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Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has an alternate plan to end the U.S. trade war with China and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is key to its success, the cabinet member and former Georgia governor told Agri-Pulse in an interview.

Perdue stands firmly behind President Donald Trump’s trade battles with China – the fight to get the communist country to stop appropriating U.S. intellectual property and flooding the international market with cheap steel and aluminum – but from a farm perspective, he says he knows they need to be resolved.

“We don’t like it,” Perdue said of the trade war that is depressing already low prices for soybeans, pork, dairy and other commodities that have seen exports cut in the wake of China’s retaliatory tariffs.

That, he said, was his message to Han Jun, the vice minister for China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, who visited USDA last week for informal discussions.

“I don’t know how well it translated, but I told him, ‘You know, we have a saying here in the United States: When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.’ And so our producers (and) consumers suffer when we fight at the top and it’s in our best interest to resolve those kinds of things.”

In the ideal scenario, the U.S. and China sit back down at the negotiating table and settle their differences, but that doesn’t look like it will be possible any time soon. Senior administration officials told reporters Monday evening there is still no sign that the Chinese are willing to “seriously engage” over U.S. demands, and that was just hours before Trump announced he would hit China with new tariffs on $200 billion worth of its exports.

“China has had many, many opportunities to change those practices …,” one official said. “We have negotiated and negotiated and negotiated and given them chance after chance after chance, but up to this point they have remained obstinate.”

In a further sign that China’s not yet willing to concede, the country announced via the state-run news agency Xinhua on Tuesday that it will retaliate with new or increased tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. products.

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post is reporting that China likely will scrap plans to send a trade delegation to the U.S. because of the new $200 billion in tariffs that are slated to go into effect Monday, Sept. 24.

By some accounts – including Perdue’s – China is showing signs of cracking under the U.S. tariffs. On Monday, the U.S. will be imposing tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese products – roughly half of what Americans import. And if that’s not enough, Trump is threatening to more than double that, taxing just about everything China sells to the U.S.

“They are very anxious to do something,” Perdue said. “I think they are frankly more concerned about the long-term effect on their economy than we are.”

But if China holds fast and an end to the war is nowhere in sight, the U.S. will need the kind of help that it can only get in the Pacific Rim trade pact that Trump pulled out of during his first month in office.

“I’m hoping we can get that done,” Perdue said about a deal with China. “If we are, that’s great. If we’re not, my goal is to suggest to (President Trump), let’s gang up. Let’s go back into TPP Plus and put this group of 12 together as a front against China if China won’t come to the table … I think, frankly, those 11 other countries will welcome that. I don’t know that the president is totally adverse to that. While he prefers bilateral (trade pacts), I think he just wants a better agreement than was negotiated and we would be open to support that.”

The remaining member countries of the TPP, which is now officially known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), have all agreed to implement the pact without the U.S. Japan has rebuffed U.S. proposals for a bilateral free trade agreement and more than once asked the U.S. to rejoin the multilateral deal.

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In April, Trump reacted to growing demands from Republican lawmakers to reconsider U.S. membership in the TPP by ordering U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to begin work on a potential U.S. re-entry into the trade pact that includes Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Malaysia. That didn’t last long, though, and Trump publicly walked back the project in less than a week.

But lawmakers are still adamant that the U.S. needs to be part of the TPP, both to benefit from increased trade from the tariff reductions that the Obama administration negotiated in the pact as well as to counteract China’s growing influence and leadership in the Pacific Rim.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the TPP, China picked up the pace in negotiating its own multilateral trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

“As we step back and look at the big picture, I would highly encourage that we rethink re-engaging on TPP to serve as a counterweight to China’s growing influence, not only in the region, but around the world,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said at a Senate Agriculture hearing last week.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., offered a similar sentiment at the hearing: “It seems that if you want to send a message to China, the best way to do that is to do business with their competitors.”

Perdue’s TPP plan may be a long shot despite support on Capitol Hill, but both he and Trump are still confident that the U.S. and China can work out their differences.

“I think it's going to work out very well with China,” Trump said Monday. “I think they want to make a deal. They do want to make a deal -- that I can tell you. They want to make a deal.” 

Perdue also responded to several other questions during our interview, including:

Europe, Canada will be tough on trade but not impossible. Perdue said he’s confident that the Trump administration will succeed in getting EU negotiators to the table for an overall trade agreement that tears down a bevy of European non-tariff trade barriers.

The path to get there, Perdue said, started with Mexico. Like pushing on a row of dominoes, the USDA chief said, U.S. negotiators started the chain reaction with Mexico and that will help push over Canada and then the EU.

“The domino effect is Mexico and Canada and then … the EU,” he said. “They’ve been the most intransigent ones over the willingness to talk about agriculture.”

With the U.S.-Mexico agreement complete, Perdue said he is optimistic about the next domino: Canada. Those talks are ongoing, but Canadian resistance to U.S. demands that Canada end its Class 7 dairy pricing program remains a stumbling block.

