With Robert Lighthizer now at work as U.S. trade representative, the leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee asked the Trump administration to push for fair trade in ultra-filtered milk sales to Canada.

On a bipartisan 82-14 vote, senators confirmed trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative, helping to complete President Trump's team of officials responsible for revamping U.S. trade agreements worldwide. The vote could open the door to renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Compared to other developed nations, the United States would feel little impact from climate mitigation efforts modeled on the Paris accord, said two Purdue University researchers on Thursday.

The inspector general’s office at the EPA will investigate an April meeting between EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and the National Mining Association, said The Hill newspaper.

According to a UN report, 2017 is on track to be one of the three hottest years on record. The cause, it says, is climate change, which the report implicates in “extraordinary weather,” including extreme hurricanes, floods, and droughts.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has extended the state’s climate plan for another decade by signing into law a bundle of bills meant to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. “The legislation puts California at the forefront of plans by mostly Democratic governors to reduce carbon emissions and adhere to the goals of the Paris climate change accord after Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the pact,” says Reuters.

In June 2017, the Seattle City Council approved a tax of 1.75 cents per ounce on sugary beverages. Now the soda industry has donated almost every dollar of the $20.2 million raised to support a statewide referendum on Nov. 6 that would prevent other cities and counties in Washington State from following Seattle’s lead.

Coho salmon face fatal levels of pollution in 40 percent of their range in the Puget Sound Basin, chiefly because of stormwater runoff, says a study published in the journal Ecological Applications.

Jon Rowley, who “helped make and shape Seattle’s reputation as a food destination while earning his own reputation as a culinary evangelist nationwide,” has died at 74, said the Seattle Times. 

On a 7-1 vote, the Seattle City Council approved a tax of 1.75 cents per ounce on sugary beverages, such as soda, sports drinks and energy drinks, said the Post Intelligencer. "Supporters hope the tax will help fund educational programs and close the learning gap between white students and students of color, while also curbing consumption of unhealthy sugary beverages."

The Trump administration's new and smaller boundaries for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments may not generate many immediate requests from energy companies to mine or drill on the 2 million acres of land, said the Associated Press. The Interior Department declined to say how many claims have been filed but a trade group said low uranium prices would "discourage any investment in new claims'" in the Bears Ears territory of Utah.

During a visit to Utah next week, President Trump will announce that he is lopping a combined 2 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, reducing them to 37 percent of their current size, said the Washington Post.

Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewel calls claims that public groups were kept out of the conversation during planning meetings for the Bears Ears National Monument “nonsense.” The monument was designated by President Obama during his final days in office, but current Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has recommended that the monument’s boundaries be downsized.

After a controversial four-month review of 27 U.S. national monuments, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke won’t recommend that the White House do away with any of them. He did say, however, that “a handful of sites” could see their boundaries changed or shrunken, says the Associated Press.

Rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reduce the amount of nutrients in staple crops such as rice and wheat, say researchers at Harvard's public health school. As a consequence, more than 1 billion women and children would lose a large amount of their dietary iron intake and be at larger risk of anemia and other diseases.

Philippines officials are considering a request for a biosafety permit for so-called golden rice, which would allow use of the vitamin A-enriched GMO rice as food or feed and for processing, says the Cornell Alliance for Science. The biosafety permit would allow researchers to conduct human nutrition studies, the alliance said during the summer, and an application to allow cultivation of the rice in the Philippines "will be submitted in the future."

The Agriculture Department will amend its farm loan rules, effective Sept. 25, to allow more flexibility in repayment terms for producers and to reduce the collateral required when they borrow money. “Implementing these improvements to our farm loan programs is the next step in our ongoing commitment to removing lending barriers,” said Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the Farm Service Agency, on Wednesday.

The USDA will accept more than 1 million acres of the land that was offered for entry into the land-idling Conservation Reserve during the recent signup for large tracts of land, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday. Contracts expire on 2 million acres of land in the reserve this fall and enrollment of 23 million acres is well below the ceiling of 27 million acres.

The USDA sent $23 billion in trade war payments to more than a half million farming operations, with the lion's share of the aid going to row-crop producers, said the Government Accountability Office on Thursday. Historically underserved farmers received less than 4 percent of the money.

The USDA accepted nearly 2 out of every 3 acres that were offered this spring for enrollment into the Conservation Reserve grasslands initiative, 1.2 million acres in all, said the Farm Service Agency on Thursday.

A controversial new study, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, found that, over an eight-year period, cars fueled by corn ethanol would have caused more carbon pollution than using gasoline, reports Climate Central.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are in the early stages of an experiment to farm seaweed for biofuel in the Pacific Ocean. Kelp can grow two to three feet a day without fertilizer, pesticides, fresh water, or arable land — making it an ideal product for the biofuel industry.

Applicants are asking Alaska's Department of Natural Resources for permission to begin hundreds of acres of kelp farming on the state's tidelands, reports Alaska Public Media. Last year, the state got requests to lease around 18 acres for various types of mariculture; this year, kelp farming would occupy two-thirds of the 1,000 acres of lease requests.

Days after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Des Moines Water Works against farm runoff, the City Council voted to support a bill in the Iowa House allowing regionalization of the water utility, said the Des Moines Register. The chief executive of the Water Works says the regionalization bill, sponsored by a legislator who is a hog farmer, is retaliation for the lawsuit, which wanted to apply water pollution laws to agricultural runoff.

Fifteen projects to improve more than 1,844 miles of transmission and distribution lines in rural America will receive a total of $349 million in low-cost federal loans.

The governors of Connecticut and New York state say they will put more money into a program that helps poor people pay utility bills so they won't see a reduction in food stamp benefits.