Federal

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the Trump administration on Tuesday to moderate its stance in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, describing some of Washington’s demands as “poison pill proposals” that could doom the talks. Thomas Donohue, the chamber’s president and chief executive, will raise a red flag about the progress of the negotiations, according to advance excerpts of a speech he was due to make in Mexico City on Tuesday morning.The group has argued repeatedly in recent weeks that NAFTA is critical to U.S. [node:read-more:link]

he dairy state of Wisconsin, for example, has lost 20 percent of its dairy farms within the last five years. Despite the loss in total farms, Wisconsin still produced a record 30 billion pounds of milk in 2016. A similar thing is happening in most states, Utah included. The 2014 USDA Farm Bill included voluntary dairy farmer participation in the Margin Protection Program-Dairy (MPP). The purpose of this federal dairy income safety net was to protect the margins between milk prices and the cost of feeds cows eat. [node:read-more:link]

Efforts underway from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scale back the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) would break repeated promises by President Donald Trump to protect the RFS. As part of a Notice of Data Availability (NODA) published by the agency on Oct. 4, EPA signaled that it is contemplating reducing proposed RFS volumes, including volumes that were finalized a year ago. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials say genetically modified mosquitoes are not "drugs" and should be regulated by environmental authorities. According to guidelines posted online Wednesday, federal officials have decided that mosquitoes engineered by the biotech firm Oxitec will be regulated from now on by the Environmental Protection Agency.The guidelines clarify that products intended to function as pesticides to control mosquito populations should fall under the EPA. [node:read-more:link]

Big changes abound for shippers of agricultural products in the U.S. In September of 2016, large agricultural production and shipping companies of more than 500 employees had to begin to abide by the Food Safety Modernization Act.All agricultural carriers must now be in compliance with the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food rule, commonly called the “Sanitary Transportation Rule.” This rule puts in place new regulations on vehicles and transportation equipment, transportation operations, training, and records maintenance for agricultural product carriers. [node:read-more:link]

It tells us of a massive trade ratio imbalance of five-to-one in favour of the American dairy producers exporting into Canada. I couldn’t help but laugh at Americans wanting to protect our consumers from needing to pay high prices on dairy products by eliminating our dairy marketing board.Two years ago, I saw a program called Northwest Profile on KSPS that featured a large dairy farmer along the Columbia River who has a herd of 10,000 dairy cows. The cattle live outside all year long and are milked automatically by just walking up to a machine that cleans them and milks them. [node:read-more:link]

A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general on Monday called on Congress to allow Medicaid funding to flow to larger drug treatment centers, potentially expanding the number of addicts who can get help as the nation grapples with an overdose crisis. The government lawyers for 38 states and Washington, D.C., sent a letter to congressional leaders requesting the change. They say it’s needed to help fight the opioid abuse and overdose epidemic, which continues to claim tens of thousands of lives a year. [node:read-more:link]

Recently a friend of ours told us about the farm bill listening session he attended during the August Congressional break. He expected the bulk of the comments would focus on the problems farmers are facing as the result of nearly four years of low commodity prices. Instead, he said, the bulk of the discussion focused on three issues: decreasing regulations, increasing exports, and eliminating inheritance taxes. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration acted unlawfully when it froze Obama-era restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry, a federal court ruled.  According to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Interior Department misused a provision of the Administrative Procedure Act when it stalled key provisions of a rule aimed at reducing methane venting and flaring on public and tribal lands.Just today, BLM unveiled a separate proposal to delay the standards until January 2019. [node:read-more:link]

Potential trade disputes are approaching from all directions with significant implications for American agriculture. To the north and south, the US government is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] with Canada and Mexico. Just last week, the three countries met in Ottawa, with many thorny issues yet to be resolved. Also last week, the US imposed a tariff of almost 220 percent on certain models of aircraft produced in Canada. [node:read-more:link]