Donald Trump

Some of the country’s biggest outdoor retailers, including Patagonia, say they won’t be attending one of Utah’s biggest outdoor trade shows because of the state’s stance on public lands, says High Country News. The show brings tens of millions of dollars to the state each year, while “Utah’s outdoor recreation companies employed 122,000 people and brought $12 billion into the state each year.”

Many farmers in California’s Central Valley, where 70 percent of the farmworkers are in the U.S. without documentation, voted for Donald Trump. But as Trump takes a hard line on immigration in his first few weeks in office, some farm owners are worried he won’t make any exemptions for agriculture, says the New York Times.

After meeting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Canada's foreign minister said her country "would respond appropriately" if the United States pushes for new tariffs on Canadian products as part of NAFTA negotiations, said Reuters. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could meet President Trump as early as next week; NAFTA would be a top issue.

As head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt is working up plans to rewrite climate change rules, reduce staffing and close regional offices. But it’s likely he will use a “scalpel rather than a meat cleaver” to cut the agency’s authority, says The New York Times.

Former labor secretary Tom Perez went to Hayward, a community of 2,300 people in northern Wisconsin, for a listening session as part of his campaign to become Democratic national chairman. "One of the reasons we lost in places like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania is we're not speaking to rural voters," Perez told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, naming three states that were key to election of President Trump.

Conservationists are worried that new Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke will hurt the recovery of endangered species in the U.S., says The Huffington Post.

After USDA removed investigation files from its website on some 9,000 animal facilities, including circuses, dog breeding operations and scientific labs, animal rights activists are crying foul, says the Humane Society of the United States. The society notified USDA that it would re-open a similar public access lawsuit it filed and won in 2005 if the agency doesn't immediately bring the documents back online.

Utah senators voted 22-6 to urge President Trump to cancel the Bears Ears National Monument designation made in the last days of the Obama administration, reports Deseret News. The 1.35-million-acre area is used by Native American groups, including the Navajo, to forage for wild foods like pine nuts and juniper berries, and to hunt rabbits.

U.S. food manufacturers and trucking companies are trying to quickly move product into Mexico in case trade relations between the two countries break down after President Trump promised to renege on the North American Free Trade (NAFTA) agreement, says Reuters. The President has also said he is might push for a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports in order to pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah has introduced a bill to “dispose,” or sell off, 3.3 million acres of federal public land across 10 states — an area the size of Connecticut, reports The Guardian. The Wilderness Society calls the move “step two” of the GOP’s strategy to take public land out of federal hands, after the Republican House passed a rule allowing the government to sell off federal lands without requiring revenue from the transaction.

There are plenty of reasons for optimism in the corn ethanol industry — record production, a higher mandate for biofuels in the gasoline supply and the inauguration of an ethanol supporter, Donald Trump, as president. All the same, the industry is looking for reassurance that the Trump administration will be a friend, considering that prominent federal appointments have gone to ethanol critics.

Chairman John Barrasso called it "political theater," but Democratic members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee prevented a vote on EPA nominee Scott Pruitt by boycotting a committee meeting. Barrasso said he would meet with the senior Democrat on the panel, Tom Carper, to find a way to move the nomination forward, said The Hill newspaper.

The White House has yet to send the formal nomination documents to the Senate but President Donald Trump's nominee for agriculture secretary, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, is meeting senators this week. The courtesy calls are a combination of get-acquainted sessions and a chance for the nominee to quell any doubts a senator might have. There is no confirmation hearing scheduled yet, says a Senate Agriculture Committee spokeswoman.

At nearly the same time that Wisconsin voters backed Donald Trump for president, the members of a National Farmers Union chapter in central Wisconsin elected the first Muslim as county president in the organization's history. The new president, Alicia Razvi, is a recent entrant to farming and operates a community-supported agriculture farm near Stevens Point, says the NFU.

The headlines go to the president's appointee for agriculture secretary — this year, President Trump's selection of former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. But the Agriculture Department has approximately 400 executive jobs, the great majority of them filled by the appointee. Michael Young, the USDA budget director, is the top officer at USDA for the moment, awaiting Senate confirmation of the new secretary.

If the Trump administration follows through on its threat to impose a 20 percent tax on all goods coming from Mexico, the price of certain imported foods like avocados could go up. But the tax will only be on the so-called dutiable value, which means the wholesale price of the avocado when it crosses the border, which runs around 50 cents. That means a Trump-era avocado might be around a dime more, says The New York Times.