Farm income in the Tenth District continued to decline in the first quarter, but at a slightly slower pace than in recent quarters. According to the survey, 73 percent of bankers reported farm income was lower than the year before. The decline in the first quarter marked the fourth consecutive year that District bankers reported farm income was lower than a year earlier (Chart 1). Despite the persistent decline, the pace of softening appeared to slow in the first quarter. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration is delaying for six months a rule that would require organic meat and egg producers to abide by stricter animal welfare standards. Former President Barack Obama’s Agriculture Department announced the rule two days before he left office in January. The regulations are designed to ensure that organically grown livestock have enough space to lie down, turn around, stand up and fully stretch their limbs. Poultry would have enough room to move freely and spread their wings. Beaks couldn’t be removed and cattle tails couldn’t be cut. [node:read-more:link]

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), a national dairy marketing cooperative that serves and is owned by more than 13,000 members on nearly 8,000 farms in 48 states, is calling out animal rights group Compassion Over Killing (COK) after it received notification that undercover video footage of a member farm in Pennsylvania will be released this week. While one farm employee has been fired from the farm, DFA said a third-party audit showed no evidence of abuse at the farm and shamed the activist group for recording the video instead of reporting the alleged mistreatment to a manager. [node:read-more:link]

China’s largest dairy is in talks to buy America’s No. 1 organic yogurt company, Stonyfield Farm, the New York Post has learned. Yili Industrial Group Co. has bid around $850 million to buy the Danone-owned Stonyfield and is now considered a favorite in the auction, two sources close to the process told The Post. [node:read-more:link]

A tough U.S. proposal on bilateral sugar trade with Mexico sets a bad precedent for an impending renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the head of Mexico's sugar chamber, Juan Cortina, said on Tuesday. The U.S. sugar industry pressed the Commerce Department late last year to withdraw from a 2014 trade agreement that sets prices and quota for U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Former President Barack Obama gave his first speech outside the United States since leaving office at the Seeds & Chips conference, an annual gathering of policy makers, investors and technology entrepreneurs focused on innovations to improve the food chain. His brief speech was devoted to agriculture’s role in climate change, noting that after energy, agriculture is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Now, he said, those emissions are starting to take their toll on food production itself. [node:read-more:link]

Today, we filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against Whole Foods Market, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and Global Animal Partnership (GAP) for what we believe is an improper profit-driven effort to benefit Whole Foods. HSUS and surrogate animal-liberation allies are currently engaging in campaigns threatening restaurants and other companies to switch to GAP-certified meat. GAP was created by Whole Foods (its first address was the Whole Foods corporate HQ) and has been funded predominately by Whole Foods since its inception. [node:read-more:link]

ChemChina [CNCC.UL] has won around 82 percent support from Syngenta shareholders for its $43 billion takeover of the Swiss pesticides and seeds group, China's biggest foreign acquisition to date. [node:read-more:link]

The Environmental Protection Agency may have to assess the effects on endangered species of 59 products containing clothianidin and thiamethoxam, two neonicotinoid insecticides. A federal judge has found that the agency violated the Endangered Species Act by registering the products without complying with Endangered Species Act consultation requirements, said Center for Food Safety attorney George Kimbrell, who represents his group and other plaintiffs in the case, including four beekeepers, Beyond Pesticides, the Sierra Club and the Center for Environmental Health.U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Growers and farmworker unions said Tuesday that a federal immigration crackdown in rural towns is scaring away workers and forcing cutbacks in production of hand-harvested produce. “Wherever I go in California — I was just up in the wine industry — when I talk to dairy farmers, when I talk to small farmers in the Bay Area, even some in the Central Valley, they tell me they can’t find workers,” Feinstein said on a conference call with reporters. “That workers are scared, that they’re afraid they’re going to be picked up and deported, that they have disappeared.” [node:read-more:link]