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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Thursday, December 07, 2023
President Joe Biden, standing in a Minnesota farmer's shed, took shots at agriculture industry consolidation and touted his administration's delivery of $5 billion in conservation and infrastructure spending as he kicked off of a two-week White House "barnstorm" of rural America.
Members of the Senate will begin returning to Capitol Hill for hearings this week after the August recess, while Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack travels to Cornell University for an agriculture seminar.
The shipping delays that plagued railroad networks last year have improved amid increases in staffing, though Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is calling for more action from the Surface Transportation Board to address what he calls “inadequate” and “unreliable” service from railroad companies.
The Agriculture Department is moving to improve its firefighting efforts in the West with more than $490 million in funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador may have thought he was offering a reasonable compromise when he told U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that Mexico would remain open to importing genetically modified feed corn, but American farmers don’t see it that way.
Mexico is willing to make a deal to annually exempt U.S. feed corn from a coming ban on genetically modified corn, but no deal is being considered on white corn for direct human consumption, according to a statement issued by the office of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Agriculture Department reduced its fiscal 2023 forecast for U.S. ag exports to $190 billion, a $3.5 billion drop from the agency’s last estimate in August, largely reflecting weaker expectations for soybean sales.
Moving livestock from field to field to lessen the impact of their grazing practices is a practice slowly taking hold, and some proponents say new federal funding coupled with better outreach could get more producers on board.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack personally warned Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador against banning genetically modified corn and later said the Biden administration expects to receive a proposal soon from Mexico on how to “engage in dialogue assuring the safety of biotechnology products.”
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall has introduced a bill to cut restraints on domestic fertilizer production, legislation that the Republican lawmaker aims at getting into the farm bill.
