House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson is acknowledging Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan for a House farm bill debate next month isn’t realistic.
“I would love to be able to honor the new speaker in his plan to have (the bill) out of the house in December, but I can count numbers and days and there’s just not enough to be able to do that,” Thompson said at an event in Oklahoma City Monday with Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.
By the way: Thompson also made the case for expanding crop insurance to reduce demand for disaster assistance. “We'd like to incorporate some of the disaster assistance into … crop insurance to have more certainty,” Thompson said. As we’ve reported, there’s discussion on Capitol Hill of increasing premium subsidies for supplemental area insurance policies.
Tai, Raimondo going to San Francisco for Indo-Pacific meeting
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will be heading to San Francisco next week for a ministerial meeting to follow up on the completion of the seventh round of negotiations for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework taking place this week.
“I am encouraged by the tremendous progress the United States and our fellow IPEF partners have made since we first began negotiations in September 2022,” Tai said in a statement Monday. “We are meeting the moment in the face of today’s pressing challenges, and I look forward to hosting trade ministers in San Francisco with Secretary Raimondo to deliver on the promise of lifting up our economies and the middle class here in the United States and the Indo-Pacific region.”
A main focus of negotiators this week is the trade pillar of the pact, which farm groups are hoping will contain resolutions to a wide variety of non-tariff trade barriers that stymie agricultural exports.
Four states join lawsuit against Agri Stats
Minnesota, North Carolina, California and Tennessee have joined the federal government’s lawsuit against meat industry information services company Agri Stats, which the Justice Department accuses of “organizing and managing anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork and turkey processors.”
An amended complaint filed in federal court in Minnesota notes that some companies located in the state, including Hormel, have been Agri Stats customers.
Agri Stats denied the allegations when the case was filed in September. In a statement yesterday, the company said, “Nothing about the addition of the four state plaintiffs does anything to overcome DOJ’s failure to show how Agri Stats reports could possibly result in higher prices. DOJ has done nothing more than parrot the same allegations made by class action plaintiff lawyers that already have been rejected by both a federal judge on summary judgment and a jury after a six-week trial.”
That the states have decided to “jump on DOJ’s bandwagon to gang up on a Fort Wayne small business — without ever even asking Agri Stats a single question about the company’s reports — is a sad commentary on their due diligence in antitrust enforcement,” Agri Stats said.
Weather delays Brazil soybean planting
Abnormally dry weather in some regions and excessive rains in other regions are slowing down Brazil’s soybean planting, according to the consulting firm AgRural. Brazilian farmers have sown 51% of the country’s soybean acreage, which is “the lowest rate for this time of year since the 2020/21 harvest,” the firm said.
Mato Grosso, the largest soybean state in Brazil, is experiencing “predominantly dry” weather, while farmers in Paraná, a major producing state to the south, are dealing with intense rains and floods, says AgRural. The flooding “caused damage and the need for replanting in areas of the southwest and central-south of the state.”
FSA holding county, urban committee elections
USDA’s Farm Service Agency is mailing out ballots this week for the agency’s county and urban committee elections. County committees hire the local executive director and adjudicate farmer appeals of FSA and Natural Resources Conservation Service technical determinations.
County committees have three to 11 elected members who serve three-year terms, and there is at least one seat up for election each year to represent designated regions known as local administrative areas.
FSA says urban county committees will cover 27 cities from coast to coast.
“County committees provide an opportunity for producers to play a meaningful role in delivering farm programs. In order for county committees to be effective, they must truly represent all who are producing,” said FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux.
Federal employee survey finds higher engagement
Employee engagement, a measure of job satisfaction, increased to 72% in the annual survey of federal workers released by the Office of Personnel Management Monday.
The one-percentage-point index is “notable,” the agency said, because it’s equal to about 6,300 employees, “or roughly a medium-sized agency, sharing more positive opinions in this year’s survey.”
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OPM also said that the Performance Confidence Index, “which measures employees’ belief that their work unit can achieve goals and produce at a high level, remained consistent and a strong trend at a high of 84%.”
The survey does not include an agency breakdown, which will be published before the end of the year.
FAO says most ‘hidden costs’ of ag and food systems are related to unhealthy diets
More than 70% of the $10 trillion in “hidden costs” caused by the world’s agricultural and food systems can be traced to unhealthy diets, a new report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says.
About 20% of the total costs of agrifood systems “are environment-related, from greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions, land-use change and water use,” FAO said. “This is a problem that affects all countries, and the scale is probably underestimated due to data limitations.”
The “State of Food and Agriculture” report urges governments to use “true cost accounting” to help change the way food is grown to address climate change, poverty, inequality and food security.
He said it: "If the two chairmen believe that the best thing for rural America and agriculture is a one-year extension, then I'm pretty willing to defer to their judgment. There's a lot of things competing for Congress's attention and wallet right now in Ukraine and Israel, and the CR fight, so perhaps removing ourselves from that chaos might be the best thing for farmers and ranchers." -- Adam Putnam, former House member from Florida and current CEO of Ducks Unlimited.
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