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 The Senate’s draft farm bill doesn’t include language for year-round E15 or the elimination of California’s Proposition 12, but Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman is still highly optimistic both measures will make it through Congress this year. The two biggest U.S. ethanol trade groups are defending the Trump administration against legal challenges to EPA biofuel-blending rules from environmentalists, biogas groups and oil refiners.

President Donald Trump made the biggest pitch for year-round E15 since his first term, calling on Congress to include the pro-ethanol measure in a nearly $88 billion legislative package to fund a raft of items, including the Iran war and $11 billion in financial aid for farmers. Members of Clean Fuels Alliance America gathered on Capitol Hill this week to stress the need to pass legislation to expand biomass-based diesel use in ocean-going vessels. 

The Trump administration is asking Congress to package year-round E15, $11.1 billion in additional farmer aid and a hemp law framework in a nearly $90 billion spending package related to funding of the Iran war. 

Discussion on the potential for Senate passage of an E15 bill swirled on Capitol Hill Tuesday after the release of a draft farm bill that doesn’t include the pro-ethanol measure. A bill to expedite Emergency Conservation Program payments to producers whose land has been damaged by wildfires cleared the House Tuesday with a 386-19 vote. It now heads to the president’s desk for his signature.

Partisan fighting over nutrition aid policy is threatening to derail efforts to pass a Senate farm bill. 

After about a decade of research that's still ongoing, demand from the dairy and food service industries is seen fueling big growth in U.S. plantings of premium soybeans known as high oleic. 

Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., is optimistic on the prospects for E15 and additional farmer aid to pass Congress. 

The Senate Agriculture Committee's five-year "farm bill 2.0" would bolster key farm and rural development initiatives while sidestepping the most controversial food and ag issues of the day. 

 As policy watchers await a draft farm bill from the Senate Agriculture Committee, lawmakers also need to focus on passing year-round E15, weighing in on California’s Proposition 12, and getting more economic aid into the hands of crop growers, American Farm Bureau Federation’s John Newton says. The Trump administration’s record-high biofuel-blending rules are a clear economic win for rural America, says Clean Fuels Alliance America CEO Donnell Rehagen.

A new soybean crushing plant in Illinois will help reduce U.S. farmers' reliance on Chinese demand, attendees at Incobrasa's ribbon-cutting ceremony said on Monday.