Despite a push by farm organizations to double the budgets for a pair of USDA export programs, a leaked copy of the Trump administration's proposed budget zeros out funding for both programs. The White House is expected to release President Donald Trump's budget proposal Tuesday for fiscal year 2018. The plan will recommend Congress cut a broad array of domestic programs, which includes programs farmers rely on for trade, conservation and possibly even commodity programs. [node:read-more:link]

During California’s epic five-year drought, most of the state’s irrigation districts didn’t comply with a 2007 law that requires them to account for how much water they’re delivering directly to farmers, a Bee investigation has found. State regulators are largely powerless to stop them, but they don’t seem too bothered by it. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Citrus Science Council has joined with five citrus growers in Central and Southern California to challenge the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to lift a 70-year-old ban preventing Argentine lemons from being imported to the U.S.  In the lawsuit, filed Thursday with the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

I’d go so far as to say we should all be eating oatmeal for breakfast, pretty much every day. Buy the big canister of rolled oats, which makes 30 servings and is often on sale at my local market for about $3 — which means oatmeal is 10 cents a bowl. You can get the steel-cut kind if you prefer; they’re nutritionally similar, but they cost more and take longer to cook. There are other oat-based products, of course. If you don’t want to turn whole oats into breakfast, you can let General Mills do it for you in the form of Cheerios. [node:read-more:link]

Early Saturday afternoon, renewable sources produced a record 67.2 percent of the electricity on the portion of the state’s power grid controlled by the California Independent System Operator. That figure does not include large hydropower facilities, which added another 13.5 percent. Based in Folsom, the ISO runs 80 percent of the state’s grid. More than half of the renewable energy flowing across the grid at that moment on Saturday came from large solar facilities and wind farms. [node:read-more:link]

The assumption that immigrants take jobs away from native workers presupposes that native workers and immigrants compete in the same labor market. If native and immigrant labor are substitutes, or they would accept the same kind of work, then both types of labor should have similar compensating wage differentials. The standard textbook theoretical discussion on compensating wage differentials implies that firms must compensate workers with more dangerous jobs with higher salaries. [node:read-more:link]

In search of four undocumented immigrants, federal agents raided a mushroom farm facility in Chester County and took into custody nine workers there, according to witnesses and the owner of the farm. None of those nine workers were the four that officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were reportedly looking for. ICE came onto the private property of a processing facility owned by South Mill Mushrooms Wednesday morning. [node:read-more:link]

In the 1970s, at least 60 dairy farms operated in Hillsborough. Their demise in a handful of decades seems the inevitable aftermath of urban encroachment, rising land prices and consolidation making it tougher for small and mid-sized dairy farms to milk profits. Earlier this year, the extended family trust that owns the land received a multimillion dollar offer from Miami-based Lennar Homes, eager to build a thousand homes there. [node:read-more:link]

A seemingly minor component of the USDA reorganization plan released last week could have a negative impact on food safety as the plan gets implemented. Much of the focus has been on the creation of a new undersecretary for trade position, but the plan also calls for the establishment of an interagency committee that would coordinate agricultural trade policy. This committee would be chaired by the new trade undersecretary and would include, among other agencies, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). [node:read-more:link]

This year could be a pivotal for many Iowa farmers, battling to turn a profit as they plant 23.4 million corn and soybean acres across the state.Financial pressure is beginning to show.Iowa farmers are leaning more on debt, with production loans climbing 39 percent to $8.4 billion over the past five years, federal bank data shows.Loans 30 days or more past due have increased 180 percent to about $84 million since 2011, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [node:read-more:link]