An update on Monday from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) stated that, “[USDA] today announced that seed cotton producers, who want to participate in the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs for the 2018 crop year, may now submit applications. The signup period begins today and ends on Dec. 7, 2018.

“In accordance with changes to ARC and PLC made by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, farm owners with generic base acres and recent planting history of covered commodities have a one-time opportunity to allocate all of the generic base acres on their farm.

“‘ARC and PLC are a vital part of the safety net that ensures American agriculture remains competitive and producers are able to manage risk,’ said USDA Farm Service Agency Administrator Richard Fordyce. ‘USDA encourages any cotton producer to look into these important safety net programs.'”

The FSA release noted that, “Farms with generic base acres that were planted or approved as a prevented planted commodity during the 2009 through 2016 crop years, are eligible to allocate generic base acres. This includes upland cotton.”

“Visit www.fsa.usda.gov or the local FSA office for information about FSA and the 2014 Farm Bill programs and programs impacted by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.”

A report on Friday from USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (“EU Court Extends GMO Directive to New Plant Breeding Techniques,” by Jennifer Lappin) stated that, “On July 25, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its judgment that organisms created through many newer genome editing techniques are to be regulated as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the EU. This decision subjects such organisms, and food and feed products containing these organisms, to expensive and lengthy approval processes as well as traceability, labelling, and monitoring obligations. In addition to affecting global agricultural trade, this judgment has significant consequences for EU innovation.”

The USDA update noted that, “Surprising many, the Court issued a judgment for ‘Case C-528/16 Confederation Paysanne and Others‘ taking a very restrictive view of how the EU’s main GMO legislation from 2001, ‘Directive 2001/18/EC,’ applies to organisms created by new plant breeding techniques such as CRISPR/Cas or Talen. Many scientists, breeders, and agri-food industry stakeholders had anticipated that the Court would categorize organisms derived from these newer mutagenic techniques as GMOs, but exempt them from the regulatory obligations in the Directive.

“Instead, the Court found that organisms produced with newer mutagenesis methods are subject to the regulatory obligations of the EU’s GMO Directive. As such, they will be subject to risk assessment and review requirements as they are applied to the cultivation and imports of transgenic varieties (incorporating foreign genes into the organism). For context, products approved for importation in 2017 under the GMO Directive took an average of six years to complete—five years for the risk assessment by the European Food Safety Authority and a year to garner Commission approval through the risk management process. Cultivation approvals, as well as new applications, for transgenic varietals have languished.”

Friday’s report stated that, “Under the EU’s GMO Directive 2001/18/EC, the EU focuses on the process of genetic alternation to determine what agricultural products are regulated. However, the EU’s GMO Directive exempts certain genetic modification techniques— notably for this case, ‘the mutagenesis exemption.’ In plant breeding, mutagenesis is a long-established technique that uses chemical, radiation, or other physical stimuli to induce mutations. Plant breeders then evaluate whether the genetic alternations have yielded beneficial properties. If so, these plants are selected for use in breeding programs. With the Directive’se xemption, plants developed through these common breeding techniques can enter the EU marketplace without additional GMO-related regulation. The EU’s GMO Directive does not have a legislative definition for mutagenesis. Although most new genome editing methods use mutagenesis in a more targeted manner than older techniques, the Court found that newer techniques are not covered by the ‘mutagenesis exemption.'”

The USDA update added, “The Commission has yet to react to the judgment. Follow on actions will likely have to wait until after the elections, as the European Commission and Parliament’s terms are coming to a close. The Commission’s election recess starts in October 2018, and the European Parliament’s recess usually starts by March with elections following in May of 2019.”

More information on the ruling is available here.

And Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue responded to the ruling on Friday, noting in part that, “Government policies should encourage scientific innovation without creating unnecessary barriers or unjustifiably stigmatizing new technologies. Unfortunately, this week’s ECJ ruling is a setback in this regard in that it narrowly considers newer genome editing methods to be within the scope of the European Union’s regressive and outdated regulations governing genetically modified organisms.”

Reuters writer Ben Hirschler reported on Friday that, “Gene editing in agriculture takes center stage next Wednesday when Europe’s highest court rules in a case that could determine the fate of the technology that is already making waves in the field of medicine.

“The European Union has long restricted the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) widely adopted around the world, but there is legal uncertainty as to whether modern gene editing of crops should fall under the same strict GMO rules.

“The European Court of Justice (ECJ) will rule whether the use of genetic mutation, or mutagenesis, which is now exempt from GMO rules, should differentiate between techniques that have been used for decades and the new gene-editing technology.”

Friday’s article pointed out that, “The biotech industry argues that much of gene editing is effectively little different to the mutagenesis that occurs naturally or is induced by radiation – a standard plant breeding method since the 1950s.

“But environmentalists, anti-GM groups and farmers concerned about the potential environmental and health impacts of all genetically engineered products fear that allowing gene editing would usher in a new era of ‘GMO 2.0’ via the backdoor.”

“The case before the ECJ was brought by a group of French agricultural associations that want the existing EU exemption for plant varieties obtained via mutagenesis to be restricted to long-standing conventional techniques,” the Reuters article said.

DTN writer Emily Unglesbee reported today that, “Images of cupped soybean fields have come to symbolize the dicamba injury crisis underway in farm country in the U.S. But what happens when chemicals like dicamba move beyond the soybean fields of commercial farmers onto the property of rural homeowners, business owners and organic and specialty crop farmers?

“In South Dakota, a vegetable farm that was destroyed by dicamba in a matter of weeks last year was hit again this June by another cocktail of herbicides, including dicamba.

“An elderly Illinois homeowner has watched her carefully landscaped yard wither for two years in a row from dicamba injury.”

The DTN article noted that, “A resort owner in Tennessee is fighting to save his gardens, plants, trees and a nearby historic state park after the second consecutive year of dicamba damage.

“Over the course of two months, DTN conducted dozens of interviews on non-soybean dicamba injury and found that injured property owners like these face an uphill battle to justice.

“State departments of forestry, natural resources and agriculture pass responsibility for non-soybean dicamba injury back and forth between each other, like a hot potato. State regulators are struggling to keep up with the pace of complaints, leading to long delays and unresolved investigations. Even state investigations that find a pesticide applicator at fault can only fine the applicator — not compensate the victim. Laboratories are still learning how to test for dicamba residue effectively, and at what levels. Unless an applicator was flagrantly off label, insurance companies maintain that they are not responsible when dicamba volatilizes and moves off-target. The companies who manufacture the new dicamba herbicides insist that volatility is rare and dicamba injury unusual.”

Today’s article added that, “At the end of the day, most of the property owners interviewed face serious financial losses that they will never recover. Some wonder if they will ever be able to grow vegetables or trees in their patch of countryside again if dicamba-tolerant soybean acres and their accompanying dicamba use continues to swell.”