There’s a big week in Washington ahead of the July 4 recess.
The Supreme Court could rule as soon as Wednesday on how much leeway federal agencies have in interpreting laws. The court is expected to roll back its 1984 Chevron decision, which said courts should defer to the interpretations of federal agencies when a law is unclear.
The Senate is out of session through next week, but House members are returning to debate fiscal 2025 appropriations bills. Major decisions on fiscal 2025 spending won’t happen until after the fall elections, but House Republicans are using their spending bills to make another run at slashing domestic and non-defense programs.
The State-Foreign Operations bill that funds the Agency for International Development is on the House floor this week. And the House Appropriations Committee will release draft bills covering a variety of agencies important to agriculture, including the departments of Labor and Interior, the EPA, and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Take note: The eyes of the nation will be on CNN Thursday evening for the first debate of the year between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who’s considered a candidate to be Trump’s running mate, laid out some of Trump’s key messages in an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
Asked to state his case to be Trump’s No. 2, Burgum said, “I'm doing what I think that everybody that cares about the future of this country should be doing, which is understanding that, if you care about inflation, which is hurting income, producing low-income people the most, because it's affecting food, price of energy, the price of electricity -- the American dream is being killed by high interest rates.”
Burgum also stressed the importance of border security.
Check out our Washington Week Ahead.
FSA says full copies of foreign land ownership docs only available in DC
USDA’s Farm Service Agency has informed state and county offices that the public may view some data on foreign ownership of farmland online but may only see hard copies of information at USDA headquarters in Washington.
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In a notice sent to state and county offices, FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux said “hard copy AFIDA filings, including attached legal descriptions or business structure descriptions, cannot be viewed by the public in local FSA offices.”
AFIDA refers to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, which requires USDA to compile information on foreign ag land ownership and leasing.
“Selected” information is available on FSA’s website, Ducheneaux noted.
The notice says the department’s Office of General Counsel “recently confirmed that public inspection of AFIDA filings may only occur at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C.”
By the way: The notice “encourages” state and county offices to review the records in the spreadsheet and “report any records that need to be updated or instances of foreign agricultural land ownership or lease holdings” that are not in there.
EPA makes interim decisions on fumigants, organophosphates
EPA is releasing interim registration review decisions for five pesticides today, including aluminum phosphide, a fumigant used to kill prairie dogs, ground squirrels, gophers and moles.
Also included in the decisions is one for magnesium phosphide, used to kill insects in stored food and non-food commodities.
The other three decisions are for phosphine, which is used as a grain fumigant; tetrachlorvinphos, which kills ticks, fleas and lice, and triadimefon, a broad-spectrum fungicide.
Also worth noting: EPA is opening a 60-day comment period on proposed decisions on dimethoate and dicrotophos. Both are organophosphate insecticides widely used on food crops.
HPAI in dairy cows continues to grow
The number of confirmed cases of avian flu in cows continues to grow with the announcement by Iowa of another infected herd in Sioux County, where nine of the 11 infected herds in the state have been found.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service now reports 112 confirmed cases in 12 states, but that total does not include four announced by states but not yet posted on the APHIS website. In just the last 30 days, more than 50 new cases have been reported. USDA required testing of lactating cows before interstate movement in late April.
Meanwhile, North Dakota has become the latest state to require testing of lactating cows before an in-state event. Cows must be tested within 10 days before the state fair being held July 19-27. Wisconsin imposed a similar requirement, effective June 19.
No herds have been confirmed with highly pathogenic avian influenza in either state. In addition to Iowa, it has been found in South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Idaho, North Carolina, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Wyoming, and Texas.
Biden administration opens funding for methane emission monitoring, reductions
The Department of Energy and EPA have announced an $850 million funding opportunity for competitive grants under the Methane Reduction Program, focused on emissions from the oil and gas industry in energy communities.
The new grants will be available to industry entities, higher education institutions, state and local governments, tribes and others. The new funding includes:
- Three large awards to prioritize methane reductions at wells and infrastructure across the country
- Twenty-six awards to deploy near-commercial technologies that address hard-to-mitigate sources of emissions like engines, compressors, flares, liquids unloading and more.
- Four awards to accelerate methane monitoring solutions at the local and state level near disadvantaged communities, and five awards to form partnerships for emissions monitoring in different regions and basins.
During a press call, Biden administration officials emphasized that oil and natural gas facilities are the nation’s largest industrial source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. They did not hint at any future announcements on addressing methane emissions in other sectors such as agriculture or waste, but highlighted existing funding opportunities such as the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program.
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