The Congressional Budget Office has posted the budget estimates of the draft legislation of the Senate and House farm bills that are to be considered this week. Read More...

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said today that the farm bill, which the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to mark up on Tuesday, is likely to be on the Senate floor next week. Read More...

Congress seems to be set to act on the farm bill now because the Senate and the House want to move ahead with other more politically interesting legislation, Jerry Hagstrom writes in his National Journal Daily column published today. Read More...

In the first sign of differences between the Obama administration and Capitol Hill over the farm bill, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department’s Risk Management Agency has questioned the House Agriculture Committee staff’s use of RMA statements to justify the inclusion of additional payments to cotton farmers. Read More...

More than 130 groups representing smaller and minority farmers have sent leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees a letter urging them to support programs of interest to their members. Read More...

Candy companies have been thriving and adding jobs even while they have lobbied Congress that sugar prices have caused them economic difficulties, according to a study by a University of Maryland finance professor that the American Sugar Alliance released today on the eve of Senate and House Agriculture committee consideration of reauthorization of the sugar program. Read More...

Reporters who tried to email Shin Inouye, the White House press secretary who handles agriculture and rural America issues, today got an automatic reply that he had been furloughed. Read More...

A Supreme Court decision today backing Monsanto in the case of Bowman v. Monsanto and an Agriculture Department decision last week that USDA would require environmental impact statements for certain biotech products seeking approvals have received predictable reactions from agriculture and environmental groups. Read More...

The Senate Agriculture Committee has released a section-by-section summary of its 2013 farm bill. Read More...

The House Agriculture Committee today released a draft of the farm bill that is very similar to last year’s bill with a few key changes. The committee’s markup of the bill is scheduled for Wednesday. Read More...

The Senate Agriculture Committee late Thursday published the committee print of the 2013 farm bill that The Hagstrom Report released earlier in the day. Read More...

The House Agriculture Committee formally announced its markup of the farm bill next Wednesday at 10 a.m. Read More...

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Wednesday introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at combating antimicrobial drug resistance. Read More...

The draft of the “Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act,” which the Senate Agriculture Committee will mark up on Tuesday, establishes a new program of “Adverse Market Payments” designed to garner support from southern senators, according to an initial reading of the draft. Read More...

Global greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector totaled 4.69 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2010, an increase of 13 percent over 1990 emissions, making emissions from agriculture a “huge share” of overall emissions and a concern for environmentalists, according to a new report issued by the Worldwatch Institute on Wednesday. Read More...

Barbara Leach, the associate administrator of the Agriculture Department’s Risk Management Agency since 2009, has left that position to join USDA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Read More...

A short-term law that has become known as the “Monsanto Protection Act” because it gives the Agriculture secretary the power to allow the growing and harvesting of biotech crops despite court rulings is of questionable legality and has made it more difficult for the Agriculture Department to develop rules and programs to allow for coexistence of organic and conventional and biotech crops, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today. Read More...

Former Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan will headline the CropLife America National Policy Conference on May 22, CLA has announced. Read More...

Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee have received copies of the farm bill draft. Read More...

In a signal that the Senate Agriculture Committee farm bill markup next Tuesday will be quick, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has scheduled a speech to the Organic Trade Association Policy Conference at 4:30 p.m. that day. Read More...