Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller announced a major policy shift prohibiting the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) from awarding department-administered grants to businesses that employ foreign workers on H-1B visas.
The post Texas Ag Commissioner Bans Grants to Companies Hiring H-1B Visa Holders appeared first on Breitbart.
European Union agriculture ministers have agreed a negotiating position on the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), advancing a restructuring of the bloc’s agricultural support system while postponing decisions about the financial arrangements that will determine how the reforms operate.
The agreement reached on 26 October establishes the Council’s position on the framework governing agricultural payments and support measures from 2028 onwards.
However, ministers have deliberately excluded funding allocations and several related financial provisions, which remain subject to negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget.
The distinction is important.
Governments have agreed how they want the future system to operate, but not how much money will ultimately be available to finance it.
The proposed reform would integrate agricultural funding into a broader system of national and regional partnership plans covering several major areas of European spending.
Under the existing CAP, agricultural support is organised around two principal funds: one primarily financing direct payments and market measures, and another supporting rural development.
The Commission wants to replace this arrangement with a more integrated structure, while retaining agricultural policy instruments within the new framework.
Each member state would prepare a comprehensive national and regional plan incorporating agriculture, cohesion, fisheries and several other funding programmes.
Brussels argues that the new system could simplify administration, reduce overlapping procedures and give governments more flexibility to address domestic requirements.
However, greater national discretion also raises questions about whether the policy will remain sufficiently uniform across the European single market.
Agricultural conditions differ considerably between member states, from large cereal producers in Eastern Europe to smaller farms operating in mountainous or Mediterranean regions.
Allowing governments to tailor support to domestic conditions may improve flexibility, but it also creates the possibility of greater variation in how European funds are distributed.
One of the principal changes concerns the distribution of income support.
The Council supports a proposed system known as Degressive Area-Based Income Support, or DABIS, intended to direct assistance more effectively towards farmers actively engaged in agricultural production.
Member states would be required to establish a definition of an active farmer, although governments would retain discretion over the precise national criteria.
The distinction matters because agricultural subsidies have historically generated disputes over payments based primarily on land ownership or agricultural area rather than the scale of productive activity.
The Council has also proposed an optional redistributive mechanism intended to help governments adjust the distribution of payments.
More contentious decisions, including possible payment ceilings and reductions for larger recipients, have been postponed until the broader budget negotiations.
The reform also addresses generational renewal.
Governments would be required to provide additional income support for young farmers and assistance to help them establish agricultural businesses.
Each member state would have to develop a generational renewal strategy and provide a package of support measures covering areas such as training, advice and access to agricultural activity.
These provisions reflect the difficulties facing younger people seeking to enter farming.
High land prices, expensive equipment and restricted access to finance can create substantial barriers, particularly where established farms are passed between generations.
The Council also supports expanded risk-management arrangements, including insurance and assistance following severe weather, animal diseases and other agricultural emergencies.
Environmental requirements would remain part of the framework, combining common conditions with incentives for practices intended to protect biodiversity and natural resources.
The most consequential disagreement concerns financing.
The European Commission has proposed protecting approximately €300 billion for agricultural income support and crisis measures under the 2028–2034 budget.
Additional agricultural and rural-development funding could be available through the broader national and regional plans.
The final ringfenced amount, however, has not been agreed.
As EU Today reported earlier this month, 17 member states have called for agricultural and cohesion spending to be protected during negotiations over the Commission’s proposed €2 trillion long-term financial framework.
The disagreement reflects competing budgetary priorities.
Agriculture remains one of the EU’s largest expenditure areas, but governments are simultaneously facing demands for greater defence spending, industrial investment, infrastructure and migration-related programmes.
Protecting agricultural funding would therefore limit the financial resources available for other priorities unless governments agree to increase the overall budget.
The latest agreement also follows the Council’s 19 October negotiating position on agricultural market rules, which addressed sectoral support and market organisation but similarly avoided resolving the wider funding dispute.
Irish Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon, whose government holds the rotating Council presidency, described the latest agreement as a milestone intended to provide farmers with greater stability and flexibility.
The Council’s position now provides a basis for negotiations with the European Parliament.
However, the final shape of agricultural policy will depend heavily on the separate negotiations over the 2028–2034 financial framework.
Until governments agree how much money will be available, questions about payment limits, distribution between countries and the balance between agricultural and other EU priorities will remain open.
The October agreement establishes the proposed framework for European farming after 2027. The budget negotiations will determine the scale of support that framework can actually provide.
Ministers want to speed up and simplify the payment of farming subsidies by taking control of the EU’s multi-billion euro farming payment schemes, under a deal reached late on Monday night (26 October).
The agreement at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels finalises the negotiating position of EU governments on the future of the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy in its next seven-year budget.
The ‘negotiating box’ prepared by the Irish EU council presidency earlier this month for the 2028-34 multi-annual financial framework spared agricultural subsidies provided by the common agricultural policy from cuts worth a total of €141bn but proposed three-percent cuts, worth €24.6bn, to funding for National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPP), which are intended to streamline the distribution of EU cash to governments for a variety of different policies including agriculture and fisheries.
The idea behind the NRPPs is to set up one single fund to provide support for farmers.
Each EU country would be expected to develop a single comprehensive plan outlining the reforms and investments it intends to implement from 2028 to 2034 and how it plans to use EU funds.
EU governments agreed on Monday that this planning process should be designed to give them far greater autonomy. They say that the recommendations the commission makes to member states regarding the design of support programs should not be binding.
The new system is set to prioritise ‘active farmers’, which sets a threshold of a minimum level of agricultural activity for farmers, as well as young farmers and small farmers.
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Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has launched a national food security plan aimed at eliminating undernourishment by 2030, combining domestic production with an expanded distribution network and cooperation between public institutions and private businesses.
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The Venezuela Alimenta Hambre Cero (Venezuela Feeds: Zero Hunger) plan was launched Saturday alongside the opening of the 250th facility in the Mercal and PDVAL food distribution networks in La Trinidad. The rollout also included the deployment of 100 mobile food outlets nationwide and the simultaneous opening of 10 supermarket-style establishments in other regions.
The new facility features a meat-cutting center for retail sales. According to the government, more than 90% of Venezuela’s food supply comes from domestic production, which it identifies as a foundation for improving access to essential goods across the country.
“All efforts, all capacities, the local economy, the large agro-industrial sector, the entire distribution and logistics network, financial resources and fuel incentives will be brought together to achieve this strategic objective,” Acting President said during a broadcast on state television channel Venezolana de Televisión.
First announced on Oct. 12, 2026, at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Forum in Rome, the plan is built around six strategic areas designed to coordinate government and private sector efforts. These include support for community-based economic activity and local entrepreneurship through a proposed Local Economy Law.
The initiative also prioritizes scientific innovation in nutrition and the development of statistical monitoring and oversight systems.
“We are very close to achieving our zero-hunger goal. We made this commitment to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), to the country and to our citizens,” Delcy Rodríguez said.
She also pointed to the effects of unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States, saying they had restricted access to financing, agricultural inputs, technology and spare parts needed to sustain domestic production chains.
Senior government officials responsible for the economy, digital government, food, youth, industry and commerce, agriculture, and science and technology attended the launch.
Private sector representatives included Ítalo Atencio, president of the National Association of Supermarkets and Self-Service Stores (ANSA), and Juvenal Arbeláez, president of the Venezuelan Chamber of the Food Industry (CAVIDEA).
The plan brings together food distribution infrastructure, domestic production and public-private cooperation as Venezuela pursues its goal of eliminating undernourishment by 2030.
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