Articles Tagged with ''Senate Ag Committee''

After a 55-year career in the California agriculture industry, Leroy Goehring has retired and after 21 years as the California state auditor, Elaine Howle will retire at the end of the year.

Laura Batcha, the longtime leader of the Organic Trade Association, plans to step down in the spring of 2022, and Michael Torrey Associates has welcomed Julie McClure to its team as a director of government affairs.

We now have the details on the $28 billion plan that Democrats have developed for funding climate-smart agriculture. According to a summary circulating on Capitol Hill and obtained by Agri-Pulse, the plan features a new $5 billion program to provide direct payments to farmers who plant cover crops.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott tells Agri-Pulse that he wants to make sure that carbon markets are going to be workable for farmers and won’t harm food production.

The agriculture portion of the $3.5 trillion spending package that Democrats are putting tougher is still a work in progress. In addition to $28 billion in conservation spending that still needs to be added to the legislation, there also will be some new farm debt relief.

House and Senate Ag Committee Republicans are urging the Food and Agricultural Climate Alliance to join them in calling on Democrats to hold public hearings ahead of considering ag spending in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. Committee Chairman David Scott, D-Ga., has announced a business meeting for Friday to consider the reconciliation package.

USDA is providing a fresh update on its plans for issuing some widely anticipated new regulations.

A hearing called to explore beef price transparency issues highlighted some possible changes, but senators also heard a good deal of defense for the current system.

Robert Holifield, co-founder and a principal of Lincoln Policy Group and a long-time Capitol Hill staff member, died June 16. He was 43.