The Agriculture Department is taking applications from farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners for a share of a $2.2 billion fund to compensate victims of discrimination in USDA farm lending programs.

The government must honor its 2021 offer of $4 billion in loan forgiveness to Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers, even though Congress repealed the aid program this summer, said a class action lawsuit filed on Wednesday. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, likened the situation to the loss of assistance to Black farmers after the Civil War.

Studies have repeatedly shown that federally subsidized crop insurance discourages farmers from updating their practices, tools, or strategies in ways that would help them adapt to climate change — but the federal government still subsidizes a whopping 62 percent of farmers’ insurance premiums.

The climate in California's Ojai Valley has been ideal for citrus, but that climate is changing—getting windier, drier, and hotter. A recent study showed that Ventura County’s temperature has warmed more in the last 125 years than any other county in the lower 48 states, as Lisa Morehouse reports in FERN's latest story, produced in partnership with KQED's California Repot. The corresponding rise of wildfires and drought has caused some Ojai growers to fallow orchards; farmers estimate at least 15 percent fewer acres in production now than a decade ago. County officials are concerned enough that they’re partnering with the local Farm Bureau and the Nature Conservancy to evaluate threatened farmland in Ojai and across the county.  

The Breakfast Council of "independent" nutrition experts that appeared on the website of Kellogg Co. was a paid panel given talking points by the giant food company, according to a copy of a contract and emails obtained by the Associated Press. Kellogg started the panel in 2011 and disbanded it this year, telling the AP that, as part of a review of its nutrition work, it decided not to continue the council.

The kiddos can now start their day off with a little McDonald’s happiness. The company will launch a breakfast-themed happy meal at 73 locations in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region, with a choice between two McGriddles or an Egg & Cheese McMuffin sans the Canadian bacon.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends eating breakfast as a way to avoid weight gain but the science behind it may not be as clear as desired, says the Washington Post.

"The dining tribe that craves breakfast morning, noon and night" is behind the switch by companies from McDonald's to Golden Corral to experiment with all-day breakfast, says Reuters.

Ten members of the U.S. House filed a bipartisan bill to provide grants to poultry and red meat processors that want to improve their facilities so they can move to federal inspection and sell their products across state lines. Sponsors include leaders of the House Agriculture Committee and the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA spending.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

About half of the USDA’s local offices will be open for three days, beginning Thursday, to deal with existing farm loans and provide tax documents to farmers and ranchers. USDA employees will not consider applications for new loans, the new dairy support program, disaster relief, or Trump tariff payments.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Carmen Rottenberg will lead USDA's meat inspection agency, Richard Fordyce will head the Farm Service Agency, and Bruce Summers is the new chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service.

Brazil is the world's largest red meat and poultry exporter, but it is losing customers in a scandal over allegations that meatpackers have sold unsafe products for years, said the BBC. Four markets — China, the EU, South Korea and Chile — that account for nearly one-third of meat exports "have now announced restrictions on Brazilian meat."

As a result of the Supreme Court decision on the upstream reach of antipollution laws, half of the water in U.S. rivers comes from so-called ephemeral streams that are now without federal protection, said researchers from the University of Massachusetts and Yale on Thursday.

The Agriculture Department violates the Constitution by barring farmers from its support programs if they plant crops on wetlands, said an Iowa lawsuit that challenges the four-decade-old Swampbuster rule. The Pacific Legal Foundation, which won a Supreme Court decision last May that narrowed federal protection of wetlands, is one of three conservative law firms representing the plaintiff, CTM Holdings LLC.

Three-and-a-half years after it received a cattle group's petition to define "meat" and "beef" as referring only to the flesh of food-bearing animals, the USDA said it has no authority over the labeling of alternative proteins from plants and insects. The FDA regulates those products, said the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and when it "is made aware that a non-animal product is being labeled as 'meat' or 'beef,' FSIS refers such information to FDA."

The food startup that began as Hampton Creek is now known as JUST, and its newest product is a nutrient-fortified cassava porridge named Power Gari that it says is the solution to malnutrition in western Africa, reports the Washington Post. "JUST believes that its product will increase Africans' intake of critical vitamins and minerals by including them in a product that tastes good and is sold at retail in slick branded bags, unlike the fortified foods currently offered by development organizations."

One day after President-elect Donald Trump shot down a stopgap government funding bill, the House defeated a Trump-backed bill written by Republicans to keep the government running until March 14. The GOP bill included $31 billion to buffer the impact in rural America of natural disasters and lower farm income.

One fourth of the $99 billion in disaster aid requested by President Biden would be funneled through the USDA, with the bulk of the $24 billion devoted to offsetting lost crop production and reduced quality of crops. Agriculture deputy secretary Xochitl Torres Small was to testify in support of the request before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Row crop and specialty crop growers are eligible for more than $3 billion from the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) to offset losses from natural disasters in 2022, said the USDA. Administrator Zach Ducheneaux of the Farm Services Agency said 2022 "was another year of weather-related challenges — for some, the third consecutive year or more in a row."

The government could save more than $2 billion a year if it replaced the public-private partnership of the crop insurance program with simpler and more tightly targeted disaster programs, said two agricultural economists. In an analysis for the American Enterprise Institute, Eric Belasco and Vincent Smith said a template for the less expensive program was the Pasture, Rangeland and Forage (PRF) insurance product offered by USDA.

The Midwest lost 1.06 percent of its farmland in the two decades ending in 2021; development accounted for half of the loss, said three Ohio State University analysts on Monday. "The role of large urban areas is paramount, as 81 percent of land lost to development in the eight states occurred within metropolitan statistical areas," which are regions with a core city of at least 50,000 people and strong ties to its surrounding communities.

"Congress needs to take the plunge" in the new farm bill and "insist on conservation practices where it has, up until now, asked for cooperation while dangling a bit of cash," said the Des Moines Register, published in the No. 1 corn and hog state. USDA's soil and water conservation programs traditionally have relied on voluntary cooperation from farmers, aided by cost-sharing funds, but progress is unacceptably slow, said the newspaper in an editorial.

Three out of every 10 acres of cotton in Georgia, the No. 2 cotton-growing state in the country, was in poor or very poor condition following Hurricane Helene, said the USDA on Monday. Before the hurricane, just one in 10 acres fell into those categories in the weekly Crop Progress report and 59 percent were in good or excellent condition, compared to 34 percent now.

As Hurricane Michael made landfall Wednesday, farmers in the Southeast were still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Florence just weeks ago.

U.S. farmers are growing peanuts faster than the nation, or the world, can consume them, say USDA economists, who estimate the peanut supply will be a record 9.5 billion pounds following this year's harvest. Thanks to rising demand, led by China and Vietnam, exports are forecast for a record 1.5 billion pounds — one-fourth of this year's crop — but the U.S. peanut surplus could continue to grow.

Foodmakers pulled cookies, energy bars and pretzels from grocery shelves in a food recall prompted by the discovery of peanut residue in Grain Craft flour, the largest independent wheat miller in the U.S.

A food activist with roots on a Massachusetts farm, Gus Schumacher had a hand in the creation of an antihunger movement that helps poor people buy more fruits and vegetables while boosting the income of local farmers. The executive vice president of nonprofit Wholesome Wave, Schumacher died Monday; he was in his late 70s.

An innovative program combats obesity by helping families buy fruits and vegetables, says the New York Times, in describing the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program, being tested at four hospitals in New York City.

Photographer Glenn Charles made 40 stops on a 16-day bicycle trip from Bridgeport, Conn, to Portland, Me, to follow fresh food from the field to the table.