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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are aiming to use the agriculture provisions in the Build Back Better bill to jump-start farmers’ work on climate-related farming practices and potentially create permanently higher levels of funding for conservation programs.
Longtime Washington farm hand Mike Seyfert has been tapped as the next president and CEO of the National Grain and Feed Association. The agribusiness lobbyist and former congressional staffer will officially assume his new duties March 1.
Congressional leaders reach agreement with the White House on a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package that will include a new round of aid to various agriculture sectors while also ensuring the deductibility of expenses used to get forgiveness of Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Congress faces a midnight deadline to keep the government funded. As of Thursday evening, it wasn’t clear whether lawmakers would be asked to pass a very short-term stopgap spending bill to provide the time they need to pass a massive bill that would include both government funding for fiscal 2021 as well as a big new COVID aid package.
Under court order, USDA is reinstating the farm labor survey that has long been used to determine minimum wage rates for H-2A workers. It’s not clear yet how the action will affect 2021 wage rates.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has been involved in just about every consequential piece of agricultural legislation in the last four decades. But the bill he thinks may have the most lasting impact is the 1996 farm bill known as Freedom to Farm (or “Freedom to Fail” by its detractors). The bill formally ended the system of production controls and commodity subsidies first imposed during the Depression.
The new Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance is out with its proposals for rewarding farmers for dealing with climate change. Now, the question is how much of the plan gets picked up.
Negotiations on a major new coronavirus relief package remain alive, but with the election less than two weeks away, Senate Republicans see little chance of passing a deal before a lame duck session in November or December at the earliest.
