The U.S. Department of Justice intervened last week in a price-fixing lawsuit against some of the nation’s biggest poultry companies. The Fern Dot Org website says that could signal that the department’s own grand jury investigation into the chicken sector might result in criminal indictments.

The Justice Department asked the U.S. District Court in northern Illinois to stop discovery in a class-action lawsuit brought by food distributor Maplevale Farm, saying in a motion that a “limited stay is needed to protect the grand jury’s investigation.” The stay applies to all “defendant employee and former employee depositions” and was granted on a temporary basis.

There will be a hearing later this week on the DOJ request for a six-month stay. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison law school calls the development “significant.” The investigation signals that the DOJ feels “there are serious violations here that require the grand jury inquiry and the potential for criminal indictments.”

The lawsuit alleges that the companies colluded on price hikes by relying on Agri Stats, a secretive information sharing service used by poultry companies. The suit also says those companies manipulated prices up to artificially high levels.

President Donald Trump’s trade war seems to be pushing the rural economy closer and closer to a meltdown. Politico says economic challenges in agriculture are weighing heavier on banks that lend to farmers and ranchers. Farmers are getting slammed on all sides by retaliatory tariffs, unusually bad weather, as well as a five-year drop in farm incomes.

Even the African Swine Fever outbreak in China will affect U.S. farmers because it will put a big dent in the demand for American soybeans, even if the trade war with Beijing is finally resolved. Iowa corn and soybean farmer Grant Kimberly tells Politico that agriculture has seen more than its share of “black swans” in the past couple of years. “We’ve had bad weather, we’ve had African Swine Fever, and we’ve had trade wars,” he says. “I’d say this is pretty unprecedented territory. We haven’t seen anything like this since the 1980s.”

During the first quarter of 2019, the farm loan default rate hit the highest level it’s been at in seven years. One in five farm borrowers increased the amount of debt they carried over from 2018 to the first quarter of this year. Producers are estimated to hold approximately $427 billion in debt this year, the most since the 1980s farm crisis.

The National Biodiesel Board sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler highlighting the economic damage caused by small refinery waivers. The biodiesel and renewable diesel industry have been hit hard by the retroactive small refinery exemptions under the Renewable Fuels Standard that the EPA has given out in recent years.

At issue in the letter is Wheeler’s recent comments that the approval of year-round E15 sales will make up for the economic damage done by the exemptions. “The E15 waivers will not provide growth for biodiesel and renewable diesel, but small refinery exemptions have had a detrimental impact on demand for those fuels,” the NBB says in its letter. “EPA is required to repair the demand destruction for biodiesel and renewable diesel resulting from the agency’s flood of unwarranted retroactive small refinery exemptions.”

The NBB says when they compare the size of the exempted refiners to biodiesel producers, the threat to agriculture is easier to understand. The University of Illinois says the demand destruction for biodiesel and renewable diesel could reach 2.45 billion gallons. The economic loss could reach $7.7 billion in the next few years.

The pesticide industry is asking the Trump administration to exempt its chemical imports from China from the potential $300 billion in new 25 percent tariffs the president is threatening to impose next month on Chinese goods.

CropLife America and a specialty chemical trade group filed comments with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office. Those comments say the tariffs would hit a wide range of products that farmers rely on to do their jobs. Those products would include glyphosate, 2,4-D, atrazine, and dicamba.

The groups say, “Many of the chemicals that would be subject to the proposal are just not available from American sources, and many others are not reasonably available from sources outside of China in the volumes we need and within a useful time period.”

An Agri-Pulse report says Chris Novak, President and CEO of CropLife America, was scheduled to speak on Monday during the USTR’s sixth day of hearings on the list of products targeted for the Section 301 tariffs.

U.S. President Donald Trump will be off to the G-20 summit in Japan at the end of this week. He’s scheduled to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping face-to-face for a high-stakes discussion on trade, as well as other issues.

While most officials don’t expect a long-awaited breakthrough yet, it is possible that Trump could be talked into not putting new tariffs on even more Chinese imports. Politico says Trump has continually preached patience during high-profile negotiations with China, North Korea, Iran, and other nations. It’s both for strategic reasons and as a way to smooth over any frustrations with the slow pace of progress.

Politico also says the “no rush” approach could also be a result of Trump’s confidence that the U.S. can simply outlast its adversaries in trade disputes. However, the go-it-alone foreign policy seems to be leaving the U.S. president increasingly isolated from key U.S. allies. Politico says that may become even more apparent during the upcoming G-20 gathering.

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson of California introduced the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019. The bill is designed to extend several biofuel and bioenergy-related tax credits. “For far too long, Congress has not extended important tax provisions on a forward-looking basis, resulting in confusion and uncertainty for taxpayers,” Thompson says, “We just took the first step toward untangling this mess.”

He says the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019 extends a number of provisions that expired at the end of 2017 and 2018, as well as those that will expire at the end of this year. The bill would extend the $1-per-gallon tax credit for biodiesel and biodiesel mixtures, as well as the small Agri-biodiesel producer credit of 10 cents per gallon through 2020.

The bill treats renewable diesel the same as biodiesel, except there’s no small producer tax credit. The second-generation biofuel producer credit would also be extended through 2020.

Bee colony death numbers are continuing to climb. The Bee Informed Partnership released its latest survey last week, saying U.S. beekeepers lost 40 percent of their colonies last winter. That’s the largest number of overwintering hive losses since the survey began more than a decade ago. The total annual loss in 2018 was estimated to be above average.

An NPR Dot Org article says the survey included responses from 4,700 beekeepers who managed approximately 320,000 hives. The USDA says pollinators like honeybees are directly responsible for one of every three bites of food that people consume. Most of the pollinators are domesticated honeybees and they’re essential for many different types of flowering crops. Wild insects can’t always be counted on to pollinate hundreds of acres of crops, so fruit and nut growers will use commercial honeybee colonies instead.

Studies have shown that bee decline has multiple causes. Decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping habits, as well as a loss of habitat are just some of the reasons given for bee numbers dropping. Pesticides have also been shown to weaken bee immune systems. Varroa mites have become the number one concern of beekeepers in the wintertime because the tools beekeepers use to control the mites aren’t as effective as they have been in the past.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer talked trade during an appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee last week. He told committee members that he’s hopeful the U.S. and Japan are close to a deal on agricultural tariff cuts. He says the key to reaching a bilateral trade agreement with Japan is resolving those differences over Ag tariffs.

According to various media reports, Lighthizer says, “I’m hopeful that we’ll come to an agreement in the next several weeks. It’s a high priority.” He also says, “The principal thing we’re trying to do is to get agriculture access equal to what the Japanese have given to the TPP countries.”

The trade industry website Meating Place Dot Com points out that one of President Trump’s first acts in the Oval Office was to withdraw the U.S. from negotiations over the multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The U.S. and Japan are scheduled to have more trade discussions this week during the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka, Japan. The negotiations have been ongoing since April.