A senior Republican on the House Ag Committee, Arkansas Rep. Rick Crawford, says little legislatively is likely to get done this year after March, given the political calendar. If he’s right, that’s bad news for the farm bill.
“I think we have the first quarter basically to legislate, because it's an election year, and because it's a presidential election year, I think people are going to be sort of mentally checked out. … This is particularly difficult for freshman members. They've got to go out, work hard and get re-elected after the first quarter,” Crawford says in an interview for this week’s Agri-Pulse Newsmakers.
Keep in mind: Congress could be tied down for some time just on spending issues and border security.
The House Ag Committee has yet to agree on ways to fund a farm bill. That’s a huge hurdle in and of itself. But Crawford sees other problems, too, including opposition from hardline conservatives who have continually tangled with successive House speakers over spending issues. Crawford also says he’s struggled to win support from colleagues for farm programs despite years of one-on-one conversations.
Newsmakers will be available today at Agri-Pulse.com.
Scoop: USDA emails detail checkoff report challenges
Internal USDA emails obtained by Agri-Pulse lay out the department’s ongoing struggles in meeting the annual July 1 reporting deadlines for two major checkoff programs, those for dairy and fluid milk.
A group of lawmakers critical of checkoffs wrote USDA last fall asking why it hadn’t posted reports for the dairy and fluid milk checkoffs for 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Agricultural Marketing Service has since uploaded the 2020 report. But the emails indicate the agency last summer was still reviewing economic analysis from Texas A&M for the 2021 report and waiting on economists from the university to begin work on the 2022 analysis.
“There is overall a problem with requiring the Report every July,” Dana Coale, the deputy administrator of AMS’s Dairy Program, told the agency's associate administrator Erin Morris in a June 23 email. "The Boards and State and Regionals do not have their financials completed until about 6 months following the end of the year or later, depending on various situations. Consequently, we will never be able to make the July 1 timeframe as required by the legislation” that authorized the programs.
From checkoff critics: Dee Laninga of Farm Action Fund says there’s no excuse for USDA taking several years to issue reports. "The six-month lag for completed financials might justify being six months behind schedule, but USDA only published the 2020 report in 2023 after pressure from Farm Action and members of Congress. The reports for 2021 and 2022 are still outstanding. This is a flimsy excuse for failing to do their job.”
USDA in cross-hairs as hardliners press Johnson
The potential for a partial shutdown at USDA is growing. There is momentum to pass a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded into March, but hardline conservatives continue to pressure House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to renegotiate an agreement with the White House and Senate Democrats on a topline spending limit for fiscal 2024.
Funding authority for USDA, FDA and several other departments and agencies runs out a week from today.
Take note: There seems to be little appetite for trying to oust Johnson, even if he goes forward with the deal.
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“No one would put the country through that,” one of those hardliners, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told reporters Thursday, describing Johnson as a straight shooter.
Vilsack urged to examine reducing consumption of animal products to fight climate change
Dietary changes, not simply changes in the way we produce animal products, are necessary to address climate change, a broad range of environmental and animal welfare groups said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
“We write with concern that [USDA] is disregarding the science on the climate cost of meat and dairy in high-consuming countries like the United States, and advancing the industries that are driving agricultural emissions,” climate, environment, health, nutrition and food organizations and experts said in the letter.
“The leading authorities on climate science have highlighted reducing meat consumption as a climate strategy for years,” they said. Among the groups: the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the Humane Society of the U.S.
Keep in mind: Vilsack said last month that while he was at COP28, which he attended, he had not heard much about reducing meat consumption as a climate change strategy. He did, however, “hear about the important role that strategies for methane reduction can play in making the current livestock industry sustainable, and a recognition that there is a need and will be a continually growing need for more protein.”
Meet America’s newest rancher: Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced on Instagram that he’s raising Wagyu and Angus at his ranch on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, using an unusual diet.
“They’ll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch,” said Zuckerberg, the sixth-richest person in the world. “We want the whole process to be local and vertically integrated.”
“Each cow eats 5,000-10,000 pounds of food each year, so that's a lot of acres of macadamia trees,” he continues. “My daughters help plant the mac trees and take care of our different animals. We're still early in the journey and it's fun improving on it every season. Of all my projects, this is the most delicious."
By the way: Zuckerberg was promptly roasted by climate activists, who urged him to move to a plant-based diet and not raise beef.
She said it. “The immediate economic incentives on the farm just don’t always align with making the right decisions for the climate. That is a textbook case for government intervention.” – New York farmer Ariana Taylor-Stanley, telling members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition that she knew planting trees on her farm would help sequester carbon, but she couldn’t afford it without USDA conservation assistance.
