USDA

The agriculture sector should broaden its coalitions so it can land more research money, said Dan Glickman, former agriculture secretary, in a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The owners of Quality Egg, based in northwest Iowa, pleaded guilty to charges related to a massive salmonella outbreak in 2010 in which thousands of people fell ill and 550 million eggs were recalled, says USA Today.

"Brazil is likely to receive $400 million from the United States as part of an agreement to compensate the South American country" in the decade-old cotton subsidy dispute, says Agro-South.

The Agriculture Department awarded $6 million to educate farmers about subsidies available in the new farm law and said enrollment would begin this summer for the new Margin Protection Program for dairy. Grain and soybean growers will make a key decision this winter - selecting either the insurance-like Agriculture Risk Coverage program or the Price Loss Coverage program, a more traditional approach, as their safety net through the 2018 crops.

The committees that oversee federal spending agree on a ban on horse slaughter in the United States. House appropriators voted, 28-22, for the ban on as part of their USDA funding bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee added similar language to its USDA bill on a 18-12 vote a week ago. The prohibition was a routine part of the bills since 2006 but was omitted in fiscal 2013.

A Republican proposal to give hard-pressed schools a one-year waiver from school lunch reforms is headed for a floor vote in the House with predictions of more turmoil to come. "This is poison," warned Sam Farr, a senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "It will tie up the whole ag appropriations bill." Farr lost on a party-line vote, 29-22, when he tried to delete the waiver during a four-hour committee markup.

The government is pledging $1.2 billion for the new Regional Conservation Partnership Program that could leverage an equal amount of money from private companies, local communities and others. The program was created as part of the 2014 farm bill. "This is going to be focused on measurable results," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The Agriculture Department forecasts sharply higher beef, pork and egg prices this year although its overall estimate for U.S. food price inflation is unchanged at 3 percent. In its Food Price Report, USDA said it now now expects a 6 percent increase in beef prices for the year, with pork up 3.5 percent and eggs up 5.5 percent.

"Tempting Europe with Ugly Fruit" is headline of New York Times story about a cooperative in Portugal that buys fruit and vegetables rejected under EU food marketing law and sells the goods to customers by circumvention of labeling requirements.

First Lady Michelle Obama will stress the need "to protect and advance the tremendous progress that has been made" in school meals during a meeting this afternoon, according to the White House. School leaders and other experts have been invited to the White House to discuss school meals.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted for flexibility in operating the school lunch program, a marked contrast to a House bill to allow waivers for some schools from the reforms written into a 2010 law. Conservatives say the reforms, which require more grains, fruits and vegetables in meals and less sugar, salt and fat, are too costly.

Groups supporting small farmers objected to cuts pending in House and Senate versions of the FY15 USDA funding bill. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said the House bill "cuts more than 1 million acres from the Conservation Stewardship Program, over $200 million from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and $60 million from the new Agricultural Conservation Easement Program."

The House Appropriations Committee is likely to release today a draft of the FY15 USDA funding bill. It could include provisions, sought by conservative Republicans, to delay or overturn school lunch rules. On Tuesday, House and Senate subcommittees are scheduled to mark up the spending bills. "We expect they will act on Tuesday May 20 to gut nutrition standards through the appropriations process," says the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest in a on-line petition.

The winter wheat crop, dried by intense drought in the central and southern Plains, deteriorated starkly in the past four weeks, putting the harvest into doubt, USDA data indicate. Some 44 percent of the crop is in poor or very poor condition, according to the weekly Crop Progress report. That's 2 points more than a week ago and 11 points more than April 20. Some 34 percent of the crop rated as good or excellent then. Now, it's 29 percent.

There was a bit of buzz on the Internet and in aggie circles over a USDA request for bids to supply 10 submachine guns, ranging from incredulity to waggish remarks of "watch out, varmints." (One quickly learns USDA has its own bank, the Commodity Credit Corp; an air fleet, to combat wildfires; and artillery, used by the Forest Service to prevent snow avalanches.)

The House's spending bill for USDA in fiscal 2015 includes provisions sought by some farm groups and by GOP conservatives. The House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture is scheduled to vote on the bill this morning. The draft makes white potatoes part of the WIC food basket; USDA wanted to exclude them on grounds WIC recipients get enough starch.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in DC is scheduled to hear arguments today over USDA regulations that require cuts of beef, pork and poultry meat to carry labels saying where the meat was born, raised and slaughtered, says Feedstuffs. It's the latest hearing for a case that began July 2013.

Farm-gate wheat prices could average a record $8.75/bushel if bad weather further reduces the U.S. wheat crop and draws down stockpiles, says economist Dan O'Brien of Kansas State University. Stocks peaked at 976 million bushels in 2010 and have fallen annually ever since.