Japan

If businessman Donald Trump wins the presidency, Republicans would feel obliged to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, said House Agriculture Committee chairman Michael Conaway. In a Roll Call video, Conaway, who volunteered in May to advise Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, on agricultural policy, says TPP already faces an uphill struggle for passage, so with Trump's opposition "it would be difficult to get that done."

In conjunction with the meeting of G-7 farm ministers, Japan's agriculture minister Hiroshi Moriyama discussed his idea "of replacing retiring growers with Japanese-developed autonomous tractors and backpack-carried robots," said Bloomberg.

The 2016 Alaska salmon harvest is expected to drop 40 percent from last year’s count, says Alaska Dispatch News, primarily due to a routine decline in pink salmon numbers that hits every two years.

The Abe administration in Japan says it will submit 11 bills to the parliament to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, reported Feedstuffs.

It's no fluke - for the second year in a row, Mexico topped Japan as the largest customer for U.S. pork exports in terms of volume, buying 31 percent of all U.S. pork shipped to foreign buyers.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan plans an overhaul of the country's agricultural policy so the farm sector will prosper under the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade pact.

Like U.S. agriculture overall, 40 percent of California's agricultural exports go to nations that are part of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade bloc, say three UC-Davis economists. In a newsletter, they say the agreement, if approved, "would lower import barriers and facilitate export for many of California's significant agricultural exports to the Pacific Rim nations - most importantly in Japan."

With Trans-Pacific Partnership talks at a crucial point, Japan plans to offer immediate duty-free entry for 50,000 tonnes of U.S. rice, gradually rising to 70,000 tonnes, says Nikkei.

Mexico is becoming more prominent as an export market for U.S. pork, says the monthly Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook. One-third of U.S. export tonnage during July - the most recent data available for the report - went to Mexico.

Trade officials from the 12 nations involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are in Hawaii in hopes of reaching final agreement on a free-trade pact encompassing 40 percent of world economic outlook, says Politico.

Japanese media say Tokyo "is prepared to increase its import quota for U.S. rice by 50,000 tonnes a year, about a quarter of the U.S. goal, Reuters said at the end of bilateral talks between trade negotiators.

Harvest of soft white wheat is under way in northeastern Oregon and a grain merchandiser in Pendleton says yields are down 10 to 15 percent because of hot, dry weather, says Capital Press. “The overall quality of the crop is going to be fine, there’s just not going to be a lot of it,” Dan Steiner, senior grain merchandiser at Pendleton Grain Growers, told the newspaper.

Canada and Japan will not wrap up negotiations for the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership unless the United States can guarantee that Congress will not try to re-write the deal, says Reuters.

Japan, the largest Asian importer of corn, beef and pork, has lowered its target for food self-sufficiency to 45 percent by 2026 from the current 50 percent, said Bloomberg.

Beginning on Jan. 1, Japan will lower or eliminate tariffs on $7.2 billion worth of U.S. farm exports under a “mini” trade pact that received final approval in Japan’s parliament on Wednesday.