Articles Tagged with ''John Thune''

The Ocean Shipping Reform Act, a bill aimed at ending port bottlenecks for ag exports, was introduced in the Senate Thursday even as sponsors of a tougher House-passed version sought to ramp up pressure for its enactment.

The Biden administration, together with U.S. shippers and the ag sector, are pressuring ocean carriers to stop turning down farm commodity shipments, but it may take Congress to force the issue.

Farm groups are concerned the Senate version of the House-passed Ocean Shipping Reform Act won't have the same strong provisions for getting U.S. farm goods onto container ships amid the supply chain crisis.

Congressional Democrats are punting the next battle over the debt limit until after the 2022 elections, checking off a key item on their long December to-do list, but chances for moving their Build Back Better bill through the Senate are looking less likely.

The House of Representatives Wednesday easily approved legislation aimed at stopping ocean carrier companies from refusing to load U.S. agricultural and other goods for exports to Asia and around the globe.

Support on and off Capitol hill is building for legislation that would help U.S. ag commodities get to foreign buyers despite bottlenecks at some of the biggest U.S. ports.

The Biden administration is planning to use the upcoming international climate conference to promote the potential of agriculture to make food production more resilient. And in that vein, two House Agriculture subcommittees are holding a hearing today that will feature supporters of the use of biotechnology to improve agricultural productivity.

The four senators and two representatives representing the Dakotas are pressing the Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency to make a change to the crop insurance provisions for sunflowers.

A massive bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate is debating this week would make a historic $65 billion investment in expanding high-speed internet, but the bulk of the funding would be routed through states, and rural broadband advocates want to see the Agriculture Department play a bigger role in distributing the funding.

The Department of Agriculture plans to invest $500 million in the nation's meat processing capacity, but specifics on how the money will need to be determined by an upcoming public input process.