President Trump asked the Senate to put former Wisconsin Rep. Mark Green in change of the U.S. Agency for International Development and to formally name Christopher Giancarlo, now the acting chair, as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Green is former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and a member of the board of the Millennium Challenge Corp., a U.S. foreign aid agency focusing on global poverty.

David Beasley, governor of South Carolina from 1995-99, will become executive director of the UN World Food Program on April 4, succeeding fellow American Ertharin Cousin for a five-year term, announced UN Secretary General António Guterres. The WFP describes itself as the world's largest antihunger agency, assisting 80 million people annually.

Second-term Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback will be named U.S. ambassador to UN agencies on food and agriculture in Rome, says Kansas Public Radio, based on information from "a former high-ranking government official." There was no immediate comment from the governor's office and KPR quoted an unnamed source as saying the appointment was "a done deal."

President Obama signed the bipartisan Global Food Security Act of 2016 yesterday, steering $7 billion toward agricultural development and hunger-relief efforts around the world, and ensuring that both public and private operations would continue to work together to fund these efforts in Africa and other food-insecure regions.

The Cook County Board, overseeing the 41 percent of Illinoisans who live in Chicago and nearby suburbs, is expected to repeal its 1-cent-per-ounce soda tax during a meeting today, only weeks after it took effect. The change of mind in Cook County, the largest jurisdiction in the nation to tax sugary beverages, is a dramatic defeat for public-health advocates.

Cook County, the most populous county in Illinois, will begin collecting a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages beginning on Wednesday, making it the largest jurisdiction with a soda tax, following a state court decision that the tax is constitutional, said the Chicago Tribune. Som

The world’s first Nutella Cafe is set to open on Chicago’s famed Michigan Avenue in a location abutting Grant Park, whose grassy and wooded expanse leads to the Lake Michigan shoreline, says Eater.

Whole Foods and Starbucks are opening locations in Chicago’s crime-ridden Englewood neighborhood as part of a $20-million project to bring better services and products to the area. “The typically upscale Whole Foods will occupy an 18,000-square-foot store in the newly constructed Englewood Square shopping complex during a notably violent year in the neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest — it served as the setting for Spike Lee’s controversial “Chiraq” movie, and median household income is under $20,000, according to Census data,” says MarketWatch.

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."

President Trump's nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, said at his confirmation hearing that he will follow Trump's "America first" policy. Reminded by farm-state senators of the importance of exports to the agricultural economy, Lighthizer responded, "I assure you we will prioritize agriculture," reported DTN.

South Africa to resume imports of U.S. bone-in chicken meat, "initially 65,000 tonnes a year, under an agreement reach by the two countries," said Reuters.

U.S. and Japanese officials are to discuss agriculture market access issues this week in Tokyo. Market access has become a major obstacle to a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement involving...

There is almost no risk that the United States will exceed WTO limits on agricultural subsidies with the 2014 farm law, but the picture could be far different if Doha Round proposals are adopted, according to three senior economists.

The first edition of the revived Fats and Oils: Oilseed Crushings, Production, Consumption and Stocks report was delayed for two months, until Oct. 1, because of inadequate response by processors, said the USDA.

The FDA order to foodmakers to phase out artificial trans fats "will create opportunities for Canada's canola sector, especially high oleic varieties," says Commodity News Service Canada.

The National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility, for research into some of the most feared livestock diseases, was allotted $300 million as part of congressional approval of funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The record-high beef prices of 2014, averaging nearly $6 per pound, are the starting point for increases this year, says USDA - "Average annual retail beef prices in 2015 are expected to be slightly higher than they were in 2014."

The government funding bill approved by Congress would relax a requirement for schools to use more whole-grain rich foods and block USDA from creating a new beef checkoff program.

Cattle feeders are fattening 9.8 million head for slaughter, says USDA in its monthly Cattle on Feed report, 2 percent fewer than last Aug 1 and down from the July 1 figure of 10.1 million head.

A new sage grouse conservation plan released by the Interior Department has ranchers and energy developers in the West cheering, while environmentalists worry about the endangered bird’s future.

Virtually no organic honey sold commercially in the U.S. comes from domestic hives, as commodity-crop farmers convert ever more grassland into cropland, leaving honeybees with fewer pesticide-free fields to forage, reports Civil Eats. North Dakota, for instance, which produces more honey than any other state, lost more than 100,000 acres of grassland over the past decade.

With cattle prices at record highs, grassland prices are a good bet to rise in the coming year, the head of a farm management company tells DTN.

The Cape bee, a subspecies of honeybee from the southwestern tip of South Africa, sometimes breaks the rules of the bee world. "Female worker bees can escape their queen’s control, take over other colonies and reproduce asexually — with no need for males," reports the New York Times, a strategy that may assure survival in dire times but also reduces genetic vigor.

The first shipment of U.S. beef has arrived in South Africa, part of a reopening of a market that was closed to U.S. beef, pork and poultry for years, said the USDA.

In response to the worst drought in a century, South Africa will relax some of its rules on importing GMO corn so it can ramp up supplies of the grain, says Reuters.

Drought and excessive heat prevented farmers from planting a crop in much of South Africa's corn-growing region and the season is advancing; pollination and kernel-filling takes place in February and March in much of the country. USDA slashed its estimate of the nation's corn harvest to 8 million tonnes, down by one-third from a month ago and far below normal for South Africa, which normally supplies corn to other countries in its region.

The internet rumor that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would kill 44,000 wild horses and burros isn't exactly true — at least not yet. As the site Snopes.com reported, the BLM still has to vote on the suggestion by its advisory committee that the animals be euthanized, and opposition to the idea from outside groups has been vigorous.

From 2008 to 2012, the Interior Department sold 1,794 wild horses for $10 apiece through a program intended to find homes for the animals and prevent overgrazing of federal rangeland. Colorado rancher Tom Davis was required by law to promise that he would not sell the horses for slaughter, says the Washington Post.

"There are now twice as many wild horses in the West as federal land managers say the land can sustain," says a New York Times story about the government's problems in managing the herd.

The committees that oversee federal spending agree on a ban on horse slaughter in the United States. House appropriators voted, 28-22, for the ban on as part of their USDA funding bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee added similar language to its USDA bill on a 18-12 vote a week ago. The prohibition was a routine part of the bills since 2006 but was omitted in fiscal 2013.