Greetings on July 31,

Emails are welcome at chuck@thefern.org. I am on Twitter @chuckabbott1. If you received this briefing from a friend and wish to receive it directly, you can subscribe for free by clicking this link.

USDA is to release this morning a report on methods to quantify carbon storage and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at the farm or ranch level.

A "soda tax" of 1 cent per teaspoon of sweetener would be levied under a bill unveiled by  Rep Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, with the revenue used in programs to reduce obesity, diabetes and other health losses due to sugar-sweetened beverages. "There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of other health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay," said DeLauro in a statement. A coalition of nine consumer and public health groups backed the bill. “A national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages will do more to curb the diabetes and obesity epidemics than anything that has been done to date," said the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The American Beverage Association says in a blog "the soda tax is an old idea that has gotten no traction" and pointed to industry steps such as putting lower-calorie drinks on the market. San Francisco and Berkeley will vote in November on city-wide soda taxes to pay for health and nutrition programs; 2 cents in San Francisco and 1 cent in Berkeley, says the Washington Post.

A 12-ounce can of regular soda has 130 calories of sugar, the equivalent of eight teaspoons, says the American Heart Association. It recommends Americans "consume no more than 450 calories (36 ounces) per week from sugar-sweetened beverages," such as regular soft drinks, sports drinks and fruit drinks. A teaspoon of sugar has 16 calories.

Leaders of a House Agriculture subcommittee criticized the Labor Department during a hearing as high-handed and unfair in its use of its authority to prevent shipment of farm products when it believes growers under-paid their workers. The so-called hot goods power has been an issue in Oregon fruit farms since 2012. Growers say they were coerced into signing consent agreements or see their crops wither in the warehouse. The subcommittee leaders, Republican Austin Scott of Georgia and Democrat Kurt Schrader of Oregon, have filed a bill to prevent the Labor Department from using the "hot goods" provision against perishable agricultural products. The head of the Labor Department's wage and hour division defended the practice.

To read comments by the panel leaders and statements from witnesses at the hearing, click here. For an NPR story that provides background on the dispute, click here.

China's agriculture ministry "vowed zero tolerance and harsh punishments for illegal sales and growing of genetically modified (GM) crops days after media exposure of GM rice on sale at a supermarket in central China," says China Daily. Biotech rice is not approved for use in the country. However, a television network said tests found GM rice in three of five packs of rice picked at random from a supermarket in Wuhan, in Hubei Province in central China. China Central Television said there was evidence of GM rice being sold in three neighboring provinces.

China has taken a wary approach to biotech crops. It allows imports of genetically engineered corn and soybeans but does not allow domestic production or sale of GM crops including rice. It has approved use of biotech varieties of cotton, peppers, tomatoes and papayas. Import authorities have rejected hundreds of thousands of tons of U.S. corn in the past year on grounds the cargoes included a variety not approved for sale in the country.

A new poll says incumbent Mark Pryor, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, and Republican Tom Cotton are running neck-and-neck for the Senate in Arkansas. This time, Pryor is ahead, 48-46 in a poll by a company with Democratic clients, says Roll Call. The poll was conducted last week, the same time frame as a Hendix College/Talk Business poll that has Cotton ahead, 44-42, with 7 percent undecided. "Pryor and Cotton are in one of the closest races of the cycle for a seat Republicans are counting on in their quest for the Senate majority," says Roll Call.

Polls in early July had Cotton with a lead as large as 7 points and Pryor by 6 points. Pollster's tracking model says Cotton is ahead, 47-45.

Meanwhile, the Jackson (Miss) Clarion-Ledger said state Sen Chris McDaniel should "pony up the evidence" or give up his complaints about the run-off for the Republican nomination for the Senate in Mississippi. Incumbent Thad Cochran, a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was declared the winner a month ago. "He continues to say he has evidence of voter fraud, but McDaniel is starting to sound more like Chicken Little yelling about the sky falling than the respected state lawmaker and GOP candidate who captured national attention when this race first began," said the newspaper.

An Agriculture Department researcher, Frank Forcella, is working on novel way to control weeds. In collaboration with university scientists, he has devised tractor-mounted equipment that uses high-pressure air to blast weeds with grit made from dried corn cobs. "Ongoing field trials may confirm the system's potential to help organic growers tackle within-row infestations of weeds" in row crops such as corn and soybeans, says USDA. At present, weed control methods include scorching, mechanical cultivators and hand weeding. The "Propelled Abrasive Grit Management" sprays about 300 pounds of 0.5 millimeter grit per acre at 100 pounds per square inch in a cone-shaped pattern. This is the second summer of tests on corn plots in Minnesota.

To read more from USDA's Agricultural Research Service, click here.

"Rep. Bruce Braley is betting the farm on corn — and Democrats’ hold on the Senate may be in danger if he’s wrong," says the lead sentence in Politico on the Senate campaign in Iowa. The Hawkeye state is No 1 i corn and ethanol production, with several thousand people working at ethanol plants. Braley "is busy posing at gas stations that sell the corn-based biofuel, campaigning with farmers and pressuring EPA to protect the federal mandate that guarantees corn’s role in the U.S. fuel supply," says Politico while the GOP nominee, state Sen Joni Ernst, "has been more elusive on the issue — saying she 'philosophically' opposes government meddling in markets but promising to protect EPA’s ethanol program until all other subsidies are repealed."

The administration "is widely expected" to set the mandate for use of corn-based ethanol for this year at roughly 13.6 billion gallons, up from the 13 billion gallons proposed in November, says Reuters. It says ethanol makers have suggested longer-term changes in the Renewable Fuels Standard, including faster approval of new "advanced" biofuels and a new calculation of reductions in life-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases by corn ethanol vs gasoline.

Lower commodity prices will bring a decline in farm financial performance this year "after years of exceptional growth," says AgriBank, based in St Paul, Minn, in summarizing its poll of Farm Credit officers. Some 66 percent of respondents said financial performance generally would be slightly worse compared to 2013 and 22 percent said it would be worse. Lower grain prices will reduce profitability of crop producers, said an AgriBank official, dairy, ethanol, livestock and poultry producers may see increased profitability because of the lower grain prices. AgriBank, owned by 17 Farm Credit Associations, operates in 15 Midwestern states that hold more than half of U.S. cropland

Ocean water along the U.S. East and West coasts is becoming more acidic, which jeopardizes marine life including seafood that feeds part of the human population, says the Washington Post. "The acidification of the world’s oceans frightens scientists, who see it as evidence of a rapidly changing climate.," says the story. It cites a study in journal Progress in Oceanography that says "rural areas in southern Alaska are at high risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial and subsistence fishing stocks." The Post says Chesapeake Bay "is acidifying three times faster than the rest of the world’s oceans. Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay and the Gulf of Mexico are all showing signs of rapid acidification."

The consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest says three of the nine "winners" of its Xtreme Eating awards are dishes sold by the one restaurant chain, The Cheesecake Factory. "The chain’s Bruléed French Toast, a plate of custard-soaked bread, topped with powdered sugar and served with maple-butter syrup and bacon, would require one to swim laps for seven hours to burn off its 2,780 calories," says CSPI. By comparison, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans says women need around 1,800 calories a day and men around 2,400 calories (Table 2-3 on page 14). CSPI says "some help may soon be on the way" because the FDA is finalizing regulations to require restaurant chains to list calorie counts on their menus.

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