A new agreement between the U.S. and Brazil means U.S. wheat farmers will compete on a level playing field to sell their crop to that South American nation. U.S. Wheat Associates and the National Association of Wheat Growers welcomed the news that Brazil has agreed to a duty-free tariff rate quota for wheat, a longstanding obligation under that nation’s World Trade Organization commitments.The agreement opens an annual opportunity for U.S. [node:read-more:link]

As the Central and Southern Plains of the United States continue to experience extreme weather and flooding, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine reminds animal food producers who may be mixing, storing or distributing grains and other foods for animals about information resources available. While there are few, if any, crops growing right now, previously harvested crops or siloed feed materials could become contaminated and no longer suitable for feeding. [node:read-more:link]

The Oregon House approved a 10-year ban on fracking to explore for oil and natural gas. Lawmakers voted 42-12 on Monday to prohibit the process, which injects high-pressure liquids into underground rock to extract oil and gas. The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.There are currently no fracking operations in Oregon. But developers say there’s potential for coalbed methane extraction in the Willamette Valley, which this bill would also block. [node:read-more:link]

As more consumers shop at farmers markets and “eat local,” U.S. local food sales, including cottage-food sales, have soared from $5 billion annually in 2008 to a projected $20 billion this year. [node:read-more:link]

For Maine dairy farmer Fred Stone, the discovery in 2016 that his cows were producing tainted milk has since brought financial ruin and threatened to shut down a century-old family business.  Now state regulators and health experts are investigating whether the contamination could reflect a much broader problem for farms that used similar methods to fertilize their land.The chemicals on Stone’s farm likely came from biosolids, or nutrient-rich sewage from municipal utilities, that he spread across his fields, according to a report last year by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection [node:read-more:link]

Former President George W. Bush appeared at a naturalization ceremony Monday where he praised the nation's immigrant history and called on lawmakers to deliver comprehensive immigration reform."America's elected representatives have a duty to regulate who comes in and when," Bush said at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, where dozens took the oath of allegiance to become citizens. "In meeting this responsibility, it helps to remember that America's immigrant history made us who we are. [node:read-more:link]

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a case next term concerning Kansas' prosecution of three undocumented immigrants for using stolen Social Security numbers in an effort to gain employment.Those convictions were overturned when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the federal immigration law at issue preempts a state from prosecuting undocumented immigrants, when the basis of the claim comes from information that has been culled from federal immigration forms.The case raises the question about the extent to which federal immigration law preempts states from also trying to enforce imm [node:read-more:link]

A number of US officials visited South Africa at the request of President Donald Trump as part of an investigation into the country’s land expropriation process. Trump raised eyebrows in 2018 after he tweeted that the South African government was ‘seizing land from white farmers’.Trump asked his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to study the seizure and expropriation of land in South Africa, along with the killing of farmers. [node:read-more:link]

Corn and biofuels groups are upset that the Environmental Protection Agency chose March 14, which was National Agriculture Day, to grant five additional Renewable Fuel Standard Small Refinery Exemptions for the 2017 compliance year, waiving 366 million gallons of biofuels from RFS compliance. "EPA's decision today brings the total waivers from 2016 and 2017 RFS obligations to 53, amounting to 2.61 billion ethanol-equivalent gallons. [node:read-more:link]

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed Chapter 4, S.F. 2225 into law. The bill amends the farm disaster recovery loan program to add “the weight of snow, sleet or ice” as conditions for which a farmer is eligible to participate in the program. It allows the Rural Finance Authority (RFA) to determine whether a weather event constitutes an emergency. [node:read-more:link]