Articles by Bill Tomson

In an increasingly global market where U.S. beef, pork and poultry producers can no longer thrive without access to foreign markets, the ag sector is clamoring for new advantages over foreign competitors, better access to foreign buyers and new free trade agreements.

Consumers in 10 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, the UK, New Zealand and Singapore, don’t see it as a priority to make major changes to agriculture or their diets to address climate change, according to a new survey.

Farm groups are cheering final congressional passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill after weeks of delay in the House. The bill includes $550 billion in new spending for a range of needs affecting agriculture and rural Americans — from broadband to roads and bridges, inland waterways, Western water projects and clean energy development.

The House is scheduled to vote today on both a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the larger Build Back Better package of climate measures and social spending.

This week’s election results are raising questions about the future of President Biden’s legislative agenda and putting a new focus on the struggles Democrats are having in rural America.

Multiple breakdowns in how goods are transported across the country and around the globe are worsening crises in a food and agriculture sector that is already bleeding profits and customers, according to witnesses at a House hearing Wednesday.

The Biden administration is rolling out new regulations on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. But administration officials insist they intend to rely on voluntary measures to reduce methane emissions from agriculture.

The problems farmers are having getting their products to international buyers are costing sales, cutting profits and threatening to sever precious relationships with foreign customers.

Five major U.S. ag groups are imploring the U.S. Court of International Trade to overturn a decision this year by the U.S. International Trade Commission to allow steep tariffs to be placed on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco and Russia.

Four Senate Republicans are introducing a bill today that could stop the Labor Department from increasing the wages that farmers must pay H-2A workers in many states. The minimum wage rates are set by an adverse effect wage rate, or AEWR, that the department sets each year based on a USDA survey that typically comes out each November.