Articles by Aarian Marshall

Lawmakers on Thursday spent almost half of a four-hour House Appropriations Committee markup debating the national school lunch program guidelines, continuing a battle that's drawn an unlikely cast of characters: school lunch ladies, produce advocates, anti-obesity crusaders and first lady Michelle

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., a longtime supporter of USDA’s controversial catfish program, announced today that the Agriculture Department has forwarded to the White House Office of Management and Budget a final rule to establish a USDA catfish inspection program

It was about as passive-aggressive as an official press release from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office can get. “We have spent the past several weeks working to narrow gaps with Japan. The round we just completed was focused but difficult,” Michael Froman, the USTR, said after a meeting with h

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the School Nutrition Association (SNA) both struck conciliatory notes Wednesday and told reporters they would be willing to accept compromises beyond the school lunch guideline changes proposed by House Republicans.

USDA has yet to determine which of the approximately 2,500 Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices it will propose to close, agency Administrator Juan Garcia told the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday.

A bipartisan group of 45 senators warned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman last week that a wide-ranging free trade agreement with Europe could limit market access for U.S. producers of bologna and black forest ham.

Agriculture – whose proponents have long argued the industry has a public image problem – tried a different tack this week. At a Capitol Hill summit attended by lobbyists, congressional staffers and industry members, a number of sector participants argued there’s a profound link between agriculture

Here’s help, maybe: Merriam-Webster defines “sustainability” as “involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources.”

The U.S. and EU are “clearly into negotiating mode,” after completing the fourth round of their Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks, Marc Vanheukelen, the European Trade Commission’s head of cabinet, told EU’s agriculture community at the annual Forum for Agriculture in Brus

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told organic industry representatives yesterday that coalition building would be essential to policymaking, warning organic and conventional proponents alike that they would need to lean across the agriculture aisle to achieve legislat