USDA

USDA Announces Plant Variety Protection Board Appointments

August 3, 2022 USDA AMS

The Plant Variety Protection Act provides legal protection in the form of intellectual property rights to developers of new varieties of plants and calls for a Plant Variety Protection Board. The board consists of 14 members representing farmers, the seed industry, trade and professional associations, and public and private institutions involved with developing new plant varieties. Members of the board provide oversight and guidance to the program on plant variety protection issues. …

USDA Proposes to Decrease Pork Checkoff Assessment Rate

July 28, 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposes to decrease the current Pork Checkoff assessment rate of 0.40 percent (40 cents per $100) of the market value of all pigs sold in the United States to 0.35 percent. USDA is also proposing to decrease assessments on imported pork and pork products to ensure imported and domestic products receive equal treatment. …

New USDA Database Will Replace Three Import Manuals and the Fruit and Vegetable Imports Requirement (FAVIR) Database

July 18, 2022 USDA APHIS

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has developed a new database called “Agricultural Commodity Import Requirements” (ACIR). ACIR gives users a simple search interface for finding and displaying import requirements for agricultural commodities. It will become the official location for import requirements for commodities currently found in the Fruit and Vegetable Import Requirements (FAVIR) database and three import manuals: …

USDA Proposed Changes to Florida Citrus Marketing Order

July 5, 2022 USDA AMS

As recommended by the Florida Citrus Administrative Committee, changes would include reducing the size and quorum requirements of the committee and revising the nomination and selection processes of committee members. The requirement of allocating committee seats based on volume from each district would also be removed. Lastly, a new section would authorize the committee to receive and expend domestically sourced voluntary contributions and grant funds for promotion and research projects. …

Fluid Milk Consumption Continues Downward Trend, Proving Difficult to Reverse

June 29, 2022 Hayden Stewart and Fred Kuchler, USDA Amber Waves

The USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System shows that U.S. daily per capita consumption of fluid milk decreased over each of the past seven decades. Between 1990 and 2000, it fell from 0.78 cup to 0.69 cup (an 11.5-percent decline). By 2010, it was down to 0.62 cup (10.1 percent lower than it had been in 2000). Compared with each of the previous six decades, U.S. daily per person fluid milk consumption fell at its fastest rate in the 2010s. …