Federal

State attorneys general warned such a question could lower immigrants' voting and cause a population undercount. [node:read-more:link]

The FDA has detected Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O128 and Salmonella in samples of raw pet foods manufactured by Arrow Reliance Inc. The samples were collected by the FDA to determine whether the firm had addressed an ongoing pattern of pathogenic contamination in Darwin’s and ZooLogics raw pet foods.The firm has recalled the affected products. [node:read-more:link]

China called on World Trade Organization members to unite to prevent the United States “wrecking” the WTO, and it urged them to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs targeting China’s alleged theft of intellectual property. [node:read-more:link]

When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill back in December, there were provisions giving additional advantages in form of deductions to producers who sold grain to cooperatives that did not exist for farmers selling to independent buyers.  When this was discovered, numerous Congressmen said this was an inadvertent error that would be remedied.  The spending bill corrected this “grain glitch”  in Division T, Section 101, which essentially does away with the deduction advantaged given to coops under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. [node:read-more:link]

A Minnesota farm group says that the federal crop insurance, the nation’s largest “safety net” program for farmers, is a profit bonanza for private insurance companies. Farmers, taxpayers and rural environmental quality are paying the price. “I appreciate crop insurance. It does make a risky business less risky,” said Randy Krzmarzick, a crop farmer from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. “But crop insurance is not subject to any limits. The largest recipients have received over a million dollars in subsidies. [node:read-more:link]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forced to reduce international epidemic detection and prevention programs. For many decades, the CDC has maintained a presence in as many as 49 nations to work with local health officials and to monitor outbreaks of disease. According to Dr. Rebecca Martin, Director of the CDC Center for Global Health, the agency will have to scale back the Global Health Security portfolio to focus efforts based on existing resources. Addressing her colleagues in an internal CDC E-mail, Dr. [node:read-more:link]

New rural broadband funding is included in the $1.3 trillion congressional omnibus bill to fund the government this year. The bill calls for an additional $600 million to be distributed through the Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The funding authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to create a pilot program within RUS that distributes the new funding in the form of grants and loans. There are details to be worked out, but the authorization calls for “expedited” delivery of the program.A few conditions were mandated by the funding bill. [node:read-more:link]

Agricultural steel users are already seeing higher prices due to President Donald Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariff on imports. Mark De Kleine, an agricultural engineering consultant in Prosser, Wash., said he found big price jumps in just a few days when sourcing trellis wire for orchards.“A 25 percent increase in steel — that’s going to be passed down to the consumer and be difficult for the ag industry. There’s a lot of steel in one acre of trellis,” De Kleine said. [node:read-more:link]

The $1.3 trillion government-wide spending bill released late Wednesday rejects President Trump’s proposal to slash the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget by 31 percent. Senior lawmakers negotiating the omnibus appropriations bill instead chose to give the agency $8.1 billion for fiscal 2018, keeping it at the same funding level as 2017.  [node:read-more:link]

The new tariffs are in direct response to China’s overproduction of steel and aluminum, keeping costs artificially low so that other countries can’t compete — a practice widely known as “dumping.” While the administration has called this act out as cheating, it fails to acknowledge that U.S. agricultural policy has done the same for decades, with an even more critical resource: food. [node:read-more:link]