Peterson Warns of Reduced Farm Bill Payments
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) said the next farm bill may include reduced payments in order to cut the budget to reduce the deficit.

“We’re not going to have any new money; we’ll probably have less money,” Peterson said at a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on the farm bill Thursday.

At the hearing, Philip Nelson, Illinois Farm Bureau president, said the structure of the 2008 bill should be maintained even if overall funding is reduced. At the hearing, Nelson outlined Farm Bureau’s five farm bill principles.

Agreement Reopens Russian Market to U.S. Poultry
U.S. poultry exports are expected to resume to Russia once conditions of an agreement announced Thursday by the Agriculture Department and U.S. Trade Representative are met.

The announcement came after a White House meeting between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev where the poultry ban was discussed in the context of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization.

Once the agreement is signed, U.S. producers will be able to resume shipments of poultry to Russia. Under the agreement, the United States will publish information on USDA’s website about which disinfectants/pathogen reductions treatments are known to be approved by Russia for use on processing poultry and on food generally.

No Energy Bill Comes From Senate Democratic Caucus
Democratic senators held a caucus Thursday on energy legislation, but the discussion failed to create any clear direction for legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring energy legislation to the floor next month.

The bill is expected to include provisions that respond to the BP oil spill, boost conservation efforts and develop the use of “clean” energy. A key aim of the bill will be to overhaul federal offshore drilling oversight due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The bill could include measures that will impose caps on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources.

Harkin Accuses DOE of Bias Against Ethanol
Following the Environmental Protection Agency’s delay of a decision regarding higher blends of corn-based ethanol for the domestic fuel supply, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is growing weary about the administration’s possible “bias” against ethanol, according to a story published by RadioIowa.com.

“I have a feeling that there are people at the Department of Energy, including the secretary of energy, that are just anti-ethanol,” Harkin told the Learfield Communications website. He also said he overheard “U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu make a discouraging comment about the corn-based renewable fuel during a speech last year,” according to the story.

“He said something to the effect that we have to recognize that ethanol needs to be phased out or is going to be phased out or it’s on its way out and I took note of that. I’m just wondering if the secretary has just closed his mind to the benefits of ethanol,” Harkin said.

“Evidently, the EPA is relying on the Department of Energy to do the testing,” Harkin said. “We’ve had enough tests. We’ve tested this forever, yet now the Department of Energy says they want to do more tests.”

YouTube Labels Chris Chinn Hog Farm Video ‘Inappropriate’
What makes a video inappropriate? It’s like the old quote from a former senator about pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Apparently that’s what employees at YouTube thought about video of hogs living on Chris Chinn’s Missouri farm, when they flagged the video as inappropriate for anyone under 18 and could only be viewed by adults who are YouTube members.

“At first I thought it was a mistake and after two or three months of attempting to get my video unflagged I realized that it wasn’t a mistake, that my First Amendment rights were being censored and I was not being allowed to tell my story,” Chinn said. “I was upset. I was very frustrated because we went from having over 1,000 views a month on our video to barely getting 100 views a month.”

YouTube didn’t notify Chinn that they were flagging her video or give an explanation. The only reason she discovered it had happened was because one day her daughter wanted to watch it.

“I went to their safety page and it explained there that the reason that they would flag a video as inappropriate was because of: privacy, teen safety, sexual content, sexual abuse, animal abuse or abuse in general. It really confused me because my video had none of those things in it,” Chinn said.

The restrictions have been lifted, but no one from YouTube would comment on the reasons behind any of their actions.