The White House steps up its campaign to get Congress to approve the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement this week, dispatching U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer for hearings on both sides of Capitol Hill.

Citing hundreds of millions in savings over a 15-year period, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue today announced the Kansas City region has been chosen as the new home for the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. But ERS will not be moved under the Office of Chief Economist, as previously proposed.

Farmers in five Midwest states have claimed almost half of the $8.5 billion in trade assistance payments that USDA has provided so far as compensation for losses due to retaliatory tariffs.

A bipartisan group of senators joined some Corn Belt farm groups in appealing to the Agriculture Department to ease restrictions on haying and grazing of cover crops that farmers will plant on acreage they were unable to sow to corn or soybeans this year.

USDA’s top lawyers have confirmed that unplanted crop acreage will be ineligible for trade assistance payments under the Market Facilitation Program, a government official tells Agri-Pulse.