The Senate could vote as early as this week to confirm Steven Censky as deputy agriculture secretary and Ted McKinney as undersecretary for trade. They are the first Trump nominees for USDA to be cleared for a floor vote by the Senate Agriculture Committee since March 30, when the nomination of Secretary Sonny Perdue was advanced to the floor.

A three-member team of engineers in Britain, working as the Hands-Free Hectare initiative, are "the first people in the world to grow, tend and harvest a crop without direct human intervention," says The New Yorker. The engineers say their underfunded experiment with a plot of barley shows the potential of autonomous agriculture, in which machines work the field without farmers at the steering wheel.

Climate change’s impact on animal agriculture in the northeastern United States is expected to be mild overall — and in some cases new weather patterns might even help producers, says a study by Penn State, published in the journal Climatic Change.

The Inspector General has launched an investigation into Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s air travel, after complaints that Zinke was using a private plane owned by an oil executive. That particular flight, from Las Vegas to Zinke’s home state of Montana, cost taxpayers $12,000, according to the Washington Post.  But other taxpayer-funded flights, including one to speak at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, are also being questioned.

With salmon prices rising around the world, Japan and Norway are using state-of-the-art technology for two huge offshore aquaculture projects in a effort to boost salmon supply while avoiding the problems that plague coastal fish farms, reports Japan Times.  

Coca-Cola upped its production of plastic drink bottles by more than a billion between 2015 and 2016, bringing the total number of bottles manufactured during that time to 110 billion, according to an analysis by Greenpeace. Coca-Cola, which is responsible for more plastic bottles than any other company, said in July that it intended to increase the amount of recycled plastic in its bottles to 50 percent by 2020, reports The Guardian.

Farm groups applauded when Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue changed USDA's organizational tree to create the post of undersecretary for trade. Now, Perdue is hearing complaints about his decision to give the undersecretary control over the Codex Alimentarius office — Latin for "Food Code" — that speaks for the United States in setting international food safety rules, says Politico.

Cotton production is rising in all of the major nations growing the fiber, and the United States is leading the way with a 23-percent increase, says the International Cotton Advisory Committee. The large crop, forecast by ICAC as 10-percent larger than in 2016/17, will drive down the season-average price to 69 cents a pound, a drop of 14 cents.

Monsanto has been banned from attending European parliament proceedings after the corporation refused to appear for a parliamentary hearing, slated for October 11, to investigate regulatory interference. Monsanto is accused of influencing studies on the safety of the glyphosate, the primary ingredient in the company’s weedkiller Roundup.

U.S. grain bins hold the largest stockpile of corn in three decades — 32-percent larger than a year ago — and there will be little chance to reduce it given that a bumper crop is being harvested this fall. The outlook suggests comparatively low market prices through late 2018 at a minimum, possibly adding to pressure for larger federal supports as Congress writes the new farm bill.

The FDA plans to delay the debut of the updated Nutrition Facts label to Jan. 1, 2020, some 43 months after the Obama administration unveiled the first overhaul of the label in 20 years. The agency said it acted "in response to the continued concern that companies and trade associations have shared with us regarding the time needed for implementation of the final rules."

For years, the EPA has reimbursed the Justice Department for prosecuting Superfund lawsuits “to force polluters to pay for cleaning up sites they left contaminated with hazardous waste,” says the New York Times. Now, with the Trump administration in charge, the EPA may end those payments, which, at about $20 million a year, amount to a quarter of the funding for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department.

Congress would double the USDA’s annual funding to oversee the booming organic agriculture sector and would provide an additional $5 million to prevent fraudulent organic imports under a bill filed by six U.S. representatives. An industry trade group said the bill would help the National Organic Program (NOP) keep pace with ever-increasing production and rapidly rising consumer demand for organics.

For the second time, the Senate Agriculture Committee will consider President Trump’s nominees for USDA policymaking positions, though it has yet to schedule a hearing for Sam Clovis, co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign and the most controversial USDA nominee in 15 years. Instead, committee leaders called a hearing for Oct. 5 on Bill Northey, nominated for undersecretary for farm production and conservation, and Greg Ibach, for undersecretary for marketing and regulation.