A federal district court judge today ruled that California’s low-carbon fuel standard, known as LCFS, violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, a ruling that appears at least initially to be good news for the nation’s corn ethanol industry and bad news for environmental critics who have argued that corn-based ethanol leads to changes in land use in other countries. Read More...

Thirty senators led by Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kans., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., sent Labor Secretary Hilda Solis a letter this week urging her to withdraw a proposed rule that would restrict teenagers who are not the children of farm operators from working on farms. Read More...

The United States, China and the European Union appear to be vying for popularity with the West African cotton producing countries by offering new forms of assistance and attention in the absence of a World Trade Organization Doha round agreement that would reduce cotton subsidies around the world. Read More...

Two U.S. meat groups have had remarkably different reactions to the agreement for Russia to join the World Trade Organization. Read More...

The Obama administration has released a report from the federal food safety working group.
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Leaders of Growth Energy, the ethanol coalition, painted a positive portrait of the industry going into 2012 in a call to reporters today, even though the ethanol tax break and protective tariff will expire on Dec. 31 and there are campaigns to get rid of the renewable fuel standard. Read More...

Remember the days when the Iowa presidential caucuses were marked by big, serious debates over farm policy and ethanol? Not this year. The farm economy is in possibly its best shape in American history and farm issues are not hot. Read More...

The French Embassy in Washington has launched a website to explain the importance of food and agriculture in France, in the world and in Franco-American relations. Read More...

The minimum hourly wage rates that employers must pay H-2A workers on temporary visas will go up in some states, down in others, and stay the same in some cases, the Labor Department announced today. Read More...

As the Commodity Futures Trading Commission considered a rule on swaps today, House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., wrote the commissioners that the loss of customers’ funds in the MF Global Holdings Inc. bankruptcy shows the need to protect swaps users from similar problems. Read More...

Delegates to the American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Honolulu early next month will consider a policy very similar to the one presented to the agriculture committees this fall when they were writing a bill to be presented to the supercommittee on deficit reduction, Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman said in an interview today. Read More...

The United States should provide food aid to North Korea as part of an effort to build a new relationship with that country after the death of its longtime leader, a former U.N. World Food Program executive director said today. Read More...

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk today praised Japan's decision to review its ban on importation of certain cuts of beef, Reuters reported today. Read More...

Noting that the federal government has declined to give consumers “the gift of information on alcoholic beverages,” the Consumer Federation of America today pointed to its chart revealing the caloric and carbohydrate content of some alcoholic beverages. Read More...

GENEVA — World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy’s plan to assemble a panel of stakeholders to examine “the real drivers” of trade and obstacles to it won an endorsement from a key group that represents major international agribusinesses, but the statement also reveals a list of issues that member countries may find difficult to agree on. Read More...

The American Soybean Association has hired Patrick Delaney, a communications officer for the United Fresh Produce Association, as its new communications director. Read More...

GENEVA — World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy announced tonight that he will not seek re-election when his current term expires on Sept. 1, 2013. Read More...

GENEVA — Member countries of the World Trade Organization accepted Russia as the WTO’s latest member today, but the immediate impact on U.S. agricultural exports to Russia is uncertain. Read More...

A bipartisan coalition of 19 senators led by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., today called on Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to appeal a World Trade Organization decision that was critical of the U.S. country-of-origin food labeling program. Read More...

Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine today denied he had any knowledge of a transfer of customer money to a European affiliate, but faith in the self-regulatory system under which the futures industry operates appears to be diminishing. Read More...