Articles by Bill Tomson

Russia is doing whatever it can to stop Ukraine from supplying some of the poorest nations with its wheat, corn and sunflower seed oil, effectively using “hunger as a weapon of war,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during his participation at the G7 summit this weekend in Germany.

Ag ministers for the Group of Seven nations this weekend pledged action to counter the rising cost and scarcity of fertilizer, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was at the meeting in Germany.

India on Saturday banned wheat exports in efforts to protect its domestic supply and that’s drawn the criticism of the U.S. and its fellow G7 member countries, says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says Canada’s second proposal for changing its tariff rate quotas for U.S. dairy is unacceptable and the Canadians must make key changes for the U.S. to agree to a resolution of the dispute.

American farm groups are celebrating the Biden administration’s long-waited decision to name a nominee to be the Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for trade. President Joe Biden has again gone back to the Obama administration to fill a high-level role at USDA with the choice of Alexis Taylor to be the top trade official at the department.

The Biden administration will be naming Alexis Taylor, a former deputy undersecretary at USDA, to be the department’s top trade official, sources informed of the decision tell Agri-Pulse.

U.S. potato shipments are for the first time reaching Mexican importers beyond the 26-kilometer limit established by Mexico years ago, marking the start of increased trade that will boost U.S. exports by tens of millions of dollars, according to USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Ukrainian farmers will begin harvesting millions of acres of winter wheat in July, but if Ukraine is unable to export it, the country’s economy will likely collapse and the hundreds of millions of people that depend on receiving that grain will suffer even worse than they are now, United Nations World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said Wednesday.