Philip Brasher

President Obama releases his fiscal 2017 budget this week as congressional Republicans vow to accelerate debates on appropriations bills amid the heated campaign season.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has notified lawmakers he lacks the legal authority to provide subsidies for cottonseed, a blow to growers reeling from a plunge in global cotton prices. The industry had asked Vilsack to make cottonseed an eligible commodity under the new Price Loss Cover

Democrats stalled a bipartisan energy bill in the Senate until Republicans agree to include aid for the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. A cloture motion that would have moved the Energy Policy Modernization Act toward final passage failed, 46-50, far short of the 60 votes

Rep. Steve King can say I told you so after the outcome in the Iowa caucuses. He warned back in January that corn growers and ethanol producers risked a significant defeat for the industry if they publicly opposed Ted Cruz over his position on the Renewable Fuel Standard, a

The House Agriculture Committee is urging lawmakers to leave farm and nutrition programs alone as a new budget blueprint is developed.

Critics of ethanol are rehashing proposals to curb biofuel policy, and Republicans may force another vote on the Pwaters of the United StatesP rule as the Senate debates a com-prehensive bipartisan energy bill this week.

No period in the presidential campaign is more important to U.S. agriculture than the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. But as the caucuses approach next Monday, the candidates most favored by Iowas agribusiness leadership are likely to come in third at best.

Congressional budget analysts have sharply increased their estimate of how much the new Agriculture Risk Coverage program will cost in the wake of a heavier-than-expected signup.

DuPont, which is planning a merger with Dow Chemical, says it is committed to the state of Iowa, where the companys Pioneer seed operations were founded 90 years ago. However, a statement issued by DuPont stopped short of saying what would happen to t

The nation s capital is digging out of a monster snowstorm that is playing havoc with schedules even as much of official Washington will be focused on Iowa for the last week of campaigning ahead of the Feb. 1 caucuses.