A possible government shutdown is just over two weeks away, with the expiration of funding for USDA and several other agencies. House Republicans are continuing to negotiate with the Senate and White House on spending caps for fiscal 2024, Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference Wednesday at Eagle Pass, Texas, on the Mexican border.
But Johnson stressed that Republicans expect the deal to include cuts to non-defense spending, and that President Biden and Senate Democrats must also agree to toughen immigration laws.
“We are working hard to get the appropriations bills done,” Johnson told reporters. “We have been working in earnest and in good faith with the Senate and the White House virtually every day through the holidays trying to come to an agreement.”
Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne, one of a group of Republicans who accompanied Johnson to the border, suggested her GOP colleagues were prepared to keep playing hardball on the border issue.
“None of us want to shut down the government, but we all recognize the fact that every single penny we are giving to Homeland Security at this point that is not being used to secure our border, that is not being used to increase our national security, but is doing the exact opposite … is hurting our national security.”
By the way: Johnson was asked by a reporter whether Republicans would push for mass deportations should the GOP wins control of Congress and the White House. “We don’t have a specific prescription yet that we’re proposing,” Johnson said. He noted that migrants, especially children who came over the border unaccompanied, would be hard to find.
Missouri becomes latest state to target foreign farmland purchases
Missouri has banned nations considered “foreign adversaries” from buying farmland within 10 miles of military establishments.
Gov. Mike Parson said at a news conference this week that “when it comes to China and other foreign adversaries, we must take commonsense precautions that protect Missourians and our security resources."
In addition to China, nations so designated include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
Foreign ag land purchases in the state are currently capped at 1%, Parson’s executive order “creates more stringent requirements for these land purchases and requires approval from the Missouri Department of Agriculture prior to any foreign acquisitions of agricultural land,” a news release from his office says. “The order also requires disclosing certain information to MDA prior to any foreign entity acquiring Missouri agricultural land.”
Keep in mind: Ten states enacted foreign land ownership laws this year. In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently fined Chinese-owned Syngenta $280,000 for a late ownership filing and ordered the company to sell a seed research facility and its attendant 160 acres.
New biopesticide cleared to control Colorado potato beetle
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization is touting the approval of a new biopesticide that kills Colorado potato beetles without harming honeybees and other pollinators.
“Ledprona, the active ingredient in GreenLight Biosciences’ Calantha, received a three-year EPA registration,” BIO says. “It’s one of the first insecticides using RNAi and the world’s first such biopesticide approved for commercial spraying.”
The product kills the beetles by silencing a gene needed to produce a key protein, EPA says. The company plans to start selling the product commercially next year.
New platform yields carbon payments
A new milestone was reached this week with Dairy Farmers of America’s purchase of carbon credits within its supply chain from one of its Texas dairy farmer members.
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Athian, a cloud-based platform launched in a partnership with Elanco Animal Health, provides verification and a marketplace for paying farmers for emission reductions generated on the farm. Athian CEO Paul Myer says that up to this point they’ve worked with dairy cooperatives, processors and packers to validate the carbon credit inset model. He says they’re now at a “tipping point” in showing farmers that this process works and can offer a new revenue stream.
“It’s a true validation of carbon insetting for the dairy industry,” he says of the latest news. He anticipates the beef industry will be coming online soon, but “dairy really is setting the pace for the industry as a whole.”
Producers can get paid for meeting manure management standards or using Elanco's feed additive Rumensin, which the company says reduces methane emissions by 5%.
Gaza: Hunger ‘catastrophe’ headed toward famine
Arif Husain, the chief economist at the UN World Food Program, says in a Q&A with The New Yorker that Gaza’s massive hunger problem is “unprecedented” because of its scale, severity and the “speed at which this is happening.”
But Husain says Gaza is technically classified as a hunger “catastrophe,” not yet a famine. A famine occurs when at least 20% of an area’s population is starving, 30% of the children are malnourished or wasting, and the death rate has doubled. Gaza hasn’t yet met the last two criteria, he says.
A recent interagency UN report forecasts that Gaza will be in a full-fledged famine within six months if the current conditions continue, he says.
She said it. “This is a time to hold the line.” – Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, at a news conference by Republicans who visited the Mexican border at Eagle Pass, Texas, and demanded that Congress pass legislation tightening immigration laws.
Steve Davies and Jacqui Fatka contributed to this report.
