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Pesticides under fire in U.S.

Recent court decisions have threatened farmers' abilities to use some herbicides

Reading Time: 3 minutes Pesticides are increasingly under attack in the United States and that is keeping farm leaders awake at night.









Kochia in a canola field.  Photo: File

Crop-killing weeds advance across US farmland as chemicals lose effectiveness

Losing battle with weeds adds pressures to farmers already stressed by inflation, extreme weather

Reading Time: 4 minutes Crop-killing weeds such as kochia are advancing across the U.S. northern plains and Midwest, in the latest sign that weeds are developing resistance to chemicals faster than companies including Bayer BAYGn.DE and Corteva CTVA.N can develop new ones to fight them.

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U.S. EPA denies nearly all biofuel blending exemption petitions

Refineries didn't prove hardship, agency said

Reading Time: 2 minutes New York | Reuters — U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday denied almost all outstanding petitions from oil refiners asking to be exempted from mandates that require them to mix biofuels into their fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has the authority to issue the exemptions, denied 26 petitions from 15 small refineries […] Read more


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U.S. to boost biofuel mandates over next three years

Biofuel groups still feel shortchanged

Reading Time: 3 minutes Reuters — The Biden administration on Wednesday increased the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into the United States’ fuel mix over the next three years, but the plan has angered the biofuel industry, which says mandates for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel are not high enough. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized […] Read more

ICE July 2023 canola with 20-day moving average (yellow line, right scale) and CBOT July 2023 soybean oil (dark green line, left scale). (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: Canola market rising into summer

New StatCan acreage estimates out next week

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — ICE Futures canola contracts have climbed steadily higher since their late-May lows, nearing chart resistance to the upside on the first day of summer. Updated renewable fuel targets released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to live up to expectations, sparking a speculative selloff in soyoil. While the limit-down move in soyoil […] Read more