President-elect Donald Trump called for a “streamlined spending bill” that also increases the federal debt ceiling on Wednesday as a replacement for the three-month government funding bill that congressional leaders produced the preceding day. That bill included $10 billion to offset a decline in farm income and $21 billion in disaster relief for agriculture.

The top agricultural issue for the lame duck session will be disaster and financial aid to farmers. The farm bill, meanwhile, already a year overdue, is likely to be delayed until 2025 "unless the attitude really changes," said House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson on a podcast.

The world coffee crop is up marginally from last year to a total of 150 million bags weighing 60 kg apiece, boosted by record-setting harvests in Indonesia and Honduras, said the USDA's semi-annual Coffee: World Markets and Trade report.

Colombia, the third-largest coffee grower in the world, will harvest 13 million bags of Arabica beans in the coming season, its largest crop in two decades.

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.

The USDA would be obliged to disclose the race and gender of farm subsidy recipients as well as how much money they received under companion bills filed by two Black members of the House and Senate Agriculture committees on Wednesday.

Two members of the Senate Agriculture Committee filed a bill to require the USDA to use crop insurance data as its first choice in deciding whether farmers will get an Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) subsidy. Most corn, soybean and wheat growers are enrolled in the insurance-like ARC program but there are recurring complaints of wide variation in payment rates among adjoining counties.

Farm-state lawmakers could have a "quite large" baseline for crop subsidies, "even approaching $100 billion" over a decade, when they write the 2018 farm bill, says economist Carl Zulauf of Ohio State University. In a blog, Zulaug rebuts speculation, based on the decline in pay-out for the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) subsidy, that the House and Senate Agriculture Committees could have a small amount of money available to confront an era of low commodity prices.

Subsidy payments under the new Agricultural Risk Coverage program will vary by as much as $90 an acre among counties in the same state for 2014 crops, said economists Carl Zulauf of Ohio State and Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois.

Commodity prices are down sharply this year for major crops yet wheat and soybeans may not trigger subsidies under the new farm law, says economist Carl Zulauf of Ohio State University in a blog.

With the state of the next farm bill in crisis, FERN and Mother Jones launched a series of articles that analyze the nature of that crisis and explore the emerging issues that are changing the mandate of the nation’s most important agricultural legislation. In today’s piece, Claire Kelloway unpacks the ill-fated and sometimes shameful histories of the major debates that continue to shape today’s farm bill.

Federally subsidized crop insurance is the dominant farm support, but socially disadvantaged farmers are far less likely than white farmers to participate in those programs, said a free-market think tank on Tuesday. Agriculture is an overwhelmingly white occupation in the United States, and the portion of mid-size and large farms—the major beneficiaries of crop insurance — operated by whites is even larger.

In the scorching hot Imperial Valley at the southern end of California, Bryce Lundberg stands chest-high in quinoa, "a crop that is thriving in an unexpected place," says the Los Angeles Times in a front-page story. "If the harvest proves profitable here, California could dominate yet another niche crop, as the grain-like seed graduates from health-craze fad to a popular ingredient in energy bars, cereals and even drinks."

Forget the rumors: quinoa’s international popularity hasn’t made the Peruvian grain too expensive for Peruvians, says NPR.

Two of the world's leading grain exporters "are racing to become mass producers" of gluten-free quinoa, native to South America and the world's newest super food, says Reuters.

The United Arab Emirates, after successful field trials in 2014, is working with its farmers to establish quinoa as a commercial crop on the Arabian peninsula, says Food Navigator.

In announcing his retirement at the end of 2018, House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte said his goals in his final year in office include "bolstering enforcement of our immigration laws and reforming the legal immigration system." Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, is the sponsor of divisive legislation to create a year-round H-2C agricultural guestworker program to replace seasonal H-2A visas.

Two of the top-ranking members of the House Agriculture Committee are among the four lead sponsors of a bill to eliminate the federal mandate for corn-based ethanol.

An umbrella group of agricultural employers, worried about its workforce, warned lawmakers there would be "a devastating impact" if an identity-check system is mandated "in the absence of a legislative solution for agriculture's labor needs."

Three lawmakers who oversee the USDA budget urged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to reinstate a handful of reports that were cancelled recently for budgetary reasons. "These reports provide critical supply-and-demand data that are not available in any other [USDA] report and are essential to preventing market volatility," wrote Reps. Andy Harris and Sanford Bishop and Sen. John Hoeven.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will head the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration, said President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” said Trump in announcing the nomination.

In a first step toward a new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government proposed a list of questions for experts to consider, addressing such issues as obesity, the consumption of ultra-processed foods, and strategies for diet quality and weight management. Two hot-button issues — alcoholic beverages and sustainable food production — will be considered separately, it said.

A Trump administration plan to reorganize the federal government would include consolidating food stamps, now run by the USDA, and other social safety net programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Politico.

The new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government's tips on healthful diets, will be issued in the new year, says the Health and Human Services Department.

Members of the millennial generation, born between 1981 and 1996, are less likely to go to the grocery store than Baby Boomers or Gen X-ers and spend less per person when they do go to the store, write two USDA economists. "Millennials are demanding healthier and fresher food — including fruits and vegetables — when making food-at-home purchases, and they place a higher preference on convenience than to other generations."

The millennial generation is "choosing organic" and as they become parents, the market for organic food will boom, says the Organic Trade Association, based on a survey of U.S. households. "Over the next 10 years, we’ll see a surge of new organic eaters and consumers – the Millennial parents of tomorrow and their children," said Laura Batcha, chief executive of the trade group.

The 75 million members of the so-called millennial generation account for 23 percent of the U.S. population, and millennial moms and dads, parents who are 18-34 years old, are now the biggest consumers of organic products in the country, says the Organic Trade Association. A survey commissioned by OTA says half of the parents who buy organic are millennials.

Grocery shoppers are spending less time, and money, in the center aisles of the supermarket, where the processed foods dwell and more time in the dairy case, meat counter and produce bins, says the Minneapolis Star Tribune.