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The House at long last passed the farm bill Thursday after a raucous round of wrangling and horse-trading. That wheeling and dealing included an agreement to vote on legislation allowing year-round use of E15 – a gasoline blend containing 15% ethanol – in two weeks.
Legislation to allow year-round sales has faced repeated roadblocks as proponents have struggled to overcome resistance from refiners. An effort to include the legislation in an appropriations bill early this year failed, stoking anger from farm and biofuel groups. Efforts to add it to the farm bill also ran into political and procedural hurdles. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson said on the House floor Thursday that an E15 vote would occur on May 13.
The hangup has centered on how to treat exemptions granted to some refiners from biofuel blending requirements. According to Argus, the latest proposal, while offering small companies automatic partial exemptions from biofuel quotas, would cut off some larger enterprises that currently can win relief for smaller units they own. Under current rules, refineries that process 75,000 b/d or less of crude can request hardship exemptions — but under the proposal, only companies with no more than 75,000 b/d of collective gasoline and diesel refining capacity could win relief.
The National Corn Growers Association struck a hopeful tone. “We look forward to working with our allies in Congress over the next two weeks to secure passage of the E15 legislation,” said Ohio farmer and NCGA President Jed Bower, in a news release. “Thanks to continued efforts on this issue from our biofuel champions, Speaker (Mike) Johnson promised a vote on E15, and we refuse to allow a handful of multi-million and multi-billion-dollar energy companies to derail our efforts”
China’s new ag minister: China has reshuffled leadership at the country’s agriculture ministry for the second time in under two years. China removed Han Jun as the most senior Communist Party official earlier this week, news reports said, with authorities appointing Zhang Zhu to the party role. On Thursday, Beijing announced that Zhang’s appointment as agriculture minister, Bloomberg reported.
The report noted that Han had served less than two years in the role and his removal marked the third change in six years, unusually frequent turnover for a senior position. It’s also part of a flurry of reshuffles in the top echelons of the Communist Party over recent months. Bloomberg said Zhang, 58, is a trained agronomist who most recently served as deputy party secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China’s northwest. He previously held several agriculture-related positions in neighboring Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Rice squeeze: Rice supply is expected to decline this year as farmers cut planting acreage across Asia due to fertilizer shortages and soaring fuel costs from the Iran war, Reuters reported, adding that an emerging El Nino is also set to squeeze output of the world’s most consumed staple. The report noted that rice is central to global food security, with even modest supply disruptions tending to ripple through countries, lifting prices and straining household budgets, particularly among price-sensitive consumers in Asia and Africa. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization in April forecast rice output would expand by 2% to a record high in 2025/26.
- “Farmers have already started planting rice in some countries and are using fewer inputs because prices have gone up,” Maximo Torero, chief economist at the UN FAO, told Reuters. “We are going to see a tighter global supply situation in the second half of the year and early next year.”
China pork reserve: China will support local governments when it comes to purchasing frozen pork for commercial reserves to help stabilize the market, the agriculture ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Senators ban selves from prediction markets: The U.S. Senate passed a resolution barring senators from trading on prediction markets, following concerns about the possibility of insider trading on the platforms, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ban, which passed on Thursday with unanimous consent, will be effective immediately. A representative for Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio), who introduced the resolution, said the rules apply to senators, officers and staff.
The report noted that the rise in popularity of prediction marketplaces such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow users to bet on everything from soccer matches to government shutdowns, has sparked concern from lawmakers over the potential for illegal trading.
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