“I think Canada understands that its Class 7 is not in keeping with what we believe was the spirit of NAFTA and I think we can get that resolved,” Perdue said.

More trade assistance coming? Farmers shouldn’t expect a second year of trade assistance payments next year, unless Congress decides to do a package on its own. Perdue says farmers need to make their planting decisions based on market signals, not the expectation of more aid from USDA. He noted that futures prices are suggesting farmers should plant fewer acres of soybeans. 

“That’s what farmers have done forever – look at what the forecasts are,” Perdue said.

He said the payments this year were justified because farmers couldn’t anticipate the market impact of the trade dispute when they planted their crops this spring. “I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest to send a signal that, other than the farm safety net we have out there and crop insurance, this is anything more than a 2018 kind of issue.”

He left the door open for Congress to step in - if the farm economic picture worsens. “If we move further down with working capital, with people going out of business, I think Congress will be motivated to look at some sort of package.” He said the administration is not forecasting that possibility at this time. Perdue made clear that, “It’s not the role to keep everyone in business. It’s to provide a general safety net and allow people to do what they do best in agriculture.”

Changes possible in MFP payments? USDA has already started making the first half of market facilitation payments (MFP), based on certain requirements and dates. Perdue said some of those might changes in the second tranche of trade assistance payments, including the Aug. 1 ownership date established for pork producers. “We heard of some people who cleared out their houses in early July and I think we need to be respectful and consider that in maybe the second tranche. We are not smart enough to say we just nailed it perfectly the first time.”

SNAP waiver rules need to be tightened. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says he would recommend that President Trump sign a new farm bill if it makes it harder for states to get waivers from the work rules for food stamp recipients. That wouldn’t go anywhere near as far as the House-passed farm bill, which would significantly expand the number of people subject to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements.  But Perdue says that tightening the SNAP waiver rules should be enough to address the president’s concerns. Perdue declined to say whether he would recommend a veto if the farm bill negotiators fail to agree on changing the waiver rules. 

“It’s really a matter of enforcing the integrity the system as it was designed. If we are given that statutory authority (to limit waivers), I would recommend to the president that really fulfills his request for work requirements.” 

Perdue, who was Georgia’s governor for 8 years, said he understood how governors want to draw down as many federal dollars to their states as they can and “I don’t think less of them for doing that.” But still, he says the current waivers have been abused. “When you are looking at over 10 percent unemployment, we need to be compassionate and generous.” But when you have “under four percent unemployment and virtually the whole state signing up for waivers, that’s an abuse of the system that needs to stop.”

To watch video highlights of our interview with Sec. Perdue, click here.

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The 2014 farm bill is set to expire in just over one week, raising concerns about disruptions in a number of programs, including one of the largest conservation programs as well as much smaller programs that help commodity groups open overseas markets. 

Congressional negotiators had hoped to reach agreement on a new farm bill in time to have it enacted by Sept. 30, when the 2014 law expires, but the talks remain bogged down this week over a range of policy and funding disagreements. 

Many of the largest programs in the farm bill won’t be affected by the expiration. Crop insurance is permanently authorized. Congress doesn’t have to do anything to keep it going. Authority for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be automatically renewed through the appropriations process. 

And the major commodity programs, including the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, are eligible for the 2018-19 marketing year for each covered commodity. The Margin Protection Program for dairy doesn’t expire until Dec. 31, at which time a 1949 law would kick in, forcing USDA to take steps to increase the price of milk, a prospect known as the "dairy cliff." 

There could be disruptions elsewhere before December. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service notified state NRCS offices on Monday that their work with the Environmental Quality Incentives Program must be limited after Oct. 1 to “subaccounts not affected by potential changes in the new farm bill.” 

EQIP’s funding authority after Oct. 1 is not in doubt: Congress earlier extended the program through fiscal 2019. The NRCS guidance is based on the fact that the program could be altered by a new farm bill. Don Parrish, who follows conservation policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said NRCS is delaying state allocations of EQIP funding in the new fiscal year to see if spending levels could be changed in the final bill. That is unlikely to have an impact on applicants, he said. 

There are 39 other, smaller programs that are set to run out of funding on Sept. 30. They include the Foreign Market Development (FMD) program, which subsidizes the cost of maintaining commodity groups’ overseas offices, and the Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops (TASC) program, which helps fruit, vegetable and nut producers pay for projects aimed at overcoming barriers to their products in foreign markets, including sanitary-phytosanitary restrictions. 

FMD was funded at $34.5 million a year under the 2014 farm bill, while TASC received $9 million annually.

More than two dozen groups currently participate in FMD. Melissa George Kessler, director of strategic relations for the U.S. Grains Council, says her organization will be able to weather a lapse in FMD funding but smaller groups may be hard-pressed to keep the lights on. 

The new trade promotion program that USDA announced recently as part of its $12 billion trade assistance package for farmers hurt by the Trump administration's trade disputes won’t replace FMD funding because the money can’t be used for staff or office costs, she said. 

