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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
The Biden administration is looking to farmers to help alleviate global food shortfalls by planting winter wheat this fall on ground that’s coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program, but much of the acreage lies in states that are suffering from prolonged drought.
Ag ministers for the Group of Seven nations this weekend pledged action to counter the rising cost and scarcity of fertilizer, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was at the meeting in Germany.
When the Russian military invasion cut off Ukraine’s ability to export sunflower oil and wheat, it helped push “a cascading food crisis around the world,” according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for U.S. Agency for International Development. Now Indonesia, which last week banned the export of palm oil, is exacerbating the conditions that are driving global shortages and price spikes of vegetable oil.
The war in Ukraine will increase food insecurity around the world, especially in countries heavily dependent on wheat imports from that country and Russia, and exacerbate already existing supply chain pressures, panelists on a global trade webinar said.
The Russian government's decision to suspend fertilizer exports will threaten supplies for farmers in the European Union, South America and Africa while eventually pushing up prices that U.S. farmers must pay, according to analysts.
The nearly week-long Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to restrict already tight global supplies of grain and fertilizer as Black Sea distribution hubs and supply lines shut down amid the chaos and violence that is only expected to worsen as Russian aggression intensifies and Western sanctions broaden.
The Biden administration needs to concentrate on negotiating to gain increased access to foreign markets for U.S. ag exporters – especially in Asia – or risk falling further behind in the international race to increase trade ties, according to a diverse panel of experts gathered Thursday by Farmers for Free Trade.
The House Agriculture Committee is adding seven new Republican members. All but one, Texas Rep. Michael Cloud, are first-term members. The others: Kat Cammack of Florida, Randy Feenstra of Iowa, Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota, Tracy Mann of Kansas, Mary Miller of Illinois and Barry Moore of Alabama.
The Trump administration is claiming success in the “phase one” trade deal with China with a new report released less than two weeks before the presidential election.
President Donald Trump famously tweeted that trade wars “are good and easy to win.” It was a brash statement, but emblematic of his first term in which he either threatened or hit trade partners like China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Canada and the European Union with tariffs.
