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Farmers can start enrolling next week for $16 billion in coronavirus relief payments, but the Agriculture Department has decided to prorate the aid to ensure there is enough money to go around, Agri-Pulse has learned.

The Agriculture Department has finalized a sweeping overhaul of its approval process for biotech crops that will exempt some gene modifications from regulation and allow developers to decide on their own whether their products qualify.

Following a stellar last week of April, fresh produce sales remained highly elevated during the first week of May. That’s according to an analysis by 210 Analytics, IRI and the Produce Marketing Association.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service 2020 California Almond Subjective Forecast estimates California almond orchards will produce 3.0 billion pounds of nuts this year, up 17.6% from last year’s 2.55 billion-pound crop.

Farmers, employees, consumers, and residents in communities such as Waterloo, Iowa, can only hope the changes Tyson Foods has made in its sprawling pork processing plant there will soon have workers safely processing hogs again at something close to full capacity.

Anti-biotech activists and sentiment are entrenched throughout Africa, but U.S. farm groups and businesses are hoping a free trade agreement with Kenya will help the country break through its GMO barriers and provide an example to other nations of what the science can do for farmers and food security.

While many large meat processing plants slowed down or temporarily closed due to the spread of COVID-19 among their employees, many small, local meat lockers are seeing a boom in demand for custom butchering.

China snapped up another 136,000 metric tons of 2019-20 U.S. soybeans this week, according to a USDA announcement Tuesday, showing the country is not letting up on purchases that go toward meeting its promises under the “phase one” trade agreement.

The European Union's plan to buy up skim milk powder and butter from European producers is spurring U.S. producers to join in protest with farmers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay.

A bipartisan group of senators are asking the Justice Department to “expediently” investigate what they call “concerning circumstances” within a beef sector rocked by processing capacity issues and accusations of profiteering at the highest levels of the supply chain.