The Argentine government will not be able to honor its prior commitment to keep subsidizing Argentina’s nascent cattle feeding industry due to the current economic crisis there. Beef industry observers there expect a complete economic collapse of the American-built feedlot industry within six months. The government had previously put tight price controls on grassfed beef while subsidizing grain feeding to "modernize" the beef economy. This caused a major shift in the pampas regions away from a mixed livestock/crop economy to an almost total grain-based economy. Argentina is currently going through what has been described as a "perfect storm" of events. The pampas region is wracked with continuing drought having received only two inches of rain in seven months. The once lush region is said to now look like Nevada with ranchers there almost completely out of hay. The swine flu outbreak there continues to spread with some 150,000 cases and 250 deaths so far. The ruling political party was badly trounced in recent elections and this foreshadows a probable change in government. Argentine farmers have asked that all government farm help be stopped and that they just be left alone. The Argentine government almost completely funds itself on farm export taxes. These exports are dwindling due to the drought, the world economic recession and contiued farmer resistence to selling as a protest of the high export taxes.

Tallgrass Beef’s grassfed all-beef hotdog tied with Hebrew National Reduced Fat Beef Franks for number one in a hot dog tasting contest sponsored by New York Magazine. Judges were Danny Meyer of the Shake Shack, Kenny Callaghan of Blue Smoke and Public Fare chef Robb Garceau, all of New York City. The judges blind-tasted each dog twice: first bare, then on a plain bun with spicy brown mustard. Up to ten total points were awarded for taste, texture, and how well the dog played to its garnish. The judges all agreed that the grassfed hot dog was the most "beefy." Kenny Callaghan praised the hot dog’s "balance, bite and snap." Tallgrass Beef is headquartered in southeastern Kansas, but sources grassfed cattle from all over the mid-section of the country.

Dean Foods’ Horizon Brands plans to create a "natural dairy" line to profit from consumers’ increasing disillusionment with Certified organic dairy products. Sales growth from organic products has flattened as consumers have learned that much of today’s organic milk did not come from pristine little pastoral farms in Vermont as they had supposed but from large-scale feedlot dairies in the West. Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group, a consumer research company, said that consumers now prefer the world "natural" to "organic" because they think organic is just a unregulated marketing buzzword that means the product is more expensive. "In reality, the opposite is true," she said. "Natural is the unregulated word." Ironically, the recent exposure that Dean had replaced organic soybeans with conventional soybeans in their Silk line of faux dairy products without changing the label or the price helped contribute to the consumers’ growing distrust of Certified organic products. Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute said that Dean Foods had declared war on the very organic industry which had brought them so much prosperity. Deans new Horizon "natural dairy" line will only claim that the milk is from cows who have not been given bovine growth hormones. This frees them to access all of their milk from industrial dairies without fear of media exposure or chastisement. Dean said that organic dairy was only three percent of its total sales. They recently converted their Rachael’s organic brand in the UK to conventional milk with little consumer backlash. Jack Lazor, a pioneer organic dairy marketer in Westfield, Vermont, said that Deans moves will no doubt have a negative impact on the organic category. "It is no more important than ever that consumers of organic dairy products understand the benefits of organic foods and farming," he said. Organic foods are currently a $24 billion industry in the USA.

In these days of depressed real estate, some developers are keeping their sales hot by making an organic farm the centerpiece of their development, The New York Times reported. Currently there are at least 200 developments that include agriculture as a key component according to the Urban Land Institute. In 2008, a 1756 acre Idaho development with an organic farm as its centerpiece realized a 61% price premium on the sale of its home sites over a nearby development with no farm and earned a $2.8 million dollar profit while still keeping 1000 of its acres open. Developers said that they had noticed that homeowners were willing to pay a 25 to 50% premium to live in America’s 16,000 golf course developments even though most of them didn’t play golf. A farm is far better because everyone eats. The Idaho developer said a farm creates permanent views, wholesome activities for children, access to walking and riding trails and inclusion in an epicurean club. Near the Atlanta airport, Atlanta restaurant impresario, Steve Nygren, has turned his 900 acre farm into a 220 home development that features an organic farm and "edible street landscaping" of blueberries, figs, peach and apple trees. Near Charlottesville, Virginia, a 2000 acre development has 300 Angus cattle grazing throughout the development. Once the development is completed, the grazing fee the rancher pays will go to help finance the homeowners association. The developers said that homeowners want a "working farm" that actually produces edible food and not a park. They said that the up-front costs of improving the soil enough to be farmed organically were high but not as high as putting in a golf course. The hardest part is finding an organic knowledgeable farmer to run the farm.

Between 1997 and 2007, the number of meat goats in the USA doubled. However, the USA remains the world’s largest importer of goat meat according to the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Poteau, Oklahoma. Sandra Solairman of Tuskeegee Institute estimates that the nation needs at least another 750,000 goats harvest each year to meat current domestic demand. The meat goat industry was traditionally centered in the arid Southwest but is now most rapidly expanding in the hot and humid Southeast. Currently, there are no large scale goat abattoirs in the region and most goats east of the Mississippi go to Connecticut or New Jersey for harvest. Consequently, prices in small volume markets are often half those elsewhere. Other problems are rising parasitism as commercial wormers lose their effectiveness and a lack of basic goat knowledge among new producers. "Goats are not small cattle," said Dr. David Sparks, a veterinarian in Porum, Oklahoma. However, cattle may be the best answer for southeastern goats’ parasitism problems as cattle are not susceptible to goat parasites. "Cattle are like a vacuum cleaner for goat parasites," said Dr. Steve Hart of Langston University. "You can just lead with cattle head of goats (in a rotational grazing program)." The two species are complimentary in other ways as well. Goats actually prefer the tall weeds and woody browse that cattle often ignore.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of millionaires in the world fell by 15% in 2008. The Capgemini and Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report found that the number of global millionaires fell to 8.6 million from 10.1 million. This is the largest decline since the survey was started 13 years ago. The survey defines millionaires as people with one million dollars worth of investable assets. The wealth of the world’s millionaires fell by 20% while the ultra-wealthy, those with $30 million, fell by 24%. In the USA, the number of millionaires fell to 2.5 million from three million in 2007. The U.K., Russia, India, Australia and Canada, all had larger percentage drops in their number of millionaires than the USA. Least affected were Brazil and China.