Among the groups worried about the farm bill lapse is the American Peanut Council, which operates one overseas office, in London, which is paid for with FMD funds. 

The office manages the group’s promotional efforts in Europe as well as monitoring regulatory issues in the European Union, which accounts for a third of U.S. peanut exports, said Stephanie Grunenfelder, the group's senior vice president. FMD also partly funds APC offices operated by contractors in Canada and Mexico. 

“Should FMD be ended, staff would be laid off, and our office would be closed within a few months,” said Grunenfelder. “Our staff has more than 30 years of experience and the long-term relationships built over time, as well as industry knowledge, would be lost in one of our largest and most important markets.”

For many groups, the biggest concern is that lawmakers won’t reach a deal on a new farm bill by December, forcing Congress to pass an extension of the 2014 farm bill into 2019, when a new Congress convenes. Unless the extension provided funding to continue expired programs such as FMD and TASC, they would out of money in 2019.

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That is what most worries Kam Quarles, vice president of public policy at the National Potato Council, which relies on TASC to fund its ongoing efforts to remove trade restrictions on U.S. potatoes in Mexico. Mexico currently restricts sales of fresh U.S. potatoes to areas along the U.S. border. 

“I think that people can kind of keep the wheels on for a month or a couple of months...But if you drag this out six months, eight months, it’s going to start to hurt,” Quarles said. 

USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, which administers both FMD and TASC, declined to comment on what would happen to the programs after Sept. 30, if no farm bill is enacted by then. 

“Congress is certainly aware of the deadline, and we hope that lawmakers pass a new farm bill by then,” the agency said. “We don’t want to speculate about a hypothetical situation that has not materialized yet. Members of Congress know how important farm bill programs are to agricultural producers.”

Ferd Hoefner, senior strategic adviser to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, expressed frustration that there isn’t more concern about a lapse in farm bill authority beyond the trade programs. For example, he said the Farm Service Agency cannot process new applications for the Conservation Reserve Program after Oct. 1.

FSA provided a statement similar to the one issued by FAS when asked how it was responding to the expiration of the 2014 farm bill. 

Congress could address the uncertainty by providing a short-term extension of all of the programs as part of the continuing resolution that must pass by Oct. 1 to fund agencies that don’t have a FY19 appropriation enacted. The Senate approved such a CR on Tuesday that would run until Dec. 7.The uncertainty and stops and starts in program authority are a waste of time and money for USDA, Hoefner said. 

The lead Senate negotiators, Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, have reported little progress in the talks and have emphasized in recent days that they have until December to reach a deal.

Stabenow said Monday night there were “big differences” between the House and Senate on many issues. “We very much want to get it done. There’s just very different views on how farm programs should look, conservation programs should look, how food assistance programs should look, how energy programs should look.”

A spokeswoman for Stabenow said that Congress would need to provide funding for the expiring programs if a long-term extension is needed in December.

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Opposition to moving the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture out of Washington, D.C., continues to mount, with the National Farmers Union the latest to voice concern about USDA’s proposal.

NFU’s President, Roger Johnson, criticized the plan in a Sept.18 letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, telling him “the process to relocate these agencies has lacked meaningful public input that would better inform any final decision” and urging USDA to “be more forthcoming and transparent with the metrics it utilized in developing the current proposal.”

In addition, Johnson said, “We are concerned that the move will lead to a large loss of knowledgeable and experienced staff” and “any disruption in the execution of these agencies’ functions would have a significant detrimental impact on family farmers and ranchers.”

Although the potential move of ERS has garnered the most attention, supporters of NIFA also are worried about the proposal, announced by USDA last month.

Research organizations have asked USDA to provide some opportunity for public input on the potential impact of the NIFA relocation. For now, USDA is asking for “expressions of interest” from communities who want to host the agencies, a request that a USDA spokesperson said has garnered “multiple dozens” of responses “from state and local officials, colleges and universities, and other entities, which take the form of expressions of interest in becoming the new homes of ERS and NIFA.”

On Sept. 13, USDA extended the deadline for those entreaties until Oct. 15, but has not asked for comments on the merits of the move. A department spokesperson said USDA is not making those documents public for now.

The National Coalition for Food and Agriculture Research, an advisory group currently chaired by Andy LaVigne, president and CEO of the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) joined scientific groups and a number of university agriculture schools in asking the department to slow down its consideration of the NIFA move. 

LaVigne said NCFAR is trying to better understand what USDA’s intent is and what advantages the relocation could provide. The group is concerned about NIFA’s ability to work with commodity groups and university researchers to develop plant breeds that are critical to addressing challenges faced by farmers. 

He said there are good reasons for NIFA to be in the D.C. area, including the ability of its experts to interact with other agencies and departments, such as the Energy Department on biofuel issues; the Bureau of Land Management; and the National Institutes of Health.

“Those are the groups we consider their counterparts or their peers. It makes it harder for them to interact with those organizations when they (NIFA personnel) are not here,” LaVigne said.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue defended the proposal in an interview with Agri-Pulse last week. “Frankly, all of us empirically can understand there are less expensive places to live than the National Capital region, there are less expensive places to raise a family,” he said, suggesting it would be easier to recruit people to work in places other than Washington, D.C.

