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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Sunday, September 01, 2024
The Senate is expected to approve a new deputy secretary for USDA this week as lawmakers return from their July 4 break facing a backlog of fiscal 2024 spending bills heading into the August recess.
For the third Congress in a row, House members have offered a bill addressing agriculture’s labor shortage, reintroducing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which allows year-round ag labor for H-2A workers and creates a merit-based visa program for the ag sector.
The House and Senate Agriculture Committees are still several months away from voting on a new farm bill, but the major issues in each of the 12 titles are coming into focus even as lawmakers continue offering new proposals they’d like to see included. Here is a summary of the issues in play as well as notable proposals lawmakers would like to see included in the bill.
USDA has is taking nominations for membership on the department's Tribal Advisory Committee. The committee was established in the 2018 farm bill and provides guidance to the Secretary of Agriculture regarding tribal affairs.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients were overpaid at a rate of 9.84% in fiscal 2022 and underpaid by 1.7% on average as state agencies struggled with staffing coming out of the pandemic, according to USDA.
A handful of farm policy lobbyists say the debate to fund the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration could offer them insight into how the politics of Capitol Hill might shape the farm bill reauthorization process.
House lawmakers are setting the stage for a farm bill battle over international food aid with new legislation to diminish the role of non-profit humanitarian groups and eliminate the roles of cash and non-U.S. origin food in the assistance delivered around the world.
The forestry title, often overlooked in the farm bill, figures to play a prominent role this time around, given the potential of trees to harbor significant amounts of carbon and the Biden administration’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.