The Environmental Protection Agency will announce the volumetric requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard in a telephone call to reporters at 3 p.m. today.
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President Barack Obama landed at Orly Airport in Paris late Sunday and made an unannounced stop at the Bataclan concert hall, site of the worst of the recent terrorist attacks in the city.
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With Republicans in Congress opposed to many of President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives, National Journal asks in two stories today whether the president can fulfill the pledges he will make to other countries.

• National Journal — How Binding Can an International Climate Agreement Get?
• — One Big Way Obama Can’t Outrun Congress on Climate Change

“We are for trade, but it must be on a level playing field,” Martin Merrild, a Danish farm leader who is the president of COPA, the broad coalition of farm groups in the European Union member countries, told The Hagstrom Report recently when he visited Washington.
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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is scheduled to be in Brussels today and Tuesday to talk about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, climate change and global food security. Read More...

BRUSSELS — “TTIP is alive and making headlines in some member states,” Daniel Rosario, the European Commission spokesman for agriculture, rural development and trade, told a group of trade journalists at a recent discussion here. Read More...

BRUSSELS — Removing nontariff barriers to trade is the most important goal in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the staff of COPA, the European coalition of farm groups, have told The Hagstrom Report. Read More...

Negotiations over the regulation of financial services and whether foreign companies can compete for government procurement contracts are the most important issues in the negotiations — not agriculture: “If TTIP is not finished, it won’t be due to agriculture.” Read More...

Shortly after voting not to end debate on a bill that would require the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw their Clean Water Rule and start over, the Senate voted 55-43 to move ahead with consideration of a joint resolution sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, calling for the disapproval of the rule, which is also known as the Waters of the United States rule. Read More...

The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture has asked the Senate to repeal mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef and pork. Read More...

A Kansas City grocery store executive told the American Bankers Association agriculture meeting last week how his stores have used local and organic foods and fruits and vegetables to differentiate them from the competition, even among food stamp beneficiaries, Jerry Hagstrom writes in his National Journal column today. Read More...

The Senate fell short of the votes needed today to stop debate and consider a bill to require the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw the Clean Water Rule and rewrite it. Read More...

The White House Office of Management and Budget said today that if the Senate passes a bill that would require the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw the Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States rule, President Barack Obama’s advisers would recommend a veto. Read More...

KANSAS CITY — Farmers have enough reserves and good enough credit ratings to make it through this year, even though commodity prices are low, but 2016 will be the year to see how the future looks, bankers and economists said at the National Agricultural Bankers Conference here last week, hosted by the American Bankers Association. Read More...

The Bipartisan Policy Center has established a CEO Council on Sustainability and Innovation that will “showcase and promote innovative approaches to both combat and adapt to the realities of our changing climate,” former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, now a senior fellow at the center, said at a session last week. Read More...

The Senate is expected to vote at 2:30 p.m. EST today on a bill (S. 1140) that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from implementing the Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States rule, and restart the rulemaking process. Read More...

KANSAS CITY — While there is a lot of talk about aging farmers and the shift to a new generation, a less unheralded generation shift is taking place among agricultural bankers, a panel of bankers of different ages said at the National Agricultural Bankers Conference here last week, hosted by the Americans Bankers Association. Read More...

Anne Penketh, a former British journalist and correspondent who now lives in Paris, has written a novel of a widow who goes to work in the Washington office of a multinational food company. Read More...

KANSAS CITY — Barry Flinchbaugh, the renowned professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, has never been known as a liberal, but he signaled to the Americans Bankers Association here last week that he has had enough of the tea party and of his own congressman, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. Read More...

In a sign of the changing times in agriculture, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is officially launching the first World Cotton futures contract today.
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