“Many, frankly, we believe would volunteer to go somewhere else,” he said.

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He also stressed that a “cadre” of senior officials would remain behind in both agencies so visitors to Washington, D.C. would be able to “interface with the leadership of ERS as well as NIFA.”

Asked whether a cost-benefit analysis or any other type of detailed rationale had been developed to support the proposal, Perdue said, “Maybe not to the degree that we’re able to publish or willing to publish at this point in time.” But he added that USDA would be responding to questions from Congress as they come in.

But former NIFA director Sonny Ramaswamy, who left USDA earlier this year to become the president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities in Washington state, said he never had any problem recruiting people to work at NIFA. He routinely received hundreds of resumes, he said.

“Washington’s where the action is,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with Agri-Pulse. NIFA staff have been able to coordinate with other federal science agencies in the D.C. area and convene public discussions on issues critical to the agriculture industry, he said.

USDA has cited turnover rates in ERS and NIFA that it says are higher than for the department as a whole, but Ramaswamy said the department had a hand in creating those higher rates when it refused to fill any of about 70 vacancies in NIFA near the end of his tenure.

“You’re really looking at the natural ebb and flow (of employees) that’s now been artificially inflated – like putting your thumb on the scale,” he said.

A USDA spokesperson said Perdue “ultimately approved a portion of the NIFA hiring plan” – 19 positions – after Ramaswamy was no longer director.” are all in varying stages of the hiring process,” the spokesperson said, noting that Perdue “determined that he would wait for a new NIFA director to come on board before proceeding with further review of the hiring plan.”

Ramaswamy also said moving NIFA near a land-grant university could raise concerns about favoritism when that university receives a research grant.

NIFA, which awards hundreds of grants totaling hundreds of millions of dollars each year, has between 350 and 400 employees and a budget of $1.525 billion, which the administration proposed to cut in fiscal 2019 to $1.369 billion. Employees include about 100 people in grants and financial management, about 60 “national program leaders” in areas such as agronomy and soil science, and about 70 program specialists or assistants and administrative support staff. Other employees include executives, information technology workers, and civil rights compliance staff.

Congress appears unlikely to intervene in either the NIFA or ERS relocations for the time being, although House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Democrats on the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, are fighting the move. The top Democrat on the panel, Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., is trying to insert a policy rider in the fiscal 2019 spending package for USDA to block the relocations, but Republicans are working to stop such a provision from being included. 

Bishop and Hoyer, however, will be better positioned to head off Perdue’s plans should Democrats win control of the House in November, and it’s possible the FY19 spending bill won’t be finalized until December. Perdue said that while “Congress has an oversight responsibility, they don’t really have a micromanagement responsibility.”

Meanwhile, the chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee are awaiting answers from Perdue on a series of questions about the ERS and NIFA plans. Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and ranking member Debbie Stabenow of Michigan are asking Perdue to explain the rationale for the plan and to turn over any cost-benefit analysis that has been done.

In a Sept. 7 letter to Perdue, the senators cited concerns by some stakeholders that a large number of employees will be unable to move, “causing a sharp loss of knowledgeable staff.”

“I absolutely guarantee you that most people will not move,” Ramaswamy said.

A USDA spokesperson, however, cited an email that Ramaswamy wrote in December 2017 to Senate and House Agriculture Committee staff, in which he recommended that the salary of the next director salary be increased. Ramaswamy received $179,700 per year for the six years he headed NIFA.

“I have spoken to a number of potential director candidates – universally they have said that it would be tough for them to move to Washington, D.C., considering the cost and low salary (the average dean makes significantly more than $100,000 more per year in salary alone!),” Ramaswamy said in the email.

“Certainly, if the cost of living would be of concern for the director at that salary, it would be of concern to rank-and-file employees of NIFA as well,” the spokesperson said. “This is precisely one of the reasons we listed when we announced the ERS and NIFA move – the cost of living. It would appear that Dr. Ramaswamy agrees with us on that point.”

Ramaswamy, however, said, he was speaking only of the director’s position. His email noted that the base Senior Executive Service salary was $190,270.

“The NIFA director position must be eligible for cost-of-living and performance raises and performance bonuses, similar to what is recommended for career SES staff,” Ramaswamy said, adding that he had spoken to someone interested in the director position who told him the salary was a “deal-breaker.”

“Neither NIFA nor ERS has any serious issues with recruitment or retention,” said Catherine Woteki, formerly the chief scientist and undersecretary for research, education and economics at USDA. She’s now on the faculty of Iowa State University’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.

Phil Brasher contributed to this story

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Though the remnants of Hurricane Florence finally dumped their last torrents of rain near the U.S. Northeast coast and drifted back out to the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday, the storm’s havoc is sure to plague the Carolinas and its farms for weeks.

