Congress included $625 million in guaranteed funding for bio-energy programs in the 2014 farm policy law, says Jonathan Coppess of U-Illinois at farmdoc daily.

Rep Luis Gutierrez, long active on immigration reform legislation in the House, "declared the prospects for reform dead this year and said the only option left is for President Barack Obama to take unilateral action to stem deportations," says Politico.

U.S. farmland values will hold steady or decline somewhat in the near term due to lower grain prices and high production costs, lenders and financial experts told a House Agriculture subcommittee.

Obama administration officials and corporate leaders who produced a report on the potential impact of climate change on the economy met at the White House on Wednesday.

The Ethiopian mustard plant could be used to help canola varieties resist the fungal disease blackleg, says a researcher at the University of Alberta.

Six-term incumbent Thad Cochran, the Republican leader on the Senate Agriculture Committee, won the GOP run-off in Mississippi by 2 percentage points over state Sen Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite.

Private and public lenders are scheduled to testify on availability in rural America at a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing.

Three agribusiness leaders were elected to the board of the Farm Foundation - Gregg Hillyer, editor of Progressive Farmer magazine; Craig Yunker of CY Farms and John Miller, vice president of agricultural products for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

The House passed, 265-144, its bill to reauthorize the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator of the vast derivatives market.

U.S. farmers said they would plant a record 81.5 million acres of soybeans this spring, putting within reach a record crop that would ease high prices and the tightest supplies in decades.

In the past few days, the Washington Post ran two stories on milk consumption; one on the decades-long decline in dairy consumption and one on the rise of alternatives, such as soy, almond, coconut, rice and hemp.

Proximity to an urban center may be key for maintaining rural population, say three Iowa State University researchers.

Key provisions of the new farm policy law - insurance, conservation, dairy and the traditional crop subsidies - are the focus of a new edition of Choices, the magazine of agricultural economics.

Several hospitals in San Francisco are working together "to add more fresh, organic and sustainable foods to their patient and cafeteria trays," writes Ingfei Chen at The Guardian.

Olive trees are taking root as a cash crop in California, with the drought as an inducement, says the Sacramento Bee, which cites a farmer who switched to olives from rice.

Landowners in five states in the upper Midwest are eligible for $8 million in payments if they establish new habitat for honey bees on land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve, says USDA.

Coffee production is on the rise in Colombia and Central America, where growers battle the rust fungus, said USDA in its Coffee: World Markets and Trade report.

Widespread and locally heavy rain storms in the central Plains and Midwest capped four weeks of an easing in the extent and severity of drought across the nation, said the Drought Monitor.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set aside the "minibus" appropriations bill that includes fiscal 2015 funding for USDA after a disagreement over how to handle amendments.

When commodity prices fall, growers may collect payments from crop insurance as well as deficiecy payments from traditional crop subsidies, says economist Carl Zulauf of Ohio State University in an analysis.