Two members of Congress plan to investigate the White House Council on Environmental Quality's involvement in the mediation of an environmental lawsuit over management of the four lower Snake River dams. A coalition of environmental and fishing groups in 2020 sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration over their dam operations plan.

Rural Minds will be presenting a one-hour webinar on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time. The free webinar will feature Chrisa Hickey’s lived experience with managing her adult son’s schizophrenia in rural Wisconsin and overcoming mental healthcare barriers. Dr. Monica Taylor Desir, a community psychiatrist, will share her expertise with treating patients living in rural America with various mental illnesses.

China is set to import record volumes of wheat this year, trading sources say, with rain damage to its crop and worries over dry weather in exporting nations fueling Beijing's appetite to buy while prices are low. Traders said China's frantic buying is likely to support global prices, which have dropped more than a quarter this year - based on the Chicago futures benchmark price - amid abundant supplies from top exporter Russia.

Russian wheat export prices were flat last week amid muted demand from importers, yet dwindling supply from farmers, after a prolonged price slump, analysts said. The price of 12.5%-protein Russian wheat scheduled for free-on-board (FOB) delivery late November-early December was $224 per metric ton last week, the same as the week before, the IKAR agriculture consultancy reported.

US durum production this season is estimated to be down more than 7% year over year, the only major variety of wheat to decrease. Projected ending stocks for the year are seen plummeting nearly 30% from a year earlier, dropping to their lowest level since at least 2010. Lower imports are also hitting US durum supplies — in the June-August period durum imports were down 32% versus last year, mainly because of a smaller crop in Canada.

Due to widespread dry conditions, Argentina’s wheat production forecast for the 2023-24 marketing year has been revised lower in the most recent Global Agricultural Information Network report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). The FAS dropped its projections for Argentine wheat output by 2 million tonnes from the previous forecast to 14.5 million tonnes. If realized, the total would still be 2 million tonnes higher than the country’s 2022-23 drought-stricken crop. Argentina, typically the largest wheat producer and exporter in South America, is in the midst of a three-year stretch of dry conditions.

It has been a few years since the United States has had a truly good winter wheat harvest, though the 2024 crop could be on its way despite lingering drought in top states. In its first assessment of the growing season, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 47% of the domestic wheat crop as good or excellent (GE) as of Sunday, the date’s best since 2019 and above the recent five-year average of 44%. That is substantially better than last year’s initial rating of 28% GE, which was by far the worst start for winter wheat since conditions began in 1986. Come April, the 2023 crop still carried some of the worst-ever ratings, seemingly guaranteeing a terrible harvest was looming.