Indeed, agriculture in North and South Carolina is sharing in the misery and economic losses, especially in the low-lying coastal plain that extends across the eastern part of both states. That’s where Florence hit hardest, dumping more than 30 inches of water in some areas since last Friday.

The storm has claimed more than 30 lives in the two states, and, as of Tuesday afternoon, more than 300,000 customers were without power in North Carolina and thousands more in South Carolina. And while flooded rivers were starting to recede in mountainous and piedmont regions, they’ll keep rising in many areas, some into record levels, and will continue to rise into next weekend. One result: 1,500 roads, including major highways, were still flooded and closed in North Carolina on Tuesday, and many won’t reopen soon.

For North Carolina’s massive, highly diverse ag sector, the torrential rains came as many crops were maturing and farmers were beginning to harvest.

Thus, “this storm could not have hit North Carolina agriculture at a worse time,” said North Carolina Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten late Monday.

Andrea Ashby, public affairs director for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, points out that “six of our top 10 counties (in farm cash receipts) are in the area hit by the storm,’’ and she says most of the damage will be due to flooding, not from the hurricane winds, and the flooding may continue for weeks.

Says Wooten: “Fifty percent . . . the money part of the tobacco crop, was still in the field.” Tobacco is the state’s biggest crop by value, with $724 million in receipts last year, and could see losses ranging from 25 percent to 100 percent in some fields.

What’s more, “our farmers put their green tobacco into the bulk curing barns,” he explained, and they need a generator to keep air on the tobacco once harvested. So, where the electric power is out and auxiliary generators aren't available, the tobacco will soon rot, and “what is in the barn is totally wasted.”

Cotton, soybeans, peanuts and other major crops – now ready for harvest, or nearly so – remain in fields, many of which are under water. “We hadn’t quite started digging peanuts yet. If the sun comes out and it begins to dry out, we may be OK (for the peanut crop),” Wooten said.

Also, North Carolina farmers, who grow over half of America’s sweet potatoes, had scurried and managed to harvest a fourth of this season’s crop before Florence hit. Survival of the rest of the crop will depend on water quickly leaving fields, Wooten said.

Soybean growers in the state had just started harvesting early-maturing fields last week, according to Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report.

Katherine Drake Stowe, interim chief executive of the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association, says, “absolutely, our guys are going to take losses in some areas.” But she points out that the state’s bean acreage “is spread out across eastern Carolina,” and the northeastern region has had little flooding. On the other hand, she said, agronomists advise that soybean crops can usually sit in rain water for three to four days and survive, but, after that, a field left standing in flood waters means soybeans “are adulterated and that grain should not be sold.”

In South Carolina, where farm production is also diverse but smaller that in its northern neighbor, farmers were luckier in some ways.

The South Carolina cotton crop is concentrated in the state’s coastal northeastern counties where Florence hit the hardest, and so, as in North Carolina, “has taken a very hard hit . . . and some soybeans have as well,” said Sally McKay, communications director for the state's Department of Agriculture.

However, the state’s celebrated peach harvest wrapped up last month, and most crops of melons and summer vegetables have been harvested, she said. Plus, about 90 percent of the corn crop had been harvested before the storm, she said. "That’s what a lot of our farmers were doing last week,” she said. North Carolina farmers had managed to harvest two-thirds of their corn.

Meanwhile, 20 South Carolina farmers grew their first legally permitted crop of industrial hemp in that state this year. Unfortunately for them, the crop remains an outcast of the subsidized federal crop insurance program because it is variety of the marijuana plant, outlawed by federal law. The hemp acres, scattered across the state, will apparently have some losses where fields are in low-lying areas, said Lucas Snyder, the South Carolina Hemp Farmers Association executive director.

For livestock, the resilience that producers of swine and poultry in the two states have built in recent years against floods and other disasters is becoming increasingly evident.

Poultry producers and processors “have been up to their alligators” in Florence’s flood waters, said Connie Smith, president of the South Carolina Poultry Federation. She said that poultry farmers and processing plants have been building defenses against flooding since Hurricane Floyd hit the Carolinas in 1999, and now, “we’ve got farms that are running totally off their generators because the (public utility) power is out” in so many rural areas.

She notes that South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued a waiver of limits on hours of driving trucks, and producers and suppliers were moving birds to slaughter plants, and feed and fuel to farms and to flood-protected staging sites around the clock for days before Florence. “That hopefully helped a good bit,” she said.

Still, she said she knew Monday of at least one chicken-meat processor whose plant had flooded in the northeast corner of the state, and workers there were trying to relocate their offices from the inundated facility.

In North Carolina, where the swine and poultry industry is much larger, most of the 194 slaughter plants for swine, cattle and other livestock inspected by the state prepared extensively ahead of the storm and they expected to close for days, said Ashby, with the state Ag Department. As of late Monday, 33 plants remained closed, most apparently waiting for flood waters to recede. Three plants reported being flooded and some others were left without a public power source.

