The Biden administration expanded a pandemic relief program for dairy farmers on Monday to cover up to 9 million pounds of milk produced during the second half of 2020, up from the original 5 million pounds. The Agriculture Department also announced a new assistance program for organic dairy farmers, who face sharply higher feed expenses.

The USDA gained “a significant increase” in its power to prevent fraud and protect the integrity of the National Organic Program with the publication of the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule, said Agriculture Undersecretary Jenny Moffitt on Wednesday. The rule will take effect in 2024.

California leads the nation with $3.55 billion in sales of organic agricultural products, one-third of the U.S. total, said the USDA on Thursday. The 2021 Organic Survey listed total organic sales of $11.2 billion, an increase of 13 percent in two years.

Organic agriculture groups challenged Danone North America on Monday to match the USDA commitment to support organic dairy farming in the Northeast. "We urge Danone to invest at least $20 million in this region, matching the USDA taxpayer investment to aid organic dairy farmers overcome this crisis," said six organic groups on the anniversary of Danone's decision to terminate contracts with 89 dairy farms in the region.

Six countries in Africa and the Middle East will receive $670 million in additional food aid to mitigate severe food insecurity, said the Biden administration on Wednesday. The assistance will mean the complete drawdown of a USDA emergency fund for the purchase of U.S. commodities for donation to hunger programs overseas.

The president of Mississippi State University, Mark Keenum, is President Trump's choice to become chairman of a USAID advisory group, the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development, said the White House. Keenum was the No. 3 Agriculture Department official during the George W. Bush era, overseeing U.S. farm subsidies, ag exports and foreign food aid before becoming university president in his home state in 2009.

Since the 1980s, as rising seas and storm surges started pushing saltwater through the banks of tidal rivers and ruining their crops, rice farmers in Bangladesh, backed by the government, began shifting to shrimp farming. As Stephen Robert Miller writes in FERN’s latest story, published with The Guardian, “It was a way to adapt, and for a while it worked. Commercial shrimp, known as ‘white gold,’ has become one of the country’s most valuable export commodities.” <strong>(No paywall)</strong>

Shakuntala Thilsted, who spent years proving, and then promoting, the value of fish grown in backyard ponds to improve the diets of poor families in Asia and Africa, was the 2021 winner of the $250,000 World Food, the sponsoring foundation announced on Tuesday. In Bangladesh, her pond-polyculture approach supports 18 million people and turned the nation into the world's fifth-largest aquaculture producer.

Researchers are developing a new strain of genetically modified rice that contains much higher levels of iron and zinc, says the University of Melbourne. "This has the potential to reduce chronic malnutrition disorders that can be caused by an over-reliance on rice in the human diet," says the university.

The United States will continue its run as the world's largest cotton exporter during 2016/17 with shipments up by 26 percent from the previous marketing year, said the International Cotton Advisory Committee. Higher yields and a 20 percent expansion in U.S. plantings will assure an abundant supply for shipment overseas.

The second-largest U.S. poultry processor, Pilgrim's Pride, pleaded guilty in federal court in Denver to conspiring to fix prices of broiler meat and was sentenced to pay a criminal fine of $108 million, said the Justice Department on Tuesday. Pilgrim's was the first company to settle charges in an alleged conspiracy that involved 10 officials from five processors.

Fundamental change in U.S. agricultural and rural policy is "an absolute necessity," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday in calling for Teddy "Roosevelt-style trust-busting laws to stop monopolization of markets and break up massive agribusinesses." In a position paper, Sanders, pursuing the Democratic nomination for president, endorsed supply management — federal control over farm production — higher minimum prices for major commodities such as grain and milk and a return to a government-owned grain reserve "to alleviate the need for government subsidies and ensure we have a food supply in case of extreme weather events."

House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson acknowledged on Monday that time is tight for enactment of the new farm bill by Sept. 30, when current law expires. But he stuck to his frequent forecast of a bipartisan and bicameral bill "on time," which might mean a floor vote in the House.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources on Thursday killed a proposal by a Norwegian-backed company to build two massive salmon farms in the middle of pristine Frenchman Bay, next to Acadia National Park. The decision ended a long-running saga that had generated considerable opposition in the community over fears that the farms would foul the water and ruin the local fishing and shellfish industries.

Voters in Maine approved a constitutional amendment establishing a right to food in a landslide on Tuesday, despite disagreement over what it would mean, according to unofficial results. The amendment, the first such constitutional guarantee in the nation, was ahead by a 3-to-2 margin with votes counted in 507 of 571 precincts statewide.

Global food company Danone has given a year's notice to 79 organic dairy farms in the Northeast that it will stop buying their milk on Aug. 31, 2022. The decision is just the latest squeeze on organic dairy producers, who face rising costs and pressures to consolidate.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, America's largest woodpecker, with a 31-inch wingspan, is extinct, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ending years of lingering hopes that the "Lord God Bird" had survived deep in southern bottomland forests. The ivory-bill was one of 23 species declared extinct on Wednesday, 11 of them birds.

In its largest set of declarations since mid-May, the USDA designated 101 counties in the Midwest and West as natural disaster areas due to drought. The designations make farmers and ranchers eligible for USDA emergency loans.

Hawaii, the top coffee producer in the United States, is expected to see marginally lower production this year than last, and coffee acreage will be down nearly 3 percent.

The amount of land used for agriculture in Hawaii has declined 68 percent since 1980, primarily because of the end of pineapple and sugar cultivation, said the Washington Post.

With industrial meat operations struggling to stay open, consumers are turning in droves to smaller producers to keep them in beef, pork, chicken and lamb, as Stephen R. Miller reports in FERN's latest story, published with HuffPost. Miller's story takes a close look at one operation, SkyPilot Farm in Longmont, Colorado, which is run by Chloe Johnson and her husband Craig Scariot. Since the outbreak, sales at SkyPilot have increased about 400 percent and the customer base has tripled.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>

When the Trump administration poured billions of dollars into rural America to mitigate the impact of trade war, "most of it bypassed the country's traditional small and medium-sized farms that were battered by the loss of their export market," said the CBS News program 60 Minutes on Sunday. It's just as likely big farmers will benefit in a big way when the USDA disburses $16 billion in coronavirus-relief cash to farmers and ranchers, said the program.

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.

A series of emails obtained under a state freedom of information law suggest major food companies have a "roadmap for dealing with scientific challenges," says the leader of the nonprofit group U.S. Right to Know in a Bloomberg story. The emails by current and former Coca-Cola executives suggest actions such as enlisting outside organizations to question dietary advice that was contrary to their business interests.

Farm groups, from local cooperatives to large national organizations, traditionally hold their annual meetings during the winter, when field work is at a minimum and a meeting in town mixes business with a social get-together. Many of the national meetings will be held online this time due to the pandemic.

After a week in which Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who's running for president, was in the spotlight for her call to check the power of big agribusiness and "level the playing field for America's family farmers," Big Ag began to hit back, insisting her ideas are out of touch with reality.