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California‘s Proposition 12 has survived a challenge in a federal appeals court brought by the National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation, which alleged it imposed excessive costs on out-of-state pork producers who will have to comply with the law’s animal housing requirements.

The House Agriculture Committee approved an $8.5 billion disaster bill that would cover a wide range of producers’ losses in 2020 and 2021, with somewhat more generous provisions than the recent relief programs.

Six groups have filed suit against the Agriculture Department over regulations the Trump administration issued last year to streamline the regulation of gene-edited crop traits and allow companies to decide whether their products need USDA approval.

Senate negotiators look to finalize and advance a bipartisan infrastructure bill this week, while the House debates a package of appropriations that would sharply increase funding for USDA, EPA and other departments and agencies important to agriculture.

The Newsom administration is drafting an emergency regulation to curtail senior water rights for thousand of farmers who depend on deliveries through the Delta.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to be director of the Bureau of Land Management after a sharply partisan debate over her truthfulness about a 1989 tree-spiking incident on an Idaho national forest.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sparred with Republican senators Wednesday over a House-passed bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers, and the squabble showcased the divisions that have prevented Congress from passing immigration reform legislation for decades.

The nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, which manages about one of every 10 acres of surface lands in the U.S., will get a vote Thursday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee after months of debate over her role in the spiking of trees on a national forest in 1989.