A fresh round of assistance from the Small Business Administration should soon be available to farmers.

The USDA’s decision to open the tightly-controlled U.S. sugar market to more foreign sugar comes as a relief for bakers and food manufacturers.

The Department of Agriculture expects imports of an additional 100,000 short tons of refined Mexican sugar to compensate for shortages in U.S. production.

There won’t likely be enough sugar in the U.S. market to comfortably supply all the bakers, candy makers and food manufacturers that need it at a reasonable price, so USDA will soon be announcing a plan to allow for more imports, the department announced Friday.

Sugar producers leave no doubt they want to keep their supply-managed sugar market.

The White House steps up its campaign to get Congress to approve the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement this week, dispatching U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer for hearings on both sides of Capitol Hill.

While the rest of the country has enjoyed an economic resurgence in recent years, the farm economy has slipped into a recession as global commodity prices precipitously fall.