Fewer of America's large-scale corn and soybean farmers are planting cover crops this year than last, and nobody says they're doing it to lock carbon in the soil, said a Purdue University survey on Tuesday. Cover crops, long promoted as a way to improve soil health, have more recently been promoted as an agricultural practice that mitigates climate change and could be a new source of income.

The analytics company Agri Stats has violated antitrust law for years by sharing information with chicken, pork, and turkey processors about their competitors’ costs, output, and prices, said the Justice Department in a lawsuit filed on Thursday. Processors used the reports to restrain production and raise prices to consumers, said the lawsuit.

Although two senators identified the farm bill as a potential way to restrict foreign ownership of U.S. farmland, Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow said on Wednesday that the annual defense authorization act seemed a better bet. Senators added language to the defense bill in July to prohibit China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from purchasing U.S. farmland and agricultural companies.

Congress could be even later than expected in completing the new farm bill, said two farm policy experts during a webinar on Tuesday, four days before the current law expires. House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are now aiming for passage of the 2023 farm bill by the end of December, but closed-door negotiations have moved slowly.

It will be difficult or even impossible for Congress to enact a new farm bill amid the disruptions of a federal shutdown, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters at the White House on Monday. A shutdown could begin on Saturday when government funding lapses, which is the same day the 2018 farm law expires. But agricultural leaders in Congress have some leeway — until December — to act on the farm bill.

The Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program serving 6.7 million poor people could run out of money within a few days if Congress cannot agree to fund the government beyond Saturday, said a USDA official. In a repeat of the Trump era, a shutdown also could derail the monthly USDA crop report, but a USDA contingency plan says meat inspectors would stay on the job.

Growers are expected to sow the largest amount of U.S. land to winter wheat in nine years, encouraged by strong market prices, in part a result of warfare in Ukraine, and forecasts of better growing conditions in the drought-hit central and southern Plains. Winter wheat accounts for roughly seven of every 10 bushels of wheat harvested in the nation.

Congress should make the wealthiest farmers pay a larger share of the cost of taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance and hold the line on crop subsidies in the new farm bill, said a half dozen think tanks, budget hawks, and environmental groups on Wednesday. “There is no obvious or urgent need to increase farm subsidies,” said Nan Swift of the R Street Institute, despite the appeals of farm groups.

Farmers are clamoring to enroll in the USDA's climate mitigation programs, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday, while leaders of the Senate and House Agriculture committees made it official: December is the new target for passage of the farm bill. The 2018 farm law expires on Sept. 30, but there is little peril until dairy subsidies terminate on Dec. 31, said House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson.

House Republicans wrote a one-sided, "slapdash and reckless" bill to keep the government running after Sept. 30, said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday. House passage of the GOP package, which called for an 8 percent cut in discretionary spending from current levels with an exemption for the military and veterans, was not certain since some Republican lawmakers spoke against it.