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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
The Environmental Protection Agency is approving the first pesticides for application on industrial hemp fields and proposing to allow continued use of atrazine herbicide on corn and other crops.
The House approved a pair of fiscal 2020 spending packages Tuesday that will provide a fresh infusion of disaster relief to farmers, extend the expired biodiesel credit to 2022 and bolster port inspections to protect U.S. agriculture for African swine fever and other threats.
Congressional negotiators agreed to revive and extend through 2022 the expired $1-a-gallon tax credit that subsidizes biodiesel and renewable biodiesel production.
A congressional agreement to fund the government for fiscal 2020 includes an additional $1.5 billion in disaster relief for farmers and would revive the biodiesel tax credit and extend it through 2022.
In what is setting up to be an historic week, the House is poised to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement after a bitter debate over the impeachment of President Donald Trump, and lawmakers also are rushing to pass legislation to fund the government for fiscal 2020.
The Democratic-controlled House approved a bill Wednesday to expand the H-2A visa program to year-round farmworkers and provide growers relief from wage hikes, but the broad GOP opposition underscored the challenge of getting Congress to address the agricultural labor squeeze.
Agricultural policy has seldom received as much attention as it has in this presidential campaign as Democrats vie for ways to cut into President Donald Trump’s rural base and win Iowa’s first-in-the-nation’s caucuses amid heightened anxiety about the farm economy.
Lawmakers are trying to wrap up deals this week on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and fiscal 2020 government spending while the Trump administration faces a self-imposed deadline for getting a partial trade agreement with China.
Brushing aside an outcry from anti-hunger advocates and congressional Democrats, the Trump administration on Wednesday finalized regulations that will make it harder for states to exempt able-bodied adults from work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The Trump administration’s trade assistance payments have become so critical to farm profits that some growers could take a hit to their income if the program is discontinued in 2020 because of a trade deal with China.