Category: Farm Report

Summer shower of federal cash to follow rainy spring in Farm Belt Farmers can expect a deluge of federal payments in the weeks ahead to cushion the effect of farm exports lost to the trade war and crops washed away by the rainiest spring in a quarter-century, say analysts. Trump… Continue reading

Farm Belt howls as EPA proposes no-growth biofuel mandate for 2020 The Trump administration proposed a Renewable Fuel Standard of 20.04 billion gallons for 2020, meaning no change in corn ethanol’s share of the gasoline market for cars and light trucks, while the share of that market going to cleaner-burning… Continue reading

Brazil’s JBS wins a quarter of Trump-tariff contracts for pork A Brazilian-owned meat processing company undercut its competition by more than $1 per pound to win nearly $78 million in pork contracts through a federal program launched to help American farmers offset the impact of the ongoing trade war. As… Continue reading

Food access in D.C.: Q&A with Ashanté Reese In her new book, “Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C.,” Ashanté M. Reese, an assistant professor of anthropology at Spelman College, uses Deanwood, a predominately black neighborhood in D.C., as a lens to examine the broader obstacles… Continue reading

Farmers will be ‘great beneficiary’ as U.S.-China talks resume, says Trump American farmers may benefit doubly during efforts to end the Sino-U.S. trade war, suggested President Trump over the weekend. They will get billions of dollars in payments intended to mitigate the impact of the trade war on the agricultural… Continue reading

Judge allows DOJ to intervene in poultry price-fixing case U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin in Chicago granted the Department of Justice’s request to stay discovery in a high-profile case that alleges collusion in the poultry industry. Durkin halted discovery in the case for three months, half the time DOJ had… Continue reading

Profits won’t sprout from shower of prevented-planting payments Some growers may collect three or even four payments on land where they were unable to plant a crop this spring due to persistent rain and flooding, but no one is going to get rich off of it, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny… Continue reading

Put USDA in charge of gene-edited livestock, says hog industry The U.S. hog industry is going to the White House in its campaign for the USDA to supplant FDA as the federal regulator of gene-edited food animals, leaders said on Tuesday. House passes spending bill, including amendment to delay hog-slaughter… Continue reading

Supreme Court rules SNAP sales data are confidential A solid majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that SNAP sales data at the store level are confidential and outside of the reach of public-records laws. The Argus Leader newspaper fought for access to the information for eight years on… Continue reading

Difficult choices when crop insurance, disaster aid and Trump’s bailout intersect The farm safety net offers many strands of support to farmers swamped by a historically slow planting season, but the strands pull in different directions, says associate professor Bradley Lubben, of the University of Nebraska. “The complexity for producer… Continue reading