Sara Wyant

USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) announced today that it will go ahead with the first phase of plans to update the methodology used to set crop insurance premiums, leading to lower insurance premium rates for many corn and soybean producers in the 2012 crop year and potentially other crops in th

As lawmakers return this week from the Thanksgiving break, they face a host of issues including whether or not to extend several tax breaks and how to gain approval for nine more appropriations bills before the current stop-gap spending measure expires on December 16.

Various super committee packages have been advanced, but partisan bickering over the level of spending cuts and tax increases continues to stand in the way of reaching any compromise.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., held separate briefings for members in an attempt to bring them up to date on the status of deliberations to cut $23 billion out of farm bill spending over the next decade.

With just 10 days left to produce a $1.2 trillion package aimed at deficit reduction, the 12 members of the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee are providing only small hints that they may be moving closer to their end game.

some farm and commodity groups are pushing back against what they view as major reversals in farm policy reforms

As members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees continue to work on finding $23 billion in farm bill spending cuts as part of $1.2 trillion package aimed at deficit reduction, many of their colleagues are suggesting that it may not be enough.

the Ranking Minority member of the House Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson, said discussions over how to find $23 billion in farm bill cuts were in a “holding pattern” and that “there appears to be some backsliding” on some of the most contentious issues in the commodity title.

The chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are expected to get together and finalize their plans for cutting $23 billion out of farm bill spending over the next ten years.