Ethanol supporters argue for fuel diversity
Austin Scott’s brief bid for speaker spotlights futility of rural leaders
Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, was shunted aside by fellow Republicans in his one-day bid to become speaker of the House. Scott, a mainstream conservative, said he would support Rep. Jim Jordan, who won the GOP nomination on a 121-81 vote, when the House votes this week on a successor to Kevin McCarthy.
Claim: USDA’s ‘incredibly shrinking’ conservation program a warning about the farm bill
Congress has voted repeatedly to constrain spending under the Conservation Stewardship Program, created to pay farmers to make soil and water conservation a part of their daily operations. University of Illinois associate professor Jonathan Coppess, writing at the farmdoc daily blog, said the "incredible shrinking of CSP ... may also serve as a warning" about stewardship funding in the 2023 farm bill.
Huge is becoming normal for U.S. crops
Food inflation rate slows to U.S. average
After outrunning the rest of the U.S. economy for 19 months, food price inflation has slowed to 3.7 percent, the same rate as the nation overall, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday. Dairy prices fell 0.2 percent on an annualized basis while meat, fish, poultry, egg, fruit, and vegetable prices rose modestly.
Vilsack encourages congressional creativity to break farm bill impasse
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he’s certain Congress will meet the Dec. 31 deadline to pass the farm bill or temporarily revive its predecessor, but it will require a dose of creativity to do it. Lawmakers have been deadlocked for weeks over farm group demands for a larger safety net when there are few ways to pay for it.
Project will help schools buy healthy food
The Urban School Food Alliance of 17 of the largest U.S. school districts will provide training to districts across the country on how to purchase high-quality food while keeping costs low, said the Agriculture Department on Wednesday.
Navigator withdraws Illinois application for its five-state carbon pipeline
A company that wants to build a carbon pipeline stretching across the Midwest said on Tuesday it was withdrawing its application for the Illinois portion of the 1,350-mile project. In the past month, South Dakota utility regulators rejected Navigator CO2's request for a pipeline permit in their state, and the company asked Iowa regulators to suspend action on its application there.
Gene-edited pig resists swine disease, says developer
Animal genetics company Genus said it used gene editing to develop pigs that are resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a costly viral disease affecting hogs. Colombia has approved sale of the pigs, and Genus, based in Britain, said it anticipates a decision from the FDA in the first half of 2024, "followed by phased global launch of the pigs, subject to receiving applicable regulatory approvals."
Spend more on food and ag research, says ASU food leader
Congress perennially recognizes the long-term payoff from agricultural research but repeatedly fails to adequately fund the work in the near term, said Kathleen Merrigan, who served as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture during the Obama era. During a panel discussion on the future of global agriculture, she put ag research at the top of her list of issues that need attention.
With new outbreaks, bird flu toll nears 59 million fowls
Ending a five-month hiatus, highly pathogenic avian influenza was confirmed in commercial flocks in two states — turkey farms in Utah and South Dakota — said the Agriculture Department. Some 58.97 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens and turkeys being raised for human consumption, have died in bird flu outbreaks that began in February 2022.
The often brutal existence of seasonal sheepherders
Sheepherders who come to the U.S. on the H-2A work visa often face abuse from their employers, including threatened violence, confiscated passports, and withheld rations, according to farmworker attorneys, government officials, and human-trafficking experts. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Farm bill’s default reference price hikes could add billions to subsidy costs
Almost every farm in the country will benefit from a more generous trigger for crop subsidy payments in the years ahead if Congress does nothing more than extend the current farm law, said associate professor Jonathan Coppess of the University of Illinois on Thursday.
Farm bill should offer three months of paid family leave, says Democrat-leaning group
The farm bill is America's rural agenda and should include a system of three months a year of paid family and medical leave, said the Democrat-leaning One Country Project on Monday. The program would be financed by a 1 percent tax on income, with employers paying the bulk of it.
Two MacArthur grants spotlight interplay of trees and climate
The MacArthur Foundation awarded “genius” grants this year to A. Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist who is developing a wildfire forecasting model after studying climate change and tree mortality, and Lucy Hutyra, an environmental ecologist whose studies show that conserving urban forest fragments helps mitigate local impacts of climate change.
Biomass-based diesel crowds out petroleum rival in California
By the end of this decade, "there is a high chance there will be no petroleum diesel used" in California, said agricultural economist Aaron Smith on Monday. This historic upheaval of the fuel market is being driven by state regulations promoting cleaner-burning fuels, he said. "Most California diesel is now made from animal fat, corn oil, soybean oil or used cooking oil."
Some signs of softening farmland values, says Fed economist
Although farmland values are strong, some ag bankers report a downturn in prices in the central Plains after a three-year run-up in values, said senior economist Cortney Cowley of the Kansas City Federal Reserve on Wednesday. The majority of bankers, however, expect farmland values to hold steady or increase moderately.
House defeats USDA-FDA funding bill
The House rejected the USDA-FDA funding bill for this fiscal year by a 46-vote margin driven partly by the bill's proposed ban on mail-order and over-the-counter sale of an abortion drug to people holding a prescription. USDA-FDA funding could become part of a long-term government funding bill in coming weeks; the stand-alone Senate version of the bill, with no ban on the drug, mifepristone, also was available.
Pope Francis: ‘Drastic’ steps needed to mitigate climate change
The world may be near the breaking point as global warming inflicts drought, intense storms, and heat waves on more and more people, said Pope Francis on Wednesday, calling for a worldwide commitment to reining in human-caused damage to the environment.
Inflation aside, Americans spend more for food
Americans opened their wallets to spend a record amount on food last year, even when inflation is considered, partly because they like the convenience of take-out and restaurant food, said two USDA economists. Outlays on food away from home grew by an inflation-adjusted 11 percent last year at the same time inflation was driving up prices.