Seven of the largest school districts in the United States will not relax school meal standards that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced changes to last week. Seven school districts organized as the Urban School Food Alliance — New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami-Dade County Florida, Orange County of Orlando, Florida, and Broward County of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, — will continue to reduce sodium levels, increase the percentage of whole-grain rich foods to 100 percent and serve only nonfat flavored milk rather than one percent flavored milk, according to the Hagstrom Report. The schools have a combined enrollment of 3.1 million students and spend more than $590 million a year on food and food supplies. The schools joined to tell food companies that they wanted, for example, antibiotic-free chicken and lunch trays that could be composted.

The U.S. Meat Export Federation says pork and beef exports posted strong first quarter results this year, reaching a new record volume for pork. Pork exports reached 227,000 metric tons in March, up 16 percent year-over-year and topping the previous monthly high set in November 2016. Export value was $586.6 million, up 22 percent. For the first quarter, pork exports were up 17 percent in volume and 22 percent in value. Beef exports totaled 105,000 metric tons in March, up 18 percent year-over-year, with value increasing 22 percent to $588.2 million. First-quarter beef exports were up 15 percent in volume at 292,000 metric tons and 19 percent in value at $1.61 billion. USMEF President and CEO Philip Seng stated in response to the export numbers: “The U.S. is not just moving more meat internationally because we have more available. Our products are commanding solid prices and winning back market share in many key destinations.”

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Thursday that the first shipment of fresh U.S. beef has arrived in Brazil following a 13-year hiatus. The entrance of American beef into the Brazilian market ushers in promising long-term economic opportunity for U.S. beef producers, according to Perdue, who says: “I look forward to Brazilians getting the opportunity to eat delicious American beef, because once they taste it, they’ll want more of it.” Brazil closed its market to imports of U.S. fresh beef in 2003 over concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Since then, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have worked continuously with Brazilian officials to regain market access. Brazil officially reopened the market on August 1, 2016, based on the United States’ classification by the World Organization for Animal Health as a negligible risk country for BSE.

The National Farmers Union is calling on the U.S. Senate to reject the House-passed American Health Care Act. NFU says the act will cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, lessen protections for those with preexisting conditions, and adversely affect family farmers and rural Americans. NFU President Roger Johnson expressed disappointed in House passage of the bill, saying many of the issues from the original legislation opposed by NFU in March still exist in the bill. Those issues include caps to Medicaid, and basing subsidies on age. Johnson says: “House leadership has made the legislation worse by providing even fewer protections for family farmers and rural Americans.” The recent MacArthur amendment to the bill, which allows states to apply for waivers to parts of the law, would be “particularly detrimental to individuals with preexisting conditions,” according to Jonson. He says the National Farmers Union priority for any health care bill is that “it offers coverage for more people rather than fewer.”

Farm banks increased agricultural lending by 5.3 percent in 2016 and held $103.4 billion in farm loans at the end of the year, according to the American Bankers Association’s annual Farm Bank Performance Report. Asset quality remained healthy at the nation’s more than 1,900 farm banks as non-performing loans have fallen to a pre-recession level of 0.54 percent of total loans. ABA defines farm banks as banks whose ratio of domestic farm loans to total domestic loans is greater than or equal to the industry average. An ABA spokesperson stated: “We’re continuing to see a decline in farm income, but the good news is farm banks are in good shape to assist their farm and ranch customers as the ag economy takes a turn.” At the end of 2016, banks held $176 billion in farm and ranch loans. In addition, more than 97 percent of farm banks were profitable in 2016, with 60 percent reporting an increase in earnings.

Included in a budget deal to avert a government shutdown is funding for the Food and Drug Administration for consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology. The Washington Post reports the money is to be used to tout “the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts” of biotech crops and their final food products. The bill includes $3 million for the campaign, that comes after More than 50 agriculture and food industry groups had signed a letter last month urging the funding to counter “a tremendous amount of misinformation about agricultural biotechnology in the public domain.” It’s unclear what the FDA campaign will look like, or when it will launch. The Washington Post points out that the $3 million allocated is little more than a speck in the FDA’s total allocated budget of $2.8 billion. The budget specifies only that the initiative be developed in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, and include the “publication and distribution of science-based educational information.”

$1.2 billion of milk exports from the U.S. to Mexico are at risk as Mexico appears to be seeking new trading partners. Mexico is America’s top dairy exporter, and as the Donald Trump administration makes trade relations uneasy with its North American Free Trade Agreement counterparts, Mexico is in talks to import dairy products from New Zealand. In the first two months of 2017, Mexico increased its imports of skim milk powder from the European Union by 122 percent over last year. Mexico has also been exploring talks with dairy powerhouse New Zealand. That country’s trade minister visited Mexico in February to discuss a potential trade deal, according to Bloomberg news. University of Missouri agricultural economist Scott Brown says Mexico is “looking to make sure they have market alternatives because of the rhetoric from the U.S. on renegotiating NAFTA.” But, CoBank economist Ben Laine says “it’s not just the NAFTA talk.” He says demanding that Mexico pay for a border wall and taking a hard line on immigration likely have an impact, as well.

A former U.S. trade representative warned Canada that trade negotiations with the U.S. would be much less predictable with the Donald Trump administration. Obama-era USTR Michael Froman told Canada-based CBC News much of the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations with the Trump administration will likely be familiar ground, albeit with a less predictable partner. Froman helped lead the Obama administration to reach an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement President Trump removed the United States from upon taking office. Froman says: “We already have renegotiated NAFTA, it was called TPP.” Included in the TPP, Froman says Canada and Mexico agreed to a number of revisions that were not in NAFTA that helped make NAFTA a 21st-century agreement. He says it’s unclear what the new administration will seek that goes beyond the scope of the TPP agreement. Froman, now a distinguished fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said it can be reasonably expected that the White House will want to address supply management in the dairy industry, and seek changes to softwood lumber, among the vocal criticisms of the Trump administration of late.