President Trump resolved two persistent questions about biofuels on Tuesday, allowing the year-round sale of higher blends of ethanol in gasoline, which will benefit corn farmers, and saying he will consider whether ethanol exports should be counted as part of the government's target for biofuels use, a step that would relieve pressure on oil refiners.

Robert Fraley, who won the World Food Prize in 2013 for his role in the development of agricultural biotechnology, will leave Monsanto following its merger with Bayer, ending a 35-year career at the company.

Cattle producers in Oklahoma lost $26 million in stock, fencing, and facilities to wildfires during April, estimated Derrell Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University.

More than 19 million acres of corn were planted last week, thanks to generally favorable weather in the Midwest, according to the Crop Progress report released on Monday.

Residents and advocates in Duplin County, North Carolina, settled a federal civil rights complaint last week with the state environmental board, requiring the state to better regulate and monitor the local hog industry. The settlement comes closely on the heels of a $50 million jury verdict in favor of North Carolina residents who live near large-scale confinement hog farms.

Agricultural bankers are slowly raising the interest rate on loans to farmers and ranchers, with the largest increases on the short-term operating loans that account for 60 percent of new, non-real estate farm loans at the banks, said the Ag Finance Databook published by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. "Although farm debt also has continued to rise alongside higher rates, the increase in interest expense has remained relatively small."

Mindy Brashears, a professor of food safety and food microbiology at Texas Tech, is President Trump's choice for agriculture undersecretary, announced the White House. "Food safety is at the core of USDA's mission because it directly affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans every day," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in describing Brashears as an excellent choice.

Most of the trillions of bacteria and other organisms that live in and on our bodies — our microbiome — are in our intestinal tract, “where they are capable of influencing virtually every aspect of our health,” writes Rene Ebersole in FERN’s latest piece, published with Cooking Light. <strong>No paywall</strong>

Food makers would be allowed to use a circular logo with the initials “BE” to identify foods made with GMO ingredients under a labeling rule proposed by the USDA.

Kansas will reap its smallest winter wheat crop since 1989 and neighboring Oklahoma will harvest half of its usual total because of a months-long drought in the Plains, crop scouts said on Thursday after touring the winter wheat belt.

Six months after withdrawing his nomination for USDA chief scientist, Sam Clovis will leave the department on Friday and return to Iowa. The nomination was doomed when Clovis was caught up in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Farmers are increasingly dour about the outlook for U.S. farm exports, with 27 percent expecting lower soybean prices in the year ahead — nearly double the figure from a month earlier, said a Purdue University poll of 400 producers.

The $50-million judgment against a North Carolina hog farm as a nuisance to its neighbors “is a blatant assault on animal agriculture and rural America,” said the meat industry and three farm groups on Wednesday.