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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Brazil, a country that produces 42% of the world’s soybeans and 12% of its corn, is intrinsic to global food production, but all of that hinges on the South American nation’s ability to bring in billions of dollars’ worth of fertilizer from thousands of miles away. It’s a situation that Matt Simpson, CEO of the company Brazil Potash, said he wants to help change.
Grower groups cheered when a federal appeals court ruled last week that EPA’s decision to revoke all food tolerances for chlorpyrifos ran afoul of the law. But they also know that the court ruling does not mean that renewed access to the insecticide is guaranteed.
In a major victory for grower groups, a federal appeals court vacated EPA regulations banning the use of chlorpyrifos, which should allow the insecticide to continue to be used in agriculture.
Lawmakers are looking at boosting subsidies for supplemental, area-based crop insurance policies to induce growers to buy higher levels of coverage, which could potentially reduce the demand from farm groups for ad hoc disaster assistance.
China’s approval of a whopping 51 new genetically modified varieties of corn and soybeans for planting on Chinese fields is a major development in the country’s changing stance on its acceptance of the technology.
China says it is ready to join the plant biotechnology revolution, opening its fields to the widespread cultivation of genetically modified soybean and corn crops in an effort to bolster domestic production, but it’s unclear if the transformation will benefit U.S. exports.
There were fears that even though U.S. ag exports to China were rising after the countries agreed to a trade war détente during the Trump administration, the U.S. might never recover its pre-trade war share of China’s imports.