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Sanderson Farms, a major poultry producer and processor, reported Tuesday that 60 of its 880 broiler houses on North Carolina contract farms had flooded, killing about 1.7 million broiler chickens, and that another 30 farms are isolated by floodwaters and could not be reached by feed trucks. Tyson Foods also reported two poultry farms in the Fayetteville area impacted by Florence. 

Meanwhile, a USDA spokesman said late Tuesday that 29 red meat and poultry plants under federal inspection in the Carolina were closed for reasons linked to Hurricane Florence

Across North Carolina’s vast swine breeding and feeding operations – with 2,100 commercial farms and about 3,300 treatment lagoons – Florence's effects tracked as of Tuesday by the North Carolina Pork Council (NCPC) were widespread as producers fought to keep swine safe and fed.

“The historic flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence has continued to cause widespread impacts . . . (including) at least a dozen of our hog farms,” NCPC said in a statement. Seven farm lagoons had “overtopped” because of the torrential rains, and rising rivers had flooded four others, NPPC said. Yet, there had been only one actual breach of a farm lagoon, and that was on a small farm in Duplin County, the group reported , and, so far, manure “solids remained in the lagoon."

With some rivers not expected to crest for days, NCPC suggested that more farms would be affected this week, but noted that pollution from flooded hog farms may be much less than from the state’s municipal sewage treatment plants, if the experience of 2016’s Hurricane Mathew is repeated. That storm pushed 154 million gallons of raw municipal waste into the state’s waterways, according to a North Carolina Division of Water Resources report.

Most important, said the Farm Bureau’s Wooten: “We need it to quit raining . . . so we can let the water get out and we can get roads opened up.” And the weather may be cooperating: sunny or partly sunny days are predicted for the next several days.

International regulations that add sustainability and sourcing barriers to imported timber and biomass products are under the watchful eye of American exporters concerned about the possibility of expanding non-tariff barriers in critical export markets.

The increased obstacles include additional verification for the legality of the export as well as heightened sustainability standards in countries that have traditionally been willing recipients of U.S. products. According to Bob Simpson, a contractor with the National Association of State Foresters, the U.S. was mostly able to rely on its sterling reputation as a reliable rule-follower to address any concerns about the legality and sustainability of exported forestry goods. Now, some trading partners are asking for proof.

“Beginning about three or four years ago, countries were beginning to say this has sufficed in the past, but we really now need to be able to show our constituencies that wood purchased from the United States is in fact coming from a legal source and, in some instances, sustainable,” Simpson told Agri-Pulse.

Additional documentation ranges from proof of sustainable harvesting and management practices to verification of legally sourced products. The U.S. isn’t exactly known for cover-of-night mass deforestation, but, as anyone familiar with the debate will willingly admit, sustainability is a hard thing to prove. So far, either Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification appears to suffice.

In some instances, the importing countries offer sound guidance on just what they’re looking for. As an example, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service says Japan’s Clean Wood Act will enforce legality concerns by company registration, and companies found in violation will have their registration stripped for a year. But other countries are a little more vague, such as the Netherlands requiring producers be able “to guarantee that the biomass is from genuinely sustainable sources.”

The shift in attitude comes as countries around the world seek to shift energy portfolios to fulfill greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. In Europe, the European Commission’s 2020 Energy Strategy calls for a 20 percent GHG emission reduction, increasing the share of renewable energy to at least 20 percent of consumption, and achieving energy savings of 20 percent or more. Simpson says that means the U.S. could be well-positioned to step in and replace the coal that was previously in use.

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“Wood has become the go-to source of energy,” he said, “and the Netherlands have created this biomass policy that could be quite burdensome on U.S. forest owners.”

At this point, Simpson said he wasn’t aware of any products that were rejected over legal or sustainability concerns, but he also pointed out that a limited number of policies are in place. For now, the U.S. government and interested private groups are simply trying to stay ahead of the issue before stronger trade enforcement becomes necessary.

“A lot of this is still in progress,” Simpson acknowledged. “The U.S., our federal agencies, trade agencies, and National Association of State Foresters is staying ahead of this to make sure that U.S. markets remain strong and resilient.”

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If you’re a rural-home or business owner hobbled by snail-paced or unavailable internet service, know that:

• Millions of other owners are equally cut off,
• Federal agencies are riding to your rescue,
• But the federal rescue may need to be re-targeted.

The major cable companies join other stakeholders in welcoming the current multibillion-dollar infusion of new funding for rural broadband from USDA and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). But there’s sharp disagreement over how these billions should be spent.

In its detailed Sept. 17 appeal to the FCC this week, USTelecom, the leading trade association representing major internet service providers, warns that “by splitting a small potential subscriber base among additional firms, no firm may be able to obtain sufficient revenues to keep its rural network operational.”

Other stakeholders see competition as the best way to accelerate broadband expansion while lowering costs. USTelecom instead said that subsidizing competitors in rural areas results in duplicative “overbuilding” that wastes limited federal funding.

USTelecom also said that even though the FCC has reduced regulations that have limited broadband expansion, USTelecom members still face “substantial difficulties in accessing poles, ducts, conduits, and rights-of-way owned by entities . . . such as municipalities and electric cooperatives.”

