With sales to China waning, the growth markets for U.S. pork exports will be Mexico and Latin America, said economist Brett Stuart of Global AgriTrends. Mexico accounted for 22 cents of every $1 in pork exports last year, and eight Latin American nations, often regarded as lesser customers, are set to become major customers for U.S. pork.

President-elect Donald Trump says he will stop recent steps toward reconciliation between the U.S. and Cuba unless the island makes "a better deal," says the Los Angeles Times. U.S. farm and food exports to Cuba flow under a 2000 law, separate from the executive orders used by President Obama to normalize relations with Cuba.

The UN International Labor Organization estimates 3.5 million people around the world work in forced labor conditions in agriculture, including forestry and fishing, says Civil Eats in a story on slavery in the food chain. "This means that forced labor has played a role in the supply chains of many of the most popular food and drinks."

Biointensive farming, which includes close plant spacing, use of seeds from plants that have been naturally pollinated and specific food-to-compost crop ratios, "produces far greater yields than conventional agriculture while using far less land and water," Ensia magazine reports, and is especially well-suited to small-scale farmers in Latin America and Africa looking for low-cost, low-tech solutions to grow food.

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.

On Thursday, the Agriculture Department confirmed an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a non-commercial backyard flock in southwestern Michigan, the seventh state with the viral disease in a domestic flock in a little over two weeks.

Two senators from the Plains filed a resolution on Monday to overturn USDA approval of imports of chilled or frozen deboned beef from Paraguay. Sens. Jon Tester, Montana Democrat, and Mike Rounds, South Dakota Republican, said they were worried about the possible transmission of foot and mouth disease.

For the first time since 1929, a version of the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, a highly infectious livestock disease, will be allowed on the U.S. mainland, said the USDA on Thursday.

In their first meeting since 2009, agriculture ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations said they would "set up an international framework to smoothly share information on livestock epidemics, such as bird flu or foot-and-mouth disease, reports the Kyodo news service.

The history of the current dispute between Mexico and the U.S. over genetically modified corn has roots much deeper than the presidential decree that set it off. Opposition to GMO crops in Mexico has simmered for twenty years, born of worries that ancient landrace varieties of corn that are central to the country’s social, cultural and economic well-being would be lost. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Boosted by large increases in most sales categories, U.S. farm exports mushroomed to a record $196.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to newly released Commerce Department data.

President Biden signed a stop-gap government funding bill over the weekend that calls for speedy payment of $10 billion to farmers to buffer lower commodity prices and high production costs. Congress voted to fund the government through March 14 after a fight that showed the limits of President-elect Trump's control over Republican lawmakers.

The new farm bill will not enacted until next year because of continuing disagreements over issues such SNAP benefits and higher crop subsidies, said Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow on Wednesday. “I am committed to passing a strong, bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible,” she said, but the process is taking longer than hoped.

The food stamp program will cost $145 billion this year, more than double its pre-pandemic total, due to expansion to combat the pandemic, estimated the CBO in updating its budget outlook. Mandatory agricultural spending was forecast at $48 billion this year, an increase of $17 billion from 2020.

Two Republicans joined the Democratic minority in the Senate on Wednesday to defeat a White House proposal to cut federal spending by $15 billion. The cuts were intended as a counterweight to the $1.3 trillion spending bill approved in March.

After setting a record this year, the agricultural trade deficit will balloon further, to $27.5 billion in fiscal 2024, thanks to the unyielding American appetite for fresh produce, coffee, and wine, say government forecasters. More food and ag imports will flow into the United States at the same time that farm exports shrink, led by a decline in sales to China.

In Central America's Dry Corridor, a historically drought-prone region that stretches from Mexico to Panama and is home to 10.5 million people, climate change is producing longer and more frequent dry spells and forcing a growing number of farmers to attempt to migrate to the U.S., according to FERN's latest story, published with The Weather Channel. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Vice President Mike Pence and other members of the Trump cabinet are holding a conference in Miami with Central American leaders, pressing them to discourage their citizens from migrating to the United States, says the LA Times. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin will be in attendance, along with officials from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America or Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — countries known for their high murder rates, extreme poverty and violence.

Vast swathes of coffee-growing territory in Central and South America may become too hot for the comfort of coffee trees in coming decades, thanks to global warming, says Eater, warning "coffee is under threat."

A well-known cause of food-borne illness is the E. coli bacteria, usually associated with moist foods, such as meat or bagged salad leaves. In solving a food illness mystery of 2016, researchers determined that Shiga-producing E. coil bacteria can survive in raw flour, an arid host, according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Federal health officials closed their investigation into foodborne illnesses linked to wheat flour milled by General Mills with a renewed warning to consumers to look for, and discard, packages of flour covered by the recall. "Consumers unaware of the recall could continue to use these recalled flour products and potentially get sick," said FDA.

For the fourth time since May 31, General Mills expanded its recall of flour because of illnesses linked to handling or eating uncooked flour dough and batter. The company said E. coli bacteria, which can cause food-borne illness, "has been detected in a small number of ... flour samples and some have been linked to new patient illnesses that fall outside of the previously recalled dates."

Dozens of people across the country have become ill by eating raw dough contaminated with a strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, the FDA said. The doughs had been made with General Mills flour produced in a Kansas City, Missouri, facility.

Russia is exporting more grain at higher prices than ever before while suppressing Ukrainian shipments, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday. “Every member of this council, every member of the United Nations should tell Moscow: Enough using the Black Sea as blackmail, enough treating the world’s most vulnerable people as leverage.”

Swarms of food-devouring desert locusts threaten food security for nearly 10 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, said the Food Security and Nutrition Working Group on Monday, describing the infestations as the worst in 25 years in Ethiopia and in 70 years in Kenya. The group, which focuses on central and eastern Africa, said the locust upsurge threatens the coming agricultural season.

Ertharin Cousin, director of the UN World Food Program since 2012, has joined the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and will advise the group in “its ongoing efforts to advance global food security by supporting research, representing food security expertise on a variety of global stages, and building unique partnerships.”

Malawi is facing a food crisis as the southern Africa region wrestles with drought and high temperatures. Due to record high winter temperatures hitting southern Africa during planting season, Malawi’s corn production fell by 12 percent in April leaving the country short of 1 million tonnes of grain during its worst food crisis in a decade, The East African said.

Verbio North America says it will more than double the capacity of its plant in central Iowa to produce renewable natural gas from corn stover, and it plans to begin production of corn ethanol in the final months of the year. The facility was the first of three plants in the nation to return to biofuel production after faltering as a producer of cellulosic ethanol, made from grasses, woody plants and crop residue.

Even as larger-scale producers of cellulosic ethanol shutter their plants, a handful of small-volume producers are staying the course. One of them, northwestern Iowa’s Quad County Corn Processors, has been using its distinctive distilling method to make cellulosic ethanol since 2014.