President Trump's best decision on agriculture was to put Sonny Perdue in charge of USDA, says economist Barry Flinchbaugh, a farm policy expert and Kansas State University professor. Perdue provides sound advice to the president, said Flinchbaugh, who gave Trump a "C" average on the four issues of farm bill, trade, immigration and deregulation, reported Drovers.

With drought intensifying in the northern Plains, the USDA is taking an additional step to help ranchers short of livestock forage. The owners of land idled in the Conservation Reserve have USDA approval to harvest hay from the set-aside land in counties in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana where drought conditions are rated as "severe" or worse.

The United States is the world's largest ag exporter, with sales generating 20 cents of each $1 in farm income, so farm groups fear they will be casualties of a trade war if the Trump administration restricts imports of steel and aluminum. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, 18 food and agricultural organizations said any nation could claim national security as the reason to keep out U.S. food exports.

Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, told reporters he would like to see a televised debate on climate change led by scientists, though he didn’t mention how they would be selected, says Reuters. "There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered (about climate change)," said Pruitt.

The industry-led Oklahoma Energy Resource Board has spent $50 million since the 1990s training the state's K-12 teachers to teach a science and math curriculum that critics claim is more industry promotion that real education.

Four days ago, the Missouri Agriculture Department announced a statewide ban on the weedkiller dicamba because of 130 complaints of damage when the herbicide drifted into neighboring fields. Agriculture Director Chris Chinn told Agritalk that it might be possible to rewrite regulations on use of the chemical and allow farmers to resume use of it by the end of this week.

A sixth mass extinction of the planet’s species is already underway — and worse than thought, says new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With an eye to grooming leaders in U.S. food policy, a Washington-based university is launching a one-year program to prepare graduates to take a guiding hand in resolving climate change and food inequalities. Former deputy agriculture secretary Kathleen Merrigan says the Food Policy Leadership Institute will "supercharge" the work of the Food Institute that she leads at George Washington University.

Illinois Rep. Mike Bost, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, faces a potentially strong challenger in Democrat Brendan Kelly, says Roll Call, which rates the race as "likely Republican" instead of the previous "solid Republican." The Capitol Hill publication also said St. Louis County commissioner Pete Stauber, a Republican, will run for the seat held by Minnesota Democrat Rick Nolan, an Agriculture Committee member who narrowly won re-election last November.

The Vatican has confirmed a 2003 directive, instructing parishes that they can’t serve truly gluten-free breads but are allowed to offer believers low-gluten substitutes during communion. The Church saw the need to clarify this policy given that, “[T]he confusion can be great when these ‘breads’ are advertised as gluten-free alongside what are described as gluten-free but are in fact low-gluten altar breads,” according to the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Futures prices for spring wheat soared 40 percent in a month and hit nearly $8 a bushel at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange on Monday, a four-year high, due to drought in the northern Plains, said the Wall Street Journal. The spring wheat prices, far above USDA's forecast of a season average $4.30 a bushel for this year's wheat crop, illustrate the demand for high-quality wheat despite a global glut.

Since 1962, U.S. cranberry growers and processors have been part of a self-financed research and promotion program. The small industry, with an estimated 1,200 growers and 45 handlers in 10 states, has rejected a proposal to allow outside donations to the checkoff program, says USDA after tabulating the votes in a referendum held early this year.

Siding with animal-rights activists, U.S. district judge Robert Shelby ruled that Utah's so-called "ag gag" law is an unconstitutional violation of the right of free speech, said the Salt Lake Tribune. Legislators in a variety of states have pursued the laws, which prohibit surreptitious recording of farming practices, following graphic accounts of mistreatment of livestock.

The USDA has approved the first open-air trial of a genetically modified non-sterile insect, male diamondback moths that pass along a gene during mating that prevents female offspring from reaching adulthood. The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York said it "believes in the strongest terms that this action should trigger a full environmental review" by state officials, rather than a rubber-stamp approval.

The bicameral Arkansas Legislative Council approved an emergency rule allowing fines of up to $25,000 for "egregious" misuse of the weedkiller dicamba, the object of 550 complaints of crop damage, says KUAR-FM in Little Rock. The council, sometimes called the Legislature's most powerful committee because it oversees the executive branch of state government, is expected to decide on Friday whether to ban use of dicamba on cotton and soybeans for the rest of the growing season.

While in Hamburg, Germany, for the G20 summit, President Trump met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, for the first time since the start of the American leader’s term. Nieto’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, predicted that NAFTA talks with begin August 16.