The USDA Commodity Credit Corporation, which helps stabilize, support and protect farm income and prices, released interest rates for July 2011. The borrowing rate-based charge is 0.125, which is down from 0.250 from June 2011, while the 1996 and subsequent crop year commodity and marketing assistance loans dispersed during July is 1.125, down 1.250 from last month. Interest rates for Farm Storage Facility Loans and discount rates for the Tobacco Transition Payment Program also are available. Read more.

Emergency grazing for land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program has been approved for eight Colorado counties. "This authorization provides relief for many Colorado livestock producers who have suffered through severe drought conditions," said Trudy Kareus, FSA state executive director. "The drought has depleted hay supplies and affected the growth of hay and pasture in parts of Colorado. Many livestock producers cannot maintain their current herds without implementation of CRP emergency grazing." The emergency grazing will be allowed through Sept. 30, 2011. Learn more.

Texas cotton farmers may opt to make crop insurance claims rather than harvest cotton as the worst drought in more than a century continues to plague the state. “This year will probably rank among the top abandonments,” said John Robinson, a professor and extension economist at Texas A&M University in College Station. “The situation looks very grave.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared the entire state of Texas as a primary natural disaster area this week due drought and wildfires. Read more (Bloomberg) or review the natural disaster declaration.

U.S. farmers planted 92.3 million acres of corn in 2011, up 4.6 percent from last year, according to report released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Driven by higher commodity prices, U.S. corn growers increased planted acreage by 4.1 million acres from last year. This is the third consecutive year of increased corn acreage and is the second-largest corn acreage in more than 60 years. Learn more.

Four more states will be added to the list of project areas under a Farm Service Agency program that encourages producers to establish unconventional crops to be used for biofuels.

Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania were selected as part of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program that will provide financial incentives to eligible agriculture producers to grow giant miscanthus — a sterile, hybrid warm-season grass that is cultivated through the planting of rhizomes in open fields.

“This represents another step in agriculture’s contribution to the President’s energy goals to establish commercial-scale dedicated energy crops,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

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