Ag Policy Blog

House Ways and Means Committee Democrats sent Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer a letter today outlining concerns in the proposed U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement that they want addressed before considering whether to approve it.

On Monday, 90 groups and agribusinesses wrote U.S. Trade Ambassador Robert Lighthizer asking him to quickly get moving on a U.S.-Japan trade agreement because U.S. agriculture is now at greater risk of losing market share to the European Union and the countries included in...

Farm organizations nationally wrote congressional leaders late last week calling on Congress to immediately pass a disaster aid package. The letter was backed by 135 groups and banks that provide operating loans to farmers and ranchers.

I had more than a couple of emails following an article this week on property taxes paid based on the 2017 Ag Census. The article was purely a numbers piece, taking the dollar amount of property taxes paid in each state and dividing it by the number of farmers reported in the...

USDA is now allowing higher limits on the department's various farm loans following a change in the 2018 farm bill.

In a speech Thursday evening to an agricultural commodity futures conference, Gregg Doud, the U.S. chief agriculture negotiator, listed the many problems the United States has with agriculture and trade in China and other countries, but did not mention any achievements in the...

Talking about the flooding disaster Monday, USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey spoke to members of the North American Agricultural Journalists in Washington, D.C.

USDA detailed the enrollment period for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) on Friday. You have until May 10 to get your application into for CSP into your local Natural Resources and Conservation Service office.

The American Trucking Associations has launched a new campaign with television and digital ads over the next two months to highlight the need for more infrastructure investment in roads and bridges nationally.

The U.S. has an updated tri-lateral trade deal with Canada and Mexico that needs approval by the legislative bodies in all three countries, but that is getting more complicated all the time.

The Senate late Monday failed to invoke cloture on a Republican substitute to the House-passed emergency disaster bill and the underlying bill that passed the House earlier this year.

As I mentioned in Saturday's item, I got a little tied up with the candidate press gaggles at the Heartland Forum in Storm Lake, especially those of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Because of that, I didn't give a fair shake to three other candidates who were there...

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan all took questions at the Heartland Forum in consecutive order on stage. These candidates, like at least 11 others...

Several farm groups focusing on issues related to small family farms in crisis held a rally here Saturday leading up to a rural issues forum later in the afternoon with a handful of Democratic presidential candidates.

In the 2008 farm bill, Congress created a disaster indemnity program for farmers called the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE). That program went away in the 2014 farm bill, but now Congress is having to fight again to get ad-hoc disaster passed. That was exactly...

The law did preempt state labeling laws, as the food industry wanted, but there are so many problems and inconstancies with the law and the rule promulgated by the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Marketing Service that when the standard goes into force in January, there...

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Tuesday he expects the emergency disaster bill that Senate Republicans released to provide flooded areas of the Midwest the same type of aid that is provided to California for forest fires and the Southeast for tornado and hurricane...

National Farmers Union on Monday, leading a coalition of other farm and rural groups, called on Congress to fully fund the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) in fiscal year 2020.

As flooding was hitting Missouri River towns, the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau on Wednesday said flooding is becoming more common and more work is needed to deal with levee protection on the river.

For the second time in as many days, USDA issued news releases this week stressing preventive measures to avoid African swine fever from landing in the U.S. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on Wednesday highlighted Greg Ibach, under secretary for Marketing and...