The Senate - by unanimous consent - passed its own version of the Global Food Security Act, moving President Barack Obama's Feed the Future program one step closer to law. The bill would authorize the $1 billion a year agricultural development initiative that the administration launched in 2010, as well as an emergency food security program that the U.S. Agency for International Development has increasingly relied on to "avoid constraints" by traditional food aid programs like Food for Peace That provision is not in the measure passed last week by the House and will have to be worked out in conference.

The USDA says the "GIPSA rider," included in the House fiscal 2017 agriculture spending bill approved Tuesday, is not in the best interest of U.S. farmers, ranchers and rural communities. The rider, which would block the USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration from finalizing regulations designed to protect poultry farmers who contract with large processing companies that typically own the birds, and according to a spokesperson: "demonstrates a complete lack of concern for honest, hardworking families who raise our poultry.”

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