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Congressional leaders were nailing down the final details of a stopgap spending bill Monday night that was expected to include $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, as well as a one-year farm bill extension, sources tell Agri-Pulse.

The Adverse Effect Wage Rate that farmers are required to pay H-2A workers is rising by an average of 4.47% nationally to $17.74 per hour, according to list of 2025 wage rates published in a Federal Register notice Monday.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday signaled support for unionized dockworkers' calls to bar automation at East and Gulf Coast ports amid tense labor negotiations that may result in a mid-January strike. 

The Labor Department will have to keep farmworkers informed of enforcement efforts, under a settlement reached with six farmworker groups.

Federal and state court judges have blocked the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons after finding the scale of the divestiture plan, which involves selling about 580 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers, cannot make up for the loss of competition that would result from the merger.

The world’s largest commodity trader plans to slash about 8,000 of its global 164,000-person workforce as part of a sweeping effort to cut costs and restructure. 

President-elect Donald Trump is setting up a cabinet of unusually diverse views and backgrounds that together could have a far-reaching impact on the food and agriculture sectors. Farm groups will be counting on his pick to lead USDA, Brooke Rollins, to be an advocate for ag within an administration. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum could be a key ally on energy policy.

Provisions in a Labor Department rule addressing the treatment and pay of H-2A farmworkers have been enjoined by a federal judge who ruled Monday the department exceeded its authority or did not adequately explain why it was changing its regulations.

Farmworker wages rose 3.2% nationally this year from 2023, according to an American Farm Bureau Foundation analysis of USDA’s Farm Labor Survey, which is used to set H-2A minimum wage rates. 

The chairman and CEO of Deere and Company, which has been the target of tariff threats by President-elect Donald Trump, touted his company’s long history of manufacturing farm equipment in the United States and exporting it to other countries on an earnings call Thursday.