In direct response, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) argues that if the FCC and USDA continue to give major carriers near monopoly control over expanding rural broadband, the result will be slower broadband expansion, at slower speeds, with higher prices for consumers and higher federal subsidy costs.

Jonathan Chambers, a partner at Conexon, which helps rural electric co-ops launch broadband service, tells Agri-Pulse that the FCC’s latest broadband subsidy awards are a significant advancement, but they also repeat a costly past mistake made in the Obama administration’s Recovery Act which helped fund rural satellites service.

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Noting that “neither the FCC nor USDA take consumer decisions into account,” he points out that “consumers by and large don’t subscribe to satellite or fixed wireless service when other options are available” and therefore these services are not sustainable once federal subsidies end. “If consumers won’t subscribe in substantial numbers to a type of service,” Chambers says, “why should public money be spent on that service?”

Chambers, who previously headed FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, explains that the new FCC and USDA funding for rural broadband “certainly has the potential of solving the rural broadband problem.” But he cautions that these latest billions will be wasted “if the money is spent on something (like satellite or fixed wireless service) that won’t be considered broadband five years from now.”

Chambers says the answer is what rural electric co-ops across the country are doing – investing in “fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks,” capable today of delivering speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. He calls this a long-term investment for 40 years or more, similar to what the co-ops accomplished in the 1930s by building the electric networks that still serve rural America today.

The co-ops’ 80-year track record, Chambers says, supports trusting them and their fiber networks as the best option for delivering rural broadband.

Chris Martin, vice president of member and industry relations for the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), tells Agri-Pulse that “in the most rural areas, the financials of deploying broadband are challenging, so we applaud the federal government making its commitment to expand broadband in rural areas.” And he says the funds should go to providers, “like rural telephone and electric utilities, who have a proven track record and are committed to getting the job done.”

He answers USTelcom’s concern about overbuilding this way: “The large carriers have made promise after promise and failed to deliver in many unserved rural areas. Rural telephone cooperatives and independent telephone companies have delivered on their promise to deploy broadband in the areas where they offer telephone service, and now those rural telecom providers, as well as electric cooperatives and municipalities, are stepping forward to deliver in areas that remain unserved.”

With NRTC representing 1,500 electric and telephone members, Martin says that rural utilities “are not interested in overbuilding where broadband is available today. They’re focused on getting to areas where there is no broadband access.”

Another promise may be delivered in the 2018 farm bill that House and Senate conferees are haggling over this week. The final compromise could add around $500 million more for rural broadband. That would be on top of the $600 million added last March in the omnibus spending bill to create USDA’s new rural e-Connectivity pilot program.

A report released last week by the NRECA shows that new funding for rural broadband would pay large dividends. The Unlocking the Value of Broadband for Electric Cooperative Consumer Members report concludes:

• “Over a 20-year period, the estimated loss in consumer-member value due to lack of broadband deployment to electric cooperative areas is more than $68 billion.”
• “In contrast, the projected deployment cost of expanding broadband to these areas is approximately $40 billion.”
• “This is a form of market failure, where private returns do not justify investment even when lost consumer value exceeds deployment costs by 70 percent.”

Further confirmation of the high costs of leaving large swaths of rural America in the digital dark comes from a Purdue University report: Estimation of the Net Benefits of Indiana Statewide Adoption of Rural Broadband, which was released in August. It concludes that “Indiana could reap nearly $12 billion in present value of net economic benefits over a 20-year period if an investment were made to extend broadband internet into the state’s rural areas” – and that “every dollar invested in broadband returns nearly $4 to the economy.”

Federal investments are being made. USDA’s latest $600 million broadband program adds to USDA’s 27 other loan and grant programs “used to fund planning, construction, research and other e-Connectivity activities.”

The FCC is also aggressively funding rural broadband expansion. In August, the agency announced winners in its Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction to provide nearly $1.5 billion for expanding broadband to more than 700,000 unserved rural locations in 45 states over the next 10 years.

The FCC points out that the 103 winning providers will offer broadband where, without federal funding “this type of broadband expansion and ongoing service would not be economically feasible.” The FCC notes that “If you live in rural America, there’s a better than 1-in-4 chance that you lack access to fixed high-speed broadband at home, compared to a 1-in-50 probability in our cities.”

To end this disparity, the FCC will also provide  $4.53 billion over the next decade in Phase II of its Mobility Fund program, “to advance 4G LTE service, primarily in rural areas that would not be served in the absence of government support.”

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The U.S. Agency for International Development is committing $15 million over five years to create the Feed the Future Innovation Lab on Fish. The initiative will be led by Mississippi State University’s Global Center for Aquatic Food Security under the direction of Mark Lawrence, associate dean and professor in MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. MSU President Mark Keenum called the new USAID partnership “groundbreaking” and said the university is “well-positioned” to lead the effort. The Innovation Lab on Fish is an interdisciplinary program "aimed at reducing poverty and improving nutrition, food security and livelihoods among stakeholders in targeted regions," USAID and MSU said in a news release. "The lab is not a specific site, but a mechanism through which academic, private and public partners can identify solutions for global challenges" while helping to implement aquaculture and fisheries programs in developing countries.

