The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a farmer's replanting of harvested Roundup Ready© soybeans violates Monsanto Company's patent rights. 

The ruling leaves in place a former court award of $84,456 against farmer Vernon Bowman for planting and harvesting the soybeans, which he had purchased as commodity beans from a local grain elevator or saved from his prior harvests.

Relying on the theory of "patent exhaustion," Bowman argued that Monsanto's patent rights exhausted after the first sale of the seed and did not apply to later uses or sales. 

Bruce Nelson, state executive director for USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) in Montana, announced that Agriculture Secretary Vilsack declared four Montana counties as primary disaster areas and nine as contiguous disaster areas due to disaster designations authorized in Montana and South Dakota.

Farmers who want to be counted and help determine the future of farming in America have until May 31 to respond to the 2012 Census of Agriculture. The USDA has already received more than 2 million completed Census forms.

While farms were scrambling to meet the May 10, 2013, deadline for having an oil spill containment plan (SPCC plan) as required by EPA regulations, Congress quietly delayed the EPA's ability to enforce the regulation. Amendment 29 to the recently enacted funding bill, H.R. 933, states that the EPA may not use any of its funds to enforce the SPCC rule against farms until after Sept. 26, 2013.