USDA
Anti-deficit lawmaker blocks House action on disaster bill
First-term Rep. John Rose, declaring it was “absolutely, without a doubt, wrong” to pass a $19.1-billion disaster relief bill without a roll call vote, blocked House action on Thursday on the legislation, which includes $3 billion for agricultural aid.
Rain delays may pull down U.S. corn yield
Corn and soybean planting is running roughly 30 percentage points behind normal in a cold and rainy spring, said the weekly Crop Progress report on Monday. "Delayed planting has set the stage for potential corn yield reductions at the national level," but not guaranteed them, wrote economist David Widmar in a blog about the implications of one of the five slowest corn planting seasons on record.
Peterson challenges USDA on land stewardship offers
Almost as soon as the USDA offered to admit land in need of high-priority stewardship practices into the long-term Conservation Reserve Program, the House Agriculture chairman threatened on Thursday to void the offer. “I am going to stop it somehow or other,” chairman Collin Peterson told two USDA officials.
Three USDA nominations advance to Senate floor
Is moving day near for two USDA agencies?
Like a genial bulldozer, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue relentlessly is pushing two scientific agencies out of Washington, with an announcement expected in mid-May of a new home in the heartland. Some mid-level USDA officials believe Kansas City, already the home of the department's commodity procurement office, is the favored site.
Nutritional quality of school food surges under 2010 reforms
With Congress in the early stages of updating child nutrition programs costing $30 billion a year, researchers say the nutritional quality of school meals increased by more than 40 percent following a 2010 mandate to serve healthier food. The first comprehensive study of the 2010 reforms also found that student participation rates were highest in the schools that served higher-quality meals.
SNAP starts small, will go national, in test of online grocery shopping
The USDA launched a test of online grocery shopping for food stamp recipients in New York State on Thursday, with plans to expand the pilot to nine states across the nation.
Amid decline in commodity prices, farmland values could fall too
U.S. farm real estate values rode the express elevator to the penthouse during the commodity boom, gaining an average $860 an acre in five years. They are still at elevated levels despite the sharply lower farm income of recent years but may drift lower in the near term, according to two examinations of the farm economy.
The big customer for U.S. animal protein: Mexico
On average, U.S. farmers are aging, but a quarter of them are newcomers
One-third of America’s 3.4 million farmers are over the age of 65, and nearly a million more of them are within a decade of that milestone, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, released by the USDA on Thursday. For decades, the aging U.S. farmer has been a cause for concern, expressed in this question: Who will feed America in the future? [No paywall]
House ag leader backs one-time aid for flooded grain
U.S. cotton use lowest in 120 years or more
Hemp won’t grow like a weed on U.S. farms, says Northey
For all the buzz about recently legalized industrial hemp, Agriculture Undersecretary Bill Northey expects a slow shift to the crop. "It will be a long time before it is a third crop in a lot of places," he told the North American Agricultural Journalists on Monday. "I think we have a lot to learn in growing the crop yet."
Proposed rule would ease standards for retailers that accept SNAP
The Department of Agriculture issued a proposed rule Friday that would ease the standards for how many and what types of products food retailers must stock in order to accept SNAP benefits at their stores. An Obama-era rule had expanded the amount of healthy foods that retailers had to stock in order to participate in the program.
SNAP defenders blast USDA time-limit proposal
The administration is motivated by conservative ideology, not facts, with its proposal to toughen the 90-day limit on food stamps for able-bodied adults, said the chair of a House Agriculture subcommittee on Wednesday, vowing “to do everything I can to stop this rule.”
Reimbursement for grain lost in flooding may be question for Congress
Trump declares flood disaster in Nebraska
Federal disaster assistance is available for recovery efforts in Nebraska following President Trump’s declaration of a major disaster in the state, said the White House on Thursday. The USDA said farmers and ranchers should contact their local USDA office to see if they qualify for assistance.
Cattle expansion slows in its fifth year
An expansionary phase in the U.S. cattle inventory, dating from 2014, is slowing, say USDA analysts, pointing to a financial pinch on the cow-calf ranchers who start the beef production cycle.
Ten RECs get $4.4 billion in New ERA clean energy funding
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced $4.37 billion in grants and loans to 10 rural electric cooperatives on Thursday for clean energy projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1.1 million tons a year. With the awards, the USDA has allocated nearly $9 billion of the $9.7 billion available in the Empowering Rural America program.