Vilsack at White House: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday will appear at the White House to “talk about the vital child nutrition proposals in the American Families Plan,” said press secretary Jen Psaki. The plan includes a permanent expansion of summer meals and the Community Eligibility Provision that allows schools in high-income neighborhoods to serve meals for free to all students. (C-SPAN)
Tough organic transition on a giant farm: A plan to convert a mammoth South Dakota farm to organic crops is doing more environmental harm than good, according to some of its neighbors, because the farm operators did not do enough to prevent wind erosion of fragile soils in a semi-arid environment. (NPR)
Slower line speeds for pork: The USDA notified pork processing plants they cannot operate slaughter lines faster than 1,106 hogs per hour following a court ruling that USDA needed to assess the impact on worker safety of allowing high-speed lines. (Wall Street Journal)
Split on water quality: Iowa farmers are more likely than the general public to view water quality in the state as good or very good and less likely to blame farm runoff as the biggest source of excessive nutrients in lakes. (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development)
Pits stay closed: The CME Group, which closed many of its futures-trading pits in 2015 due to the rise of computerized trading, said it will not re-open pits that it closed in March 2020 because of the pandemic, except for the Eurodollar options pit. (CME Group)
Listening to young farmers: USDA will hold a listening session online on Thursday for beginning farmers and ranchers to describe how the pandemic affected their operations and to get feedback on assistance. (Farm Service Agency)