The House Appropriations Committee is likely to release today a draft of the FY15 USDA funding bill. It could include provisions, sought by conservative Republicans, to delay or overturn school lunch rules. On Tuesday, House and Senate subcommittees are scheduled to mark up the spending bills. "We expect they will act on Tuesday May 20 to gut nutrition standards through the appropriations process," says the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest in a on-line petition.

The winter wheat crop, dried by intense drought in the central and southern Plains, deteriorated starkly in the past four weeks, putting the harvest into doubt, USDA data indicate. Some 44 percent of the crop is in poor or very poor condition, according to the weekly Crop Progress report. That's 2 points more than a week ago and 11 points more than April 20. Some 34 percent of the crop rated as good or excellent then. Now, it's 29 percent.

There was a bit of buzz on the Internet and in aggie circles over a USDA request for bids to supply 10 submachine guns, ranging from incredulity to waggish remarks of "watch out, varmints." (One quickly learns USDA has its own bank, the Commodity Credit Corp; an air fleet, to combat wildfires; and artillery, used by the Forest Service to prevent snow avalanches.)

The House's spending bill for USDA in fiscal 2015 includes provisions sought by some farm groups and by GOP conservatives. The House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture is scheduled to vote on the bill this morning. The draft makes white potatoes part of the WIC food basket; USDA wanted to exclude them on grounds WIC recipients get enough starch.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in DC is scheduled to hear arguments today over USDA regulations that require cuts of beef, pork and poultry meat to carry labels saying where the meat was born, raised and slaughtered, says Feedstuffs. It's the latest hearing for a case that began July 2013.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is posting a series of "drilldowns" on the Census of Agriculture. In its latest, on organic and local ag, NSAC says the West Coast has the largest concentration of organic farms; more than 4,000 of the 16,525 such farms nationwide. California is No 1 with 3,000 farms.

At the same time U.S. sugar growers launched a trade challenge against sugar imported from Mexico, apple growers in Mexico say they are being put out of business by U.S. apples. Growers attempted to get the government to cut off the imports and a senator accused the United States of dumping apples on Mexico, says Public Radio International in a story produced in partnership with FERN, the Food and Environment Reporting Network.

Virginia Quarterly Review, in an article titled "Linux for Lettuce," delves into the arguments over open-source seeds available to anyone and the practice of some seed companies to patent their products. The story opens with cases of plant breeders who independently developed plant varieties or shared their results with others but later learned a company had patented the trait they had developed.

A series of favorable polls for Democrat Mark Pryor, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, prompted Sabato's Crystal Ball to rate the race as a toss-up. Until now, it viewed the race as "leans Republican."

Bankers in the Farm Belt say expectations of lower income this year are slowing or even reversing the years-long climb in farmland values.

The $84 billion tax "extenders" bill was shelved, at least temporarily, by a GOP filibuster. A motion to limit debate on the bill failed 53-40 with 60 votes needed for passage. Republicans said they were not getting enough chances to offer amendments. An energy efficiency bill was derailed early this week for the same reasons.

Beneficial rains moistened the western Corn Belt, particularly Nebraska and western Iowa, said the Drought Monitor, which says 38 percent of the contiguous 48 states are in drought vs 40 percent a week ago.

Children's cereals contain so much sugar that "someone eating an average serving...would consume more than 10 pounds of sugar a year from that source alone," says the Environmental Working Group in a new report. Two-thirds of the cereals aimed at children contain enough the equivalent of one-third of the recommended daily amount of sugar.

Farm-gate wheat prices could average a record $8.75/bushel if bad weather further reduces the U.S. wheat crop and draws down stockpiles, says economist Dan O'Brien of Kansas State University. Stocks peaked at 976 million bushels in 2010 and have fallen annually ever since.

Americans spent $35.1 billion on organic products, the bulk of it for food, last year, the fastest growth rate in five years, says the Organic Trade Association, based on a survey of more than 200 companies. Sales were up 11.5 percent, or $4 billion, from the previous year.

California growers are curtailing rice plantings by 18 percent due to drought but larger plantings in the Delta will offset much of the downturn for the sticky rice used in sushi. "The decline in California medium-grain plantings due to drought and water restrictions have attracted more acres of medium-grain rice in the Delta where plantings in 2014 are projected up 39 percent," says USDA. In the end, medium-grain area will drop 6 percent.

Brazil's Agriculture Ministry is considering a ban on second-season soybean in Mato Grosso, the major soybean state, as a control against the rust fungus and a newly arrived plant pest known as the earworm, says AgroSouth News.

Enrollment for food stamps, the largest U.S. anti-hunger program, is down for the fourth month in a row, according to new data from the Agriculture Department. Since the decline began last November, participation has dropped by 1.2 million people, or nearly 3 percent, to 46.2 million people in February, the latest month available.

Jerry Bange, overseer of USDA's monthly supply/demand report, will retire on May 31 after 20 years as chairman of the World Agricultural Outlook Board, USDA announced. Bange has worked at the Agriculture Department for 43 years, starting in 1971, before he got his doctorate from the University of Maryland.