Federal

The administration further relaxed economic restrictions on Cuba Friday, allowing more collaboration on medical research, the approval of Cuban drugs for import and the lifting of monetary limits on cigars and rum imports. The moves make the U.S. openings to Cuba "irreversible," President Barack Obama said in a statement.  The latest changes build on the president's announcement in December 2014 to chart a new course for the U.S.-Cuba relationship, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a statement. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has sent livestock and poultry marketing rules, which USDA is calling the "Farmer Fair Practices Rules," back to the White House for review. The rules drew both praise and scorn.  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent letters to leaders of various meat and livestock industry groups on Thursday detailing why the rules were advanced. [node:read-more:link]

In September, the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, a group charged with making recommendations to the Bureau of Land Management about its Wild Horse and Burro Program, agreed that tens of thousands of equines in federal holding facilities might need to be euthanized.  This recommendation — you might call it the nuclear option — undoubtedly hit horse lovers like a bomb. Social media mushroomed with immediate rancor. [node:read-more:link]

With crop insurance's popularity rising in rural America and on Capitol Hill, and with the policy's budget outlays falling, we're guessing one of its harshest critics, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), is running out of believable critiques. So now it's resorted to pure fiction.  The EWG sounded an alarm bell in an article earlier this week, warning, "Billionaire Saudi Prince Khalid bin Abdullah could be raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice have filed a complaint against NGL Crude Logistics, LLC and Western Dubuque Biodiesel, LLC and a $6 million settlement with Western Dubuque to address alleged violations of the Renewable Fuel Standard. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alleges that NGL entered into a series of transactions with Western Dubuque in 2011 that resulted in the generation of approximately 36 million invalid Renewable Identification Numbers. [node:read-more:link]

Elephants, pangolins and parrots are among the species that were given stronger trade protections at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which ran from 24 September to 5 October in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The 17th meeting of the CITES convention was its largest ever, attended by more than 3,500 people, including representatives of 152 governments. [node:read-more:link]

USDA launched a new private investment fund with the potential to inject $100 million into growth-oriented, small businesses across rural America. The McLarty Capital Partners (MCP) Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC) will be the fifth RBIC that USDA has helped to initiate since 2014.  "Innovative small businesses throughout rural America need the same access to capital as their urban business counterparts," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. [node:read-more:link]

The USDA will move forward with rulemaking on the proposed Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Act (GIPSA) rules proposed in 2010, despite that effort being defunded by Congress at the time.  The National Cattleman’s Beef Association and North American Meat Institute were quick to note that Congress defunded the initial effort because it recognized they would limit producers’ marketing options, add layers of bureaucracy and facilitate litigation. The move also circumvents eight federal appeals court rulings, they said. [node:read-more:link]

The Bureau of Land Management has horses grazing on a ranch the agency rents, one of 60 private ranches, corrals and feedlots where it stores 46,000 wild horses it has removed from the West's public lands. The cost:49 million a year. The expense eats up 66 percent of the federal budget for managing wild horses. The program cannot afford to continue old management practices that created the problem, or afford to come up with solutions that might fix it. [node:read-more:link]

The U. S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) today awarded nearly $1 million in grants through the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP) to strengthen and explore new market opportunities for U.S. food and agricultural products. The FSMIP grant program, administered by AMS, includes $982,437 in matching grants to 12 projects in 10 states.  FSMIP provides matching funds to state departments of agriculture, state agricultural experiment stations, and other appropriate state agencies to assist in exploring new market opportunities for U.S. [node:read-more:link]