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Russia has banned imports of soybeans and corn from the United States starting from February 15, Assistant to Head of Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) Alexey Alekseenko told Russian news agency TASS on Wednesday.

A continuing decline in crop and livestock prices will pull down U.S. farm income for the third year in a row, but this year’s decline will be a modest 2% or 3%, said a USDA forecast, far milder than the combined 31% plunge of the past two years. Large crop-support payments, estimated at $9.5 billion for ARC, PLC, and LDPs, would buffer a 4% drop in livestock receipts and a 1% fall in crop receipts.

U.S. farmers will harvest 13.9 billion bushels of corn, the second-largest crop ever, and 3.785 billion bushels of soybeans next year, USDA said in its first projections of the new crop. The new crops would follow three years of bumper crops since the searing 2012 drought.

Major food commodity prices fell in November, reversing about half their rise in the previous month, as the cost of internationally-traded staples, except for sugar, fell across the board.The FAO Food Price Index averaged 156.7 points in November, down 1.6 percent from its revised October average, and 18 percent below its value a year earlier.