Today’s quick hits, September 12, 2018

Suit against USDA proceeds (Food & Water Watch): A U.S. District Court denied the Farm Service Agency’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against it by F&WW. The lawsuit challenges the agency’s environmental review for lending to an industrial chicken farm.

Time to act on ethanol, say farmers (Time): President Trump campaigned as a friend of corn ethanol but isn’t doing enough to promote the renewable fuel to offset the impact of the trade war, say farmers in key states for the November 6 election.

Americans eat at home (Bloomberg): Americans are eating more of their meals at home and going to restaurants less frequently; the average consumer ate restaurant food 185 times during the year ending in February, down by 14 percent since 2000.

Let’s get together (Food Navigator): The start-up companies promoting cell-based meat decided during a conference that it’s time to form a trade group; details are still being worked out.

Domesticating the wild scallop (Civil Eats): In Maine, pioneer aquaculturists are laboring to add the scallop to the list of shellfish that are farmed.

Silage can count as corn (KSU): Farmers can qualify for Trump tariff payments although they chopped their drought-hit corn crop for silage if they told USDA earlier this year they intended to harvest the crop for grain, said a KSU economist.