Ag Policy Blog

The USDA budget for farmers in President Joe Biden's fiscal year 2024 budget largely remains pat, waiting on the next farm bill. But the White House proposed to increase spending on USDA conservation programs by $208 million and add $400 million to spending on rural broadband...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Monday that USDA was releasing a proposed rule with new regulatory requirements to better align the voluntary "Product of USA" label claim with consumer understanding of what the claim means.

Most western states have been in some form of drought now for more than two decades, but only in the past two years has the drought received more attention, largely due to the problems with infrastructure, reservoirs and Colorado River struggles. At the moment, heavy rains...

USDA has $250 million to help rice farmers, but enrollment for the payment program will start later this spring. The department released some details of the Rice Production Program so farmers can be prepared for the signup, "which will include a pre-filled application in an effort...

The current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza is now the deadliest animal disease in history, topping the 2015 bird flu outbreak. One of the big drivers this time around is that the current strain of HPAI is hitting wild birds such as waterfowl and raptors much...

The Biden administration and Mexican officials have been going back and forth about biotech corn for a year. Mexico earlier this month essentially issued an immediate ban on the use of biotech corn for products used as food such as tortillas. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack...

The FDA draft guidance released on Wednesday keeps using the term "milk" for these plant-based milk alternatives (PBMA), but recommends "voluntary nutrient statements" for the labeling of some plant-based milk alternatives to highlight to consumers the difference between...

At a Senate Agriculture Committee farm bill hearing on federal nutrition programs, Republican senators complained to Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Stacy Dean about the way USDA had undertaken the reevaluation, and the subsequent...

Ahead of a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing Thursday at which Biden administration officials will testify on the nutrition programs, Republicans pointed to decisions by the Biden administration to increase SNAP spending that dramatically increases the baseline costs for the...

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy talked about the importance of a farm bill to agriculture at a listening session Tuesday during the World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif. Meanwhile, other lawmakers also talked about getting afarm bill done at a crop insurance industry meeting in Florida as...

Looking at the farm bill debate, some key former Capitol Hill staffers see a need to educate the new lawmakers on the farm bill. It was also suggested that the crop insurance industry should make the case that crop insurance is a climate-change program as well.

Crop insurance and other industries use the models to try to predict potential losses in the next year and to figure out how much that will cost. Creating catastrophic models begins with defining a hazard, trying to determine the local intensity, estimating the damage, adding in...

Chad Tentinger is the principal developer for Cattlemen's Heritage Beef Co., a $520 million project that would process as many as 2,000 cattle a day and employ as many as 800 people. Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, invited Tentinger to watch President Joe Biden's annual speech...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service submitted its rule Nov. 25 seeking to define the lesser prairie chicken as "threatened" in northern areas that include eastern Colorado, western Kansas, western Oklahoma and a few counties in the Texas Panhandle. Texas Attorney General Ken...

The legislation would establish regional cash minimums and equip producers with more market information, including permanently authorizing a cattle contract library. The bill is reintroduced after getting extensive discussion in the last Congress, but did not receive any floor...

On Thursday, GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress introduced resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act. All 48 Republicans in the Senate joined in that chamber. In the House, a resolution was introduced with 152 GOP members, including every Republican...

After losing a dispute panel under the USMCA trade agreement in January 2022, Canada revised how it allocates its TRQ, but that imposed new conditions still restrict a range of potential buyers from importing U.S. dairy products. The U.S. is now calling for a new dispute...

USDA was authorized to create the pilot cattle contract library in a 2022 funding bill. USDA stated the website will work similar to a library model developed and shared with stakeholders last year. Packers that slaughter an average of at least 5% of fed cattle nationally over...

The Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday will start a series of hearings on farm bill programs, starting with trade. Over the next month, the committee will also hold hearings on the commodity programs and crop insurance, as well as nutrition and conservation programs.

A new bill in Congress, the Foreign Adversary Risk Management (FARM) Act, would give the USDA Secretary a permanent seat on the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). The bill also would require more reporting by USDA and the Government Accountability...