USDA

The Agriculture Department set a 60-day comment period on its proposal for an annual survey of organizations that certify that farms and ranches meet federal standards to be designated as organic producers. "The survey will collect the number of operations that are certified organic for each State, along with the number of acres certified for the various crops, and the number of head of livestock and poultry certified as organic. The data will be used by NASS as administrative data so that future needs to collect organic data from farm and ranch operations can be kept to a minimum," said the Federal Register notice.

"There is no greater challenge" than climate change to the chore of growing enough food to feed a world population forecast to reach 9 billion in 35 years, say Obama administration officials. "Feeding them will require at least a 60 percent increase in agricultural production," say the officials - Secretary of State John Kerry, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and USAID chief Rajiv Shah - in a USDA blog that marks the launch of the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture.

A software program to help farmers decide which farm subsidy program is best for them is available for free, said Kansas State and Oklahoma State universities. In an announcement, the universities said they plan a webinar to provide an update of farm program details and to discuss how to use the decision tool. They said "this computer aid will allow farmers to evaluate the program and to start thinking about the option that best fits their farm."

Two analyses say the record-setting U.S. corn crop is around 14.06 billion bushels, or 2 percent smaller than USDA estimated 11 days ago. That would mean slightly smaller inventories and somewhat higher farm-gate prices, now forecast to be lowest in eight years.

The government will pay up to half of the cost to remove Florida citrus trees infected with the ruinous citrus greening disease and two-thirds of the cost of planting new ones, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Florida is the No 1 citrus state, responsible for more than 60 percent of U.S. production. Citrus is a $9 billion industry for Florida.

The Agriculture Department approved for sale two soybean varieties and one corn variety genetically engineered by Dow to tolerate the weedkiller 2,4-D, a widely used herbicide. The varieties would be an alternative to Monsanto's GE crops that resist glyphosate. There are reports of "superweeds" that survive spraying with glyphosate. The Center for Food Safety, a foe of GE crops, said it "will pursue all available legal options to stop commercialization of these dangerous crops." Opponents say 2,4-D poses health and environmental risks, including its own version of herbicide-resistant weeds.

The House Agriculture chairman says he expects USDA to test the "work first" format as a way to move poor people up the job ladder and off the food stamp rolls. The approach worked as part of welfare reform, said chairman Frank Lucas during a hearing on employment and training programs associated with food stamps. "These programs are designed to get individuals to work as soon as possible and then offer additional training so they can improve their earnings," he said.

The consumer group Food and Water Watch filed suit in federal court to stop USDA from implementing new poultry inspection rules. USDA says the new rules will modernize inspection and let meat inspectors spend more time looking for and preventing microbial contamination of meat. Food and Water Watch says the plan, which allows plants to run slaughter lines are higher speeds, abdicates USDA's responsibility to identify meat that is not wholesome.

The president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Bob McCan, says "there have been honest differences of opinion" over beef checkoff reform during informal discussions among 11 livestock, marketing and import groups. The National Farmers Union has pulled out of the three-year-old discussions, saying consensus was impossible.

The numbers may change when USDA issues its September crop report on Thursday but the story remains the same: U.S. farmers will reap their largest corn and soybean crops ever this fall. The gargantuan harvests will result in the biggest surpluses in several years and bring markedly lower farm-gate prices that end an eight-year run of historically high crop prices.

Landowners will be paid $328 million for easements that protect farmland from urban sprawl or restore grasslands and wetlands, said the Agriculture Department. The money will flow to 380 projects totaling 129,000 acres nationwide through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. The 2014 farm law combined three easement programs to form the umbrella ACEP. "What this program does is say, where are the needs out there?" said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during a teleconference.

Canada's wheat surplus at the start of this marking year was 9.8 million tonnes, up 94 percent from the year-earlier figure, said Statistics Canada. A record 3.7 million tonnes was in storage in Saskatchewan and storage in Alberta also was a record at 1.8 million tonnes as of Aug 1. The huge increases reflected "bumper production for many crops (in 2013), especially in the Prairies," it said.

Private consultants expect the U.S. corn and soybean crops will be larger than estimated by the government. USDA will update its forecasts on Sept 11. Three consultancies - INTL FCStone, Lanworth and Allendale - release assessments this week. Lanworth was the only one to lower its estimate of the corn crop, to 14.646 billion bushels, but that is higher than the other two forecasts and 4 percent larger than USDA's estimate of 14.032 billion bushels based on Aug 1 conditions, said AgriMoney.

Fulcrum Sierra Biofuels will receive a $105 million loan guarantee to build a plant in McCarran, Nev, to produce biodiesel jet fuel from municipal solid waste, said the Agriculture Department. The plant would produce 11 million gallons a year of fuel. The loan guarantee is nearly half of the $226 million cost of the plant. Cathay Pacific Airways said last month that it would invest in Fulcrum Bioenergy and negotiated a 10-year contract with Fulcrum for 375 million gallons of fuel.

Rice growers in drought-baked California expect twice the reduction in their crop than does USDA. An official with the California Rice Commission told CBS Sacramento that rice plantings and harvest area will be about 420,000 acres this year, down 25 percent from 2013. California is the largest grower of short- and medium-grain rice, the types used in sushi. The rice crop is worth $5 billion, so the smaller crop could mean $1 billion less in rice revenue.

The government does not expect to sell surplus sugar at a discount to ethanol makers during the new fiscal year. Sugar supplies are forecast to be fairly tight during fiscal 2015, shrinking to a carryover of 837 million short tons, compared to a surplus of 2.16 million tons in fiscal 2013.

Heading into the final weeks of the growing season, U.S. corn and soybeans were in extraordinary condition, said USDA. Its weekly Crop Progress report said 74 percent of corn was in good or excellent condition, up 1 point from the previous week, and 72 percent of soybeans were good or excellent, up 2 points. Eight percent of corn was mature, half the usual figure for the final days of August. U.S. corn and soybean harvests are forecast to set records this fall.

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.