(USCoC) In a picture painted by Tom Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The U.S. unemployment rate is climbing. Crops in the heartland are rotting. Manufacturers are moving abroad. Consumer prices are rising. in his recent column in The Wall Street Journal examining the increasingly precarious state of play in the effort to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement. “NAFTA supports millions of American jobs, and with thoughtful updates it could create millions more. Renegotiations with Canada and Mexico launched in August, but the White House continues hinting it may withdraw the U.S. from the trade agreement altogether. These threats must be taken seriously. Quitting NAFTA would be an economic, political and national-security disaster.” While modernizing the 23-year-old NAFTA makes sense, withdrawing from the agreement would be a blow for the United States, one that would hit some states particularly hard. Ironically, those likely to suffer most would be Midwestern industrial states, heartland farm states like Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, and border states, nearly all of which voted to elect President Trump.

You can read the full article here at https://www.uschamber.com/above-the-fold/which-states-would-be-hit-hardest-withdrawing-nafta

In a collaborative effort to safeguard Missouri agriculture, the Missouri Department of Agriculture today issued a 24c Special Local Need label for ENGENIA Herbicide, EPA Registration Number 7969-345 – SLN label MO-180001. The Department anticipates issuing similar labels for XTENDIMAX and FEXAPAN soon.

“Our intent in issuing the Special Local Need label is to protect this technology for the future,” Director of Agriculture Chris Chinn said. “We thoroughly reviewed the new label restrictions agreed upon by EPA and the registrants, and as much research data as possible to come to this decision that I believe will protect the product and the producers.”

According to the Special Local Need label, to apply ENGENIA to Dicamba-tolerant soybeans and Dicamba-tolerant cotton in Missouri, applicators must abide by the following restrictions:

· Restricted Use Pesticide – For sale to and use ONLY by certified applicators. Non-certified applicators are prohibited from applying this product.

· Training Requirement – Prior to the purchase and/or use of the product, certified applicators must complete mandatory Dicamba training provided by the University of Missouri Extension, which will be available soon. Training verification must be presented to the retail establishment, pesticide dealer or distributor upon taking possession of ENGENIA. For more information on training, visit the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s website at Agriculture.Mo.Gov/dicamba. Applicators are also encouraged to attend training provided by the registrants.

· Dicamba Notice of Application Form – Certified applicators must complete an online Dicamba Notice of Application form daily prior to each application. The blank Dicamba Notice of Application form can be found at Agriculture.Mo.Gov/dicamba/notice.

· Application Timing – The product cannot be applied before 7:30 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m.

· Cutoff Date –
o Use of ENGENIA in Dicamba-tolerant soybeans and Dicamba-tolerant cotton is prohibited after June 1, 2018, in the following southeast Missouri counties: Dunklin, Pemiscot, New Madrid, Stoddard, Scott, Mississippi, Butler, Ripley, Bollinger and Cape Girardeau.
o Use of ENGENIA in Dicamba-tolerant soybeans and Dicamba-tolerant cotton is prohibited after July 15, 2018, in all remaining Missouri counties.

These restrictions were determined based upon feedback the Department received from stakeholders and analysis of alleged crop injury complaints filed during the 2017 growing season.

New findings from the Pew Research Center show 56 percent of Americans believe the North American Free Trade Agreement is good for the United States. Just one-third, 33 percent, of respondents to a Pew Research poll say the trade deal is bad for the United States. The study surveyed more than 1,500 adults at the end of October as President Donald Trump has raised questions about the fairness of the agreement. Relatively small shares of Americans say that NAFTA benefits Mexico or Canada more than the U.S. However, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say NAFTA benefits those two countries more than the U.S., and the partisan gap is especially wide when it comes to Mexico. Meanwhile, for agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture data points out that since NAFTA’s implementation in 1994, U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico have more than quadrupled.

(NAFB) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross pointed a finger at special interest groups, including those in agriculture, as reason for hiccups in the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation. Ross earlier this week said the U.S. will “continue to take a hard line” on its proposals as talks get under way in Mexico City. Speaking at an event Tuesday, Ross said the negotiating environment has only grown more complicated because of industries like agriculture that have voiced a greater level of concern over the direction the administration is taking. Specifically, Ross said: “As one special interest group, say agriculture, for example, gets nervous, they start screaming and yelling publicly.” He says action from special interest groups “complicates the environment” and “makes the negotiations harder.” However, the administration has continually threatened to remove the U.S. from NAFTA, a move agriculture groups call an economic disaster.

