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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Senator Ted Cruz has gotten headlines for placing a hold on Bill Northey’s USDA undersecretary nomination, but he hasn’t gotten what he really wants: a meeting at the White House and substantive changes in renewable fuel policy.
There’s still confusion surrounding whether or not the Department of Agriculture is working to put together a contingency plan to help out farmers if the U.S. pulls out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but experts say such a plan really wouldn’t help much in a worst-case scenario.
USDA’s regulatory reform officer told Capitol Hill lawmakers Tuesday that the department has identified about 140 regulations as “possible options” for revision or repeal. Although she did not identify them, she said a “significant number” will be published in the fall Unified Regulatory Agenda that should appear any day now, if history is any guide.
A USDA spokesman dismissed ethics concerns raised in a New York Times article about a meeting the head of the department’s Regulatory Reform Task Force had in May with members of the Southern Crop Production Association (SCPA), a CropLife America affiliate, and Kellie Bray, CLA's senior director of government affairs.
Agriculture research is facing a crisis of funding and recognition, and those that rely on it need to do a better job of communicating its importance. That’s the point a handful of research supporters made Monday at an event in Washington with the goal of ginning up support for research funding in the upcoming farm bill.
Stephen Vaden, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the USDA’s top lawyer, took a bruising today from Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee who raised concerns about his qualifications and what he's written in the past about voting rights.
The Trump administration is further delaying new animal-welfare standards for organic livestock and poultry production, and USDA officials are raising concerns about the legal and economic justification for the regulations developed under the Obama administration.
A series of pending decisions from USDA and Congress over coming weeks could leave milk producers with a significantly stronger new financial safety net, if the actions fall the way the industry hopes.
A powerful group of Republican and Democratic House and Senate members is launching a new attack on the USDA program that regulates sugar production and protects farmers from price fluctuations.
