USDA to release November crop supply/demand report despite government shutdown (Reuters): The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has confirmed that its National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will publish a long-awaited crop supply and demand report on November 14 — despite the ongoing federal government shutdown that halted the regular October release. For farmers, this matters because the upcoming report will provide the first official yield and production estimates for U.S. corn and soybeans since early September, when much of the Midwest harvest was still underway and harvest dynamics remained uncertain.
The delay has triggered concern in farming circles, with social-media posts from producers suggesting that earlier USDA yield projections may have been overly optimistic. With the November report now back on track, the market will finally get updated numbers on planted acreage, yields, and ending stocks — information that could influence price expectations, marketing decisions, and input planning as we move toward the next crop year.
Appeals court finds USDA erred with “bioengineered” labeling requirements (Agri-Pulse): A federal appeals court has ruled that the USDA improperly excluded highly refined ingredients like corn oil and soybean oil from its mandatory “bioengineered” food-labeling regulations—despite the underlying law passed in 2016 requiring a uniform disclosure standard. The court found fault with USDA’s position that a food doesn’t “contain” genetically modified ingredients if the biotech DNA is undetectable, saying the rule’s detection threshold allowed food to evade labeling even when modified genetic material had been used.
While the court upheld the lower ruling that electronic disclosures (e.g., QR codes) alone are insufficient for meaningful consumer access, it stopped short of ordering USDA to require labels on all highly processed foods. For farmers, this decision signals a shift in how end-products may be regulated and labeled, particularly biotech crops and their refined derivatives—it could affect market access, input transparency, and how processors downstream of farm production handle biotech commodities.