

The Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), a foundation of AmericanHort, recently announced the portfolio of research projects to be funded in 2020. Projects fit into the cadre of research priorities established in support of our new strategic vision. Research priority areas include quantifying plant benefits, creating innovative solutions, gathering consumer insights, and producing practical and actionable solutions. […]

CBP Inspectors Boosted by New Bill

Since the publication of the last edition, progress has been made in supporting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel in their tireless work to inspect cargoes for invasive pests. The Protecting America’s Food & Agriculture Act of 2019 (S.2107/H.R. 4482) helped to address these needs by authorizing funding to hire the additional Customs and Border […]