Trade

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America’s foreign agricultural assistance provides significant domestic benefits by boosting demand for U.S. exports while making more food available to U.S. consumers and helping to guard against the import of pests and diseases, a new report says.

Congress returns from a two-week break with the deepening impeachment battle clouding prospects for budget and tax issues important to U.S. .agriculture, and there is continued uncertainty about when lawmakers will take up the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade agreement.

The United States and China have agreed to a tentative trade deal that addresses biotechnology and other key agricultural issues while substantially boosting U.S. farm exports, President Donald Trump said Friday.

The U.S. agricultural trade surplus was $812.6 million in August, the highest monthly surplus for 2019 since February’s mark of $929 million, according to data compiled by USDA's Economic Research Service. In three of the past five months, the U.S. has registered a trade deficit.

Farmers were hoping for a speedy resolution to the U.S.-China trade war, but the lack of such a resolution has sent them scrambling to come up with a new home for exports once gobbled up by China.

USDA announced Thursday export sales of 130,000 metric tons of U.S. white wheat for delivery to China, a sale that comes one week ahead of the next round of bilateral trade negotiations.

As much as growers long for an end to the trade war with China, there are long-term threats to demand for corn, soybeans and other crops that could depress commodity prices for years to come and lead to calls for higher government spending, economists say.

Beef and pork stole much of the spotlight when President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signed off on a trade pact last week, but many of the U.S. winners will be American specialty crop farmers.

Researchers are peeling back the onion to produce a closer geographic view of farm product and food transfers across the U.S.

After a major decline in August, the Ag Economy Barometer declined again in September as producers “were noticeably more pessimistic about current conditions on their farms and in the U.S. economy.”