Federal

he Organization for Competitive Markets has filed a legal challenge against USDA for withdrawing a set livestock marketing rules designed to level the playing field for producers while negotiating supply contracts with larger agribusinesses. On Friday, attorneys for OCM filed a 170-page brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri, to vacate USDA's actions against the rules last October. The OCM filed an appeal in February.The rules originally were drafted by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA. [node:read-more:link]

A research scientist at the Census Bureau produced a report based on unusual findings in the field. Across a number of projects and “pretests” (or training exercises) conducted between February and September 2017, bureau researchers discovered that survey respondents who were asked questions during focus groups or sample tests were behaving in unexpected ways: They were giving false names or incorrect birthdates, leaving family members out of questionnaires, or abandoning interviews before they were finished. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture published in the Federal Register a final decision to establish a Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) for California. The proposed FMMO would incorporate the entire state of California. The final decision is based on the evidentiary record of a public hearing held in Clovis, Calif., from September to November 2015. A recommended decision regarding the proposed program was published Feb. 14, 2017. USDA will conduct a referendum among dairy producers to determine whether they support the proposed FMMO. [node:read-more:link]

President Donald Trump is seriously considering abandoning efforts to remake the nation’s biofuel laws after wading deep into an issue that divides some of his core constituencies, according to three sources familiar with the administration’s thinking. Advisers have urged Trump to instead let Congress tackle the biofuel reforms, but use the threat of administrative action to help rival lawmakers come together and solve the intractable issue.The U.S. [node:read-more:link]

 Seventeen states, the District of Columbia and six cities sued the U.S. government Tuesday, saying the addition of a citizenship question to the census form is unconstitutional. Federal funding and congressional representation are at stake in the dispute over the Trump administration’s move to reinstate the citizenship question to the 2020 census. It would be the first time in 70 years that the government uses the form sent to every household to ask people to specify whether they are U.S. citizens. [node:read-more:link]

China's tariff of up to 25 percent on U.S. agriculture could be good news for Australia's nut, wine and fruit producers. Almost 40 percent of Australia's fruit exports last year went to greater China, and Chile also is a major fruit producer that could benefit. Australia's wine exports to mainland China rose 63 percent last year, while U.S. wine exports to the world's second-largest economy were down. Beijing also imposed new tariffs on American pork, a move that could benefit the European Union, Brazil and Canada — major exporters to China [node:read-more:link]

The Farm BIll reports are the culmination of a year-long process by FBLE partners to study the farm bill and develop concrete recommendations that will advance shared public values.Researching, writing, and publishing these joint recommendations advances our mission to work together across disciplines toward a farm bill that meets the long-term needs of our society, including public resources stewardship, economic opportunity and stability, public health and nutrition, and fair access and equal protection under the law.Each report presents a set of recommendations along a particular theme, [node:read-more:link]

Environmental Protection Agency staffers received a list of “talking points” this week instructing them to underscore the uncertainties about how human activity contributes to climate change. A career employee in the department’s Office of Public Affairs distributed the eight talking points to regional staffers. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration and House Republicans are pushing a crackdown on food stamps, but their effort to shrink a safety net program that boomed during the Obama era might come at a great cost — derailing a massive farm bill that’s heavily supported in Trump country. Talks between House Democrats and Republicans on the farm bill broke down two weeks ago over proposed changes to the nutrition program that Democrats say would cut off an estimated 1 million participants — a bad sign for the historically bipartisan legislation. [node:read-more:link]

 U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today issued a statement providing clarification on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) oversight of plants produced through innovative new breeding techniques which include techniques called genome editing. Under its biotechnology regulations, USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques as long as they are not plant pests or developed using plant pests. [node:read-more:link]