USDA

New rules for "micro loans" to small and beginning farmers will take effect on Nov 7, said the Agriculture Department in carrying out a provision of the 2014 farm law.

Dan Glickman knows his time is running out as the longest-serving agriculture secretary in half a century. Tom Vilsack, who started on the job at the dawn of the Obama administration in 2009, will tie Glickman, who served in the Clinton era, at 2,123 days in office on Nov 13 and surpass him on Nov 14, according to a USDA tally.

Analysts look for USDA to forecast the first-ever 4 billion-bushel U.S. soybean crop on Friday, along with possibly boosting the size of the record-setting corn crop.

The Agriculture Department announced a $91 million loan guarantee for an advanced biofuel plant in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, that will turn pine chips into 8-10 million gallons a year of reformate, a drop-in ingredient for gasoline and jet fuel that can be added during the regular refinery process.

Operators of diversified farms will see more affordable rates for crop insurance under the new Whole Farm Revenue Protection policy, said USDA's Risk Management Agency.

The Agriculture Department is drafting a $1 a head beef checkoff program of its own that would run alongside the current $1 checkoff that is a lightning rod for complaints of favoritism.

Politico writes about the internecine scuffles among the nation's land grant universities and their think tanks for federal money to carry out analytical work.

Americans are paying noticeably more for the three main ingredients of a bacon cheeseburger - ground chuck, cheese and bacon - than a year ago, says the largest U.S. farm group in a semi-annual market basket survey.

The Agriculture Department announced $118 million in grants for research and market-building for specialty crops - fruits, vegetables, horticulture, nuts and nursery crops.

The consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest re-filed a petition that calls for USDA to classify four strains of antibiotic-resistant salmonella bacteria as a food adulterant.

The soybean stockpile was a bare-bones 92 million bushels at the start of this month, less than a week-and-a-half supply with the new crop still reaching maturity, said the quarterly Grain Stocks report.

The Agriculture Department said it is launching reports on ethanol production and flour milling, three years after the Census Bureau ended the reports due to budget cuts.

Agricultural cooperatives had record sales of more than $246 billion in 2013, the third year in a row of record-setting volume and a reflection of boom times in the farm sector, said the Agriculture Department.

In a Federal Register notice, USDA said it has drafted an environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact if a parasitic wasp, Aphelinus rhamn, is used as a biologic control against the soybean aphid, Aphis glycines.

The Agriculture Department tapped five grant programs to provide a total of $52 million to support local food systems and organic agriculture. Some $27 million came through a new program to build a local distribution chain for small farmers as well as a longstanding program to aid farmers markets and other direct farmer-to-consumer outlets. Food hubs, aggregators and local processors can be pieces of a regional food system. Small and medium-size producers often are at a disadvantage when potential customers want large volumes of goods.

The government formally introduced its new crop subsidy programs along with an online tool to help grain and oilseed growers decide which of the two is best for their operations. Beginning on Monday, owners can tell USDA if they want to re-allocate "base" acres and update yield histories for crops they usually grow. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack described those "very important decisions" as a preparatory step to the choice of whether to enroll in the Agriculture Risk Coverage or Price Loss Coverage subsidies.

The world's largest farm equipment maker, Deere and Co., hired Citigroup to help it decide whether to sell its crop insurance wing, says Insurance Journal. Deere has sold an irrigation unit and its interest in a landscaping business in the past year. Insurance Journal quoted a Deere spokesman as saying, "While crop insurance provides a unique and important touch point with our agricultural customers, we have determined that the federal crop insurance program itself is not core to John Deere.” Recent droughts and a decline in commodity prices has made insurance less profitable.

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.