A Trump administration and new leadership of the Senate’s environment committee may breathe new life into efforts to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s renewable fuel standard, lawmakers and advocates say.  House members are continuing to build momentum around bipartisan legislation (H.R. 5180) to limit EPA ethanol requirements in total transportation fuel at 9.7 percent. Opponents of the mandate also are happy about the likely selection of Sen. [node:read-more:link]

Six states lacked the legal right to challenge a California law that prohibits the sale off eggs from chickens that are not raised in accordance with strict space requirements, a federal appeals court said Thursday.  The states – Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky and Iowa – failed to show how the law would affect them and not just individual egg farmers, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. The court upheld a lower court decision that dismissed the lawsuit. [node:read-more:link]

Animal agriculture – farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, feed mills and animal health companies – is dedicated to providing a safe and healthful food supply for everyone. That dedication starts on the farm with ensuring livestock and poultry are also healthy.  As part of that commitment, the animal agriculture community is currently working to implement significant changes in the way antibiotics are used. [node:read-more:link]

Survey Results at a Glance: • For a 14th straight month, the Rural Mainstreet Index fell below growth neutral. • Overall index slumps to lowest level since April 2009. • Bank CEOs project more than one in five farmers with negative 2016 cash flows. • More than one in four bank CEOs expect rising regulatory costs to be the biggest challenge to their bank operations over the next 5 years. • Gains reported for Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota while losses were recorded for Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Wyoming. [node:read-more:link]

The Ohio Department of Agriculture announced that nine land trusts, four counties, one township and 11 Soil and Water Conservation Districts will receive funding to help preserve farmland across the state. These organizations will receive allocations from the Clean Ohio Fund to select, close and monitor easements under the Local Agricultural Easement Purchase Program [node:read-more:link]

VTT has developed a solution for converting even small sources of methane-rich biogas into raw materials for animal feed or bioplastic on farms, landfills and wastewater treatment plants. This emission-reducing solution is based on the ability of methanotrophic bacteria to grow on methane in gas fermentors. The methanotrophic bacteria and (depending on the growth conditions) cell mass may also contain polyhydroxybutyrate plastic (PHB) - a natural substance in the cells that enables them to store conserve energy. [node:read-more:link]

Researchers in Louisiana have discovered traces of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the feathers of birds eaten by land animals. A team examined the feathers and digestive tract contents of seaside sparrows - measuring signature carbon from spilled oil. They say it "is the first demonstration that oil from the spill made it into the" food chain of land animals. The findings are published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The study focused on seaside sparrows and the soil sediments of the Louisiana marshes. [node:read-more:link]

transcripts show that farm policy hasn’t come up even once during a presidential debate for the past 16 years. For more than a hundred years before that, however, the hyperbolic praise of American farmers was a campaign mainstay. So much so that Charles Warren of Mutual News opened his moderation of a 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. [node:read-more:link]

An initiative to support the development of sustainable biofuels is being backed by 23 governments – major powers which account for 80% of the world’s investment in clean energy.The Sustainable Biofuels Innovation Challenge was announced by Mission Innovation – an influential group of countries who committed to working together to accelerate the pace of clean energy innovation – at COP 22.Governments are being called upon to pool resources and expertise to advance research and development, ‘with the goal of achieving performance breakthroughs and cost reductions for large scale production o [node:read-more:link]

New and stiffer Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) training requirements for farm workers using chemicals, specifically pesticides in an agricultural setting, are set to take effect beginning in January of 2017. As it stands now, and as it has been in the past, workers who handle pesticides on the farm must receive specialized training every five years to conform to EPA regulations. [node:read-more:link]