Canada’s dairy industry says it shouldn’t bear any additional hardship in NAFTA talks after having been forced to give up so much in past trade deals. If the United States wants increased access to Canada, it should rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership that granted a 3.25 per cent quota that was expected to be filled mainly by the U.S., said Dairy Farmers of Ontario CEO Graham Lloyd.“The TPP is the vehicle that they should be going to,” he said in an interview Wednesday. [node:read-more:link]

A new bill introduced in the House and Senate would support efforts to advance rural broadband and precision agriculture across the country. The Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act of 2018 would require the Federal Communications Commission to set up a task force to evaluate the effectiveness of existing rural broadband programs, identify gaps in coverage, and develop policy recommendations to address those gaps.The task force also would have to come up with specific actions the FCC, USDA and other agencies can take to fill the coverage gaps. [node:read-more:link]

Gov. Scott Walker is proposing a new $50 million annual investment in rural economic development projects. [node:read-more:link]

Brazil’s share of the lucrative and expanding soybean market in China grew to above 53% in 2017, as better quality beans and a huge Brazilian crop sent buyers away from the US. According to Chinese customs data, Brazil's exports to China rose 33% on the year to almost 51 million mt.That is out of a total of 95.5 million mt and compares with US exports of 32.8 million mt, down 3.8%, and Argentinian exports of 6.5 million mt. [node:read-more:link]

U.S. Census data shows that many of those leaving rural Montana are the young people, the high school graduates who leave to pursue post-secondary education and don’t come back. “If you can marry a superior and superb quality of life with the reliability and convenience of strong infrastructure, including internet connections and fiber connections, places like Choteau and Fairfield and Cut Bank and Shelby, become far more relevant and attractive for business development than they would be otherwise,” Tuss said. [node:read-more:link]

According to a report released by The Wilderness Society  “If U.S. public lands were their own country, they would rank fifth in the world for greenhouse gas emissions.” There’s been a big hullaballoo over Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s plans to turn our public lands over to industry interests. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is withdrawing a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires a major source of pollution like a power plant to always be treated as a major source, even if it makes changes to reduce emissions. The decision to withdraw the “once-in always-in” policy is part of President Donald Trump’s effort to roll back federal regulations and was sought by utilities, the petroleum industry and others. [node:read-more:link]

Republican senators on Wednesday condemned President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on washing machines and solar panels, exposing simmering GOP divisions over international trade that threaten the uneasy alliance between the president and lawmakers of his own party. “I don’t agree with it, I think it’s a bad path to head down,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said of the tariff decisions. [node:read-more:link]

Oregon House Bill 4106 would directly correlate the amount of compensation ranchers receive for wolf attacks on livestock with the overall wolf population statewide. House Bill 4106 requires the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife to prepare a report each biennium detailing the change in wolf population over the preceding two years. Legislators would then allocate money from the general fund to the Department of Agriculture’s Wolf Depredation Compensation and Financial Assistance Grant Program based on the change.The bill is spearheaded by Rep. [node:read-more:link]

Many people get nervous any time they need to go to the doctor. But in the past year, some U.S. residents became more concerned than usual. Immigrants around the country who are on edge about broader enforcement under the Trump administration have been skipping appointments, questioning whether enrolling in government-funded health care coverage could undermine their immigration applications and showing anxiety about visiting unfamiliar physicians, according to nearly two dozen medical providers and lawyers interviewed recently. [node:read-more:link]