The House Agriculture Committee released its 2018 farm bill Thursday with proposals to reshape the nation’s largest domestic food aid program, consolidate conservation efforts and tweak farm aid. The bill arrives amid controversy over its focus on shifting funding within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, into work and training programs. It does not have the support of Democrats, who worry that some states could use the tougher work requirements in the bill to push thousands out of the program by making it difficult to meet the terms. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Supreme Court held a conference on April 13, 2018, to decide if Indiana and Missouri can bring legal actions (Bill of Original Complaint) against California and Massachusetts. This case will have an important impact on agriculture. The Supreme Court punted on April 16, and asked for the views of the DOJ’s Solicitor General on the two cases. [node:read-more:link]

On average, U.S. farmers received 14.8 cents for farm commodity sales from each dollar spent on domestically-produced food in 2016, down from 15.5 cents in 2015. Known as the farm share, this amount is at its lowest level for the period 1993 to 2016, and coincides with a steep drop in 2016 average prices received by U.S. farmers, as measured by the Producer Price Index for farm products. 2016 was the fifth consecutive year that the farm share has declined, though the 4.5-percent drop in 2016 was below 2015’s 9.9-percent fall. [node:read-more:link]

President Donald Trump this week appeared to extinguish the glimmer of hope he offered U.S. farmers last week over rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty. After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Florida, Trump suggested there was one area where they would have to agree to disagree: the TPP, which Trump pulled the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

An Increase In Bankruptcies Compounds Economic And Emotional Woes.  As the dairy industry struggles with low prices in the face of a long-mounting milk glut, more farmers are finding that their woes are escalating. Over the spring of 2017, a pricing dispute with Canada, Wisconsin's large export market, along with ongoing fears of additional trade issues, have helped crystallize what is turning out to be a serious crisis in dairyland.Cow-feed suppliers can offer a measure of how dairy farmers are holding up. [node:read-more:link]

The GAO said USDA has developed standards limiting the amount of salmonella and campylobacter permitted in certain meat and poultry, such as ground beef, pork carcasses and chicken breasts. But it has not developed standards for other products that are widely available, such as turkey breasts and pork chops. Further, USDA's process for deciding which products to consider for new standards is unclear because it is not fully documented, which is not consistent with federal standards for internal control, GAO said. [node:read-more:link]

The public school in Campo, Colorado, hasn’t required all its students to come to class on Fridays for nearly two decades. The 44-student district dropped a weekday to boost attendance and better attract teachers to a town so deep in farm country that the nearest grocery store is more than 20 miles away. “I think the four-day week helped us, initially, in recruiting teachers,” the superintendent, Nikki Johnson, said. [node:read-more:link]

The weekend blizzard has some farms looking for places to shelter their cows. About ten farms with collapsed or structurally-compromised barn roofs in a 150 mile stretch of central and northeastern Wisconsin. [node:read-more:link]

Large wildfires in western Oklahoma continue to burn more than 400,000 acres and growing. “Hay is the number one need right now,” said Dana Bay, Woodward County OSU Extension Educator. “Ranchers that were able to save their cattle but lost their grass and hay of their own are in desperate need of hay to sustain those animals.”If you would like to donate hay, please contact Extension coordinators at one of the three phone numbers:(405) 590-0106,(405) 496-9329, (405) 397-7912. A second relief fund has been established by the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Foundation (OCF) with. [node:read-more:link]

The Hendricks County Superior Court ruled in favor of a group of hog farmers and their cooperative when it dismissed a lawsuit against them. The Lawsuit was filed by neighbors who argued that the hog farm was a nuisance, that the farm's location was rhe result of negligent siting and that the farm would release odors which would trespass on neighbor's property.  The plaintiffs argued the farm itself had been negligently sited, so the RTFA should not apply. [node:read-more:link]