The USDA has announced $1 billion in loan guarantees for rural businesses and ag producers that are not eligible for USDA Farm Service Agency loans. Read more about the USDA Business & Industry CARES Act Program on our USDA page

U.S. live cattle futures fell on Wednesday, as cattle continue to back up, despite slaughter plants’ coming back online, traders said. (Reuters)

Outbreaks have been reported in fruit and vegetable packing facilities in California and New York. But as more farm workers hit the fields and packing facilities, the industry risks the health of its workers, and the food supply chains those workers support, if widespread protective measures are not put into place. (Forbes)

Farmers across the nation leaned more heavily upon the federal government last year to finance their agricultural operations amid low commodity prices and trade disputes, and more of the money they borrowed is now delinquent. (U.S. News)

The Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, in collaboration with Microsoft, has created the Purdue Food and Agricultural Vulnerability Index online dashboard to quantify the potential risk to the supply of agricultural products as a result of COVID-19 farm and agricultural worker illnesses. (Purdue)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed lifting the amount of biofuels that refiners must blend into their fuel next year to 20.17 billion gallons, from 20.09 billion this year, according to two sources familiar with the details of an agency draft proposal. (Reuters)