** Whenever he talks about the 2018 farm bill, House Ag Committee Chairman Michael Conaway says his goal is “a good farm bill passed on time.”

But while the elements of a successful farm bill may be debatable, enacting a farm bill ahead of the September 2018 expiration of current law would seem an unremarkable matter of course.

Yet, it’s not. Congress hasn’t enacted a farm bill on schedule since 1990. The current law was derailed by a fight over food stamp cuts and took effect in February 2014, 16 months late.

** An Oklahoma cattleman says donations of all kinds have been pouring in from across the country to help farmers and ranchers affected by the wildfires in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association Vice President Tom Fanning tells Brownfield hay donations have been arriving non-stop since the wildfires began and have gone out as quickly as they’ve been received.

** If you haven’t had breakfast yet, this will pick up your appetite. A maple syrup producer says recent warm ups and cool downs have been good for tapping maple trees.

Joe Woods with the Michigan Maple Syrup Association says producers in northern Michigan started tapping trees in mid-February, much earlier than the normal start between March 1st and mid-April.

He says when the weather warms up for several days, production and sugar content slows, but when it freezes the sugar content usually goes up.

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