Bill Tomson

USDA took a key step Thursday in rolling out its new $1.3 billion international trade initiative, the Regional Agricultural Promotion Program, and unveiled plans for trade missions next year to Vietnam, India, South Korea, Canada, Colombia and Morocco.

Brazil, a country that produces 42% of the world’s soybeans and 12% of its corn, is critical to global food supplies, but that production hinges on the ability to import billions of dollars’ worth of fertilizer from thousands of miles away. Matt Simpson, CEO of the company Brazil Potash, wants to ensure Brazil has more reliable fertilizer supplies closer to home.

The U.S. lost its latest dispute with Canada over the country’s operation of a tariff rate quota for dairy imports under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced Friday.

The U.S. dairy sector is reeling after its loss in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement dispute with Canada over that country’s quotas.

A coalition of biofuels groups is pushing back at a federal appeals court ruling. The 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals last week vacated multiple denials of small refinery exemption requests from the biofuel blending mandates, ruling that the agency had used an “impermissibly retroactive” standard.

USDA will award the first tranche of funding under its new $1.2 billion Regional Agricultural Promotion Program, or RAPP, in 2024 with $300 million from the Commodity Credit Corporation.

USDA’s Economic Research Service lowered its forecast for U.S. agricultural exports in fiscal year 2024 Thursday to $169.5 billion. That’s down $2.5 billion from USDA’s previous August forecast and $9.2 billion lower than exports in FY 2023.

More than 60 Republican lawmakers have complained to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack about the timing of assistance from – and the methodology for – the 2022 Emergency Relief Program.

The first thing U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack did after the U.S. lost its second USMCA dairy battle with Canada was vow to keep fighting, offering statements similar to those released by U.S. lawmakers and U.S. dairy groups. But that battle may be at an end after two exhaustive legal fights that both ended in a decision by a three-member dispute panel.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, hasn’t given up on his years-long effort to tighten payment limits for farm bill commodity programs. But he doesn’t support means testing crop insurance, an issue that got fresh attention this week with the release of a new report from the Government Accountability Office.