The Transportation Updates and Regulatory News (TURN) publication collects and summarizes the latest public information on Federal and State policy that affects multimodal agricultural transportation.
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) first launched TURN in a quarterly PDF format in May 2016. (Please see the Archive for issues dating back to 2018.). Then, in December 2023, TURN underwent a major upgrade. The new TURN report, now updated weekly, makes agricultural transportation news more accessible and timelier, replacing the prior quarterly PDF-based version.
TURN’s new functionality enhances users’ experience in the following aspects:
- The dashboard’s introduction gives a quick snapshot of the latest headlines, which are linked to the full content under the relevant modal sections.
- “News by Mode” hyperlinks in the introduction provide a convenient way to navigate the page for specific content.
- Most of the news items are presented in a two-column, landscape format for improved readability.
In addition, in the December 2023 upgrade, a dataset was added, containing all historical and current news entries (from January 2023 on) for TURN. These entries showcase the news about industrial developments and trends—as well as Federal and State regulatory policy affecting all modes of agricultural transportation. The dataset also alerts readers to transportation research that is relevant to agricultural stakeholders—including research by Federal and State governments, universities, and trade associations. The dataset can be searched and filtered by date, mode, commodity, and type (e.g., project announcement, proposed or finalized rule, and research study). This format should aid the retrieval and analysis of historical news, which was not previously possible.