Ongoing lawsuits against the producer-funded beef checkoff are part of a drive by activists "to end beef promotion and, ultimately, the production of beef in the United States," says the chief executive of the largest U.S. cattle group. "We might disagree on policy matters within the industry, but it’s another thing entirely to target the volunteer-led state beef councils through unholy alliances with animal rights activists and others intent on driving beef producers out of business," wrote Kendal Frazier of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in an essay on Drovers.

Colorado native David Bernhardt won Senate confirmation as deputy Interior secretary, the No. 2 job at the department, on a mostly party-line vote, reported the Denver Post. A high-ranking Interior official in the past and most recently part of a law-and-lobbying firm in Denver, Bernhardt was described by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a walking conflict of interest.

The attorneys general of 11 states have sued the EPA for delaying implementation of a chemical-spill rule at industrial sites, including fertilizer plants, by two years. “The set of regulations, called the Chemical Accident Safety Rule, would require industrial facilities to take new steps to prevent accidents and also to conduct more robust examinations of the causes of accidents that do occur,” says Reuters.

Applicants are asking Alaska's Department of Natural Resources for permission to begin hundreds of acres of kelp farming on the state's tidelands, reports Alaska Public Media. Last year, the state got requests to lease around 18 acres for various types of mariculture; this year, kelp farming would occupy two-thirds of the 1,000 acres of lease requests.

A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in St. Louis accuses sales representatives of Monsanto, the world's largest seed and ag-chemical company, "of secretly giving farmers assurances that using unauthorized or 'off-label' spray varieties would be all right," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "That’s one of many allegations in the suit to place blame from soaring complaints of dicamba damage on companies that produce the weedkiller and accompanying seed varieties."

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol says it could use a 2005 anti-terrorism law — the Real ID Act — to all President Trump’s border wall to be built through a national wildlife refuge in Texas, without having to conduct an environmental impact studies. The studies are usually mandated for any new construction on federal lands under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The prominent coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, a former Senate staff member, "is likely to be tapped as the No. 2 official at the Environmental Protection Agency," says Axios, citing two people familiar with the decision-making process. "The expected appointment for deputy EPA administrator is a turnaround from last month when the White House was poised to tap Jeff Holmstead, a former top EPA official under President George W. Bush," and a more moderate choice than Wheeler.

More than one-third of Australian waters are are protected by law, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is asking Parliament to allow fishing in 80 percent of those waters, up from the current 64 percent, reports the New York Times. If approved, "it will be the first time a nation has scaled back its regulations in protected maritime areas."

The tech-investment firm SoftBank Vision Fund says it will spend $200 million to help the indoor farming startup Plenty expand around the globe. Currently the company has two farms, one in San Francisco and another in Laramie, Wyoming, but it wants to scale up, tapping into population centers around the world.

GOP leaders in Congress are targeting the Endangered Species Act with new bills in both the House and Senate. "The House Natural Resources Committee discussed five bills whose effects would include allowing the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to use economic costs to deny listing a species as threatened, require the agency to prioritize input in listing decisions from states, remove the gray wolf from the endangered list and limit payouts of attorneys’ fees in Endangered Species Act (ESA) litigation," says The Hill.

In a novel step, cotton growers would be eligible for two different crop-subsidy programs under a provision in the USDA-FDA funding bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The provision designates cottonseed, harvested from the boll along with cotton fiber, as one of the "other oilseeds" that can collect Price Loss Coverage subsidies while USDA runs a separate, insurance-like subsidy program for cotton fiber.

The United States is on the cusp of exporting rice to China for the first time, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, following a Sino-U.S. agreement on a protocol to prevent the introduction of rice pests into China. The trade group USA Rice said the agreement was "a tremendous leap" forward after a decade of work by the industry and USDA for access to the world's largest rice consuming nation.

Faced with prolonged and intensifying drought in the northern Plains, USDA opened a still-larger portion of the Conservation Reserve, ordinarily off-limits to farm work, to emergency haying and grazing. In its fourth announcement of permission for landowners to use the idled land for livestock forage, the USDA said haying and grazing would be permitted on wetlands and on buffer strips, often used to protect waterways from farm runoff, that are enrolled in the reserve.

President Trump's choice for USDA chief scientist, college professor Sam Clovis, appears to lack the credentials for the job, said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, which will vote on the nomination. The Union of Concerned Scientists said Clovis, "a vocal climate denier...is an unacceptable and illegal choice for this important role."

In the midst of a national cheese glut, a government-sponsored marketing group called Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) is partnering with fast-food restaurants to encourage Americans to eat more cheese. Last year, farmers poured out 50 million gallons of milk because prices and demand were so low. As dairy consumption has dropped, DMI, which was behind the popular “Got Milk?” campaign, now spends much of its time sending experts into the secret product-creation rooms of chains like Burger King, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s.

Sam Clovis, co-chair of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and a Tea Party activist from Iowa, is the president's choice to run USDA's research and economics agencies, said the White House, in a selection criticized for weeks before it was announced. Trump tabbed Indiana state agriculture director Ted McKinney for the newly created post of agriculture undersecretary for trade.