For the second straight year, Democrats threatened but ultimately backed down from blocking Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue from getting a fresh pot of money to make payments to farmers.

President Donald Trump famously tweeted that trade wars “are good and easy to win.” It was a brash statement, but emblematic of his first term in which he either threatened or hit trade partners like China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Canada and the European Union with tariffs.

USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box program needs to eventually give way to more established government nutrition practices, Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue told a virtual gathering of the nation’s produce farmers Tuesday.

The European Union’s proposed overhaul of agricultural production methods is not just bad for Europe — it threatens food security in the poorest of nations that look to the EU as role model for farming and a trading partner, according to an onslaught of criticism released Monday by Trump administration officials.

Democrats reached a deal with the White House and congressional Republicans to replenish the Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corp. account in exchange for banning CCC payments to oil companies and extending some pandemic-related nutrition assistance.

The effects of moving USDA's Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to the Midwest, which resulted in the loss of personnel, are showing.

A partisan feud over USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp. is threatening passage of a stopgap spending bill that House Democrats rolled out on Monday.

The nation’s attention will be riveted this week by the Supreme Court vacancy left by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Congress still faces a looming deadline for keeping the government funded after the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1

Lawmakers look to move a compromise stopgap funding bill this week to keep the government operating until December, even as much of the nation's attention is focused on the Supreme Court opening created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The wait is over. USDA is expected to release the rules this morning for the second round of coronavirus relief payments.