Road crews around the country are preparing for winter weather by running preparedness drills and stocking up on road treatment products. The Missouri Department of Transportation added a new product to their lineup for dealing with ice and snow on the roadways, one that includes a corn-based compound. “We added another road treatment option to our winter operations,” says MODOT St. Louis Maintenance Engineer, Mark Croarkin. “The corn-based portion of the product is a carrier for Magnesium Chloride. There are similar products that result in an approximately 2% Magnesium Chloride treated salt that use other base materials. These products typically cost a little more to mix, but they can be more effective.” Croarkin says the corn-based product MODOT started using goes by IceBan M20 or IceBan 300. “If I was trying to quantify I would estimate the IceBan treated material is about 25% more effective overall,” says Croarkin. “The benefits we have seen depend on the temperature; the colder the storm the better results.” The corn-based compound is designed to keep roads ice-free longer. “For us, this is another tool in our toolbox to treat roadways,” Croarkin said.

(NAFB) Round five of the North American Free Trade Agreement talks are set to begin Friday in Mexico City. However, Politico points out that talks will unofficially begin today.

Much of the two-day prelude to the official talks are expected to focus on textiles, labor, cross-border trade and intellectual property. There’s little expectation of talks regarding agriculture, at least for the start of the negotiations.

The Trump administration must still find a way to address Canada’s dairy supply management system, among other agriculture issues. The administration is hoping to wrap up the talks by the end of March. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says the negotiations do not have a hard deadline, but says if a resolution is not reached by the end of March, “the political calendar will make it very difficult to complete a deal.”

An Open Letter to U.S. Farmer and Rancher Organizations:

While tax reform dominates the discussion in Washington, D.C., U.S. agriculture must not allow its focus to be diverted from the equally important issue of agricultural trade. Reforming our nation’s tax code is critical to growing the economy and can benefit all Americans. However, there will be little to no benefit of tax reform to farmers and ranchers if their ability to sell what they produce around the world is diminished.

Coming from Kansas, the economic case for pro-agricultural trade policies is clear: my state exported more than $4.5 billion worth of agricultural products in 2016, generating more than $5.7 billion in economic activity and supporting more than 36,000 jobs. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 20 percent of total U.S. agricultural products are exported. In Kansas, approximately 40 to 45 percent of planted acres any given year will utilize export markets.

There are real Kansans behind these numbers who often get lost in the conversation: farmers and ranchers who hope to see the family operation stay in the hands of their kids and grandkids; teenagers and college students who want to return to the farm or ranch. The ability of a new generation of young producers to make a living in agriculture is impacted far more by the wheat, corn, cotton, and beef being exported each year than by any single tax deduction. And tax rates are irrelevant to the farmer or rancher who loses half of their income due to lost export markets.

President Trump has been consistent in his criticism of trade deals, especially NAFTA, and every indication coming from the administration points toward outright withdrawal from the agreement. Terminating a major trade deal would be unprecedented, which may make the threat hard for some to take seriously. But I am convinced our country is headed down a path toward withdrawal from NAFTA unless action is taken by agricultural groups to change the administration’s course.

This letter is not intended as criticism of farm and ranch organizations. In conversations with agricultural groups and individual producers, I am impressed with the knowledge and conviction exhibited in defense of agricultural trade. I have heard the deep concern for the economic harm that will be done to rural America if key export markets, such as Mexico and Canada, are closed or restricted to agricultural producers.

I write this letter to encourage all of us to do more. To urge agricultural and commodity groups to raise their concerns with the President and his administration through op-eds, letters, social media campaigns, and other venues about the importance of trade. The voices of lawmakers raising alarm will only go so far – the real power to change the conversation lies with the American people.

Tax reform is critical to our nation. But we can’t afford to let the debate over taxes take our attention away from simultaneously protecting the ability of farmers and ranchers to continue to export food and fiber across the globe. The news that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will move forward without U.S. involvement heightens the consequences of NAFTA withdrawal. With the leadership of agricultural organizations, we can help rally farmers and ranchers to speak up about the importance of trade to the future of a livelihood in agriculture. Tough negotiations on improvements – yes; withdrawal from NAFTA – no.

(ASA)

In response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s withdrawal of its proposed rule to overhaul federal regulation on biotechnology and plant breeding innovations like gene editing.

American Soybean Association President and Illinois farmer Ron Moore issued the following statement, “USDA’s withdrawal of the proposed rule is both a positive and a negative for soybean farmers.

On the plus side, there were a considerable number of aspects about the rule that would have stifled innovation and created additional regulatory uncertainty and ambiguity. So we’re happy that USDA recognized the flaws in portions of the proposed rule and has taken it back to square one so that those may be remedied.

We appreciate that the proposed rule addressed gene editing techniques and we hope that, however USDA opts to move forward with rulemaking, they will maintain a positive focus on these new technologies.

Specifically, we hope that USDA will continue to recognize that new plant breeding innovations are distinct from and do not fall under the same USDA regulatory review process as transgenic biotechnology.”