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USDA has approved a waiver that allows participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in hurricane-ravaged North Carolina to buy hot food with their benefits through Oct. 31. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue emphasized the importance of the waiver, noting that many North Carolina residents are temporarily living in shelters without facilities to store or cook food. “As the state of North Carolina works to recover from this storm, USDA stands ready to provide common-sense flexibilities to help them meet the needs of their citizens,” Perdue said. Normally, SNAP benefits cannot be used to buy hot food or products for immediate consumption. USDA earlier approved a waiver to allow extended time for SNAP participants to submit claims for food lost in the disaster. Affected households in the state now have until Oct. 15 to report food losses and request replacement benefits so they can purchase food to make up for what was lost in the storm. Click here for more information on assistance provided by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service during times of disaster.

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The Senate passed bipartisan legislation designed to combat the opioid crisis on Monday by a 99-1 vote. Only Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, voted against the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018. The Senate version – composed of about 70 different bills - would increase the ability to track opioid prescriptions, provide research dollars to the National Institutes of Health to find nonaddictive painkillers, and try to stop synthetic drugs from being shipped into the U.S. from other countries – among other things. About 72,000 lives were lost to drug overdoses in 2017 and over 49,000 of those were due to opioids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “These are people with hopes, dreams, and families. We need to help those gripped by addiction break free from its grips. We need to give law enforcement the tools they need to stop these poisons from infiltrating our country and commit ourselves to additional resources at the federal level that can help our states, local communities, and the private sector respond,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, when speaking on the Senate floor this week. Earlier this year, Portman and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., introduced the Synthetics Trafficking & Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act, which was included in the final package. Their measure would help stop dangerous synthetic drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil from being shipped across U.S. borders. “In Minnesota and across the country, no place has been immune from the devastating effects of opioid abuse. Passing this comprehensive, bipartisan legislation is a step toward combating this epidemic,” Klobuchar said. Before the measure can become law, it must be reconciled with the version passed by the House in June and signed by the president.

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Jon Doggett took over as interim CEO of the National Corn Growers Association last month when Chris Novak resigned to take the top job at CropLife America. Last week, NCGA officially named Doggett as the fifth CEO in the organization’s 61-year history.The veteran lobbyist has been leading the Corn Growers’ D.C. office since 2002 and had been serving as the organization’s executive vice president since 2014 … One of Doggett’s first jobs as new CEO was to name a new vice president of communications. He’s Neil Caskey, who’s been working at Osborn & Barr since 2006. Before that he spent four years with the American Soybean Association as director of industry and public relations… NCGA has also promoted Nathan Fields to the position of vice president of market development. Fields had been director of biotechnology and crop inputs.

Arthur Elkins Jr., the inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency, is retiring from federal service as of Oct. 12. Elkins has been IG for both the EPA and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board since June 25, 2010. EPA says Elkins has accepted a new position outside of the federal government, and that his new employer is expected to announce details soon. Before entering federal service, Elkins worked as a prosecutor and public defender in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Charles Sheehan, currently the deputy IG, will serve as the acting inspector general following Elkins’ departure. The EPA inspector general is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The Society of American Foresters has a new CEO. He’s Terry Baker, who most recently served as the deputy forest supervisor on the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland in Fort Collins, Colo. Baker, who holds a master’s degree in forestry from Yale, is the first African-American to lead SAF in the organization’s 118-year history.

DowDuPont has named the senior leaders of the independent companies that will be created following the separation of its Agriculture (Corteva Agriscience) and Specialty Products (DuPont) Divisions, which is expected to occur by June 1, 2019. In addition, the company announced that Ed Breen, chief executive officer of DowDuPont, will become executive chairman of DuPont following the separation. The senior leaders of Corteva Agriscience include: Jim Collins Jr., currently chief operating officer of the Agriculture Division, who will be chief executive officer; Greg Friedman, currently head of finance for the Agriculture Division and vice president, DuPont Investor Relations, who will be executive vice president, chief financial officer; and Cornel Fuerer, currently head of legal for the Agriculture Division, will be senior vice president, general counsel. The senior leaders of DuPont include: Marc Doyle, currently chief operating officer of the Specialty Products Division, who will be chief executive officer; Jeanmarie Desmond, now the head of finance for the Specialty Products Division and co-controller of DowDuPont, who will be executive vice president, chief financial officer; and Erik Hoover, currently head of legal for the Specialty Products Division, chief compliance officer for DuPont, and assistant secretary for DowDuPont, who will be senior vice president, general counsel.

After less than two years on the job, Tyson Foods CEO Tom Hayes is stepping down. While the company cited “personal reasons,” the announcement comes less than two months after Tyson stunned the market in July by downgrading its earnings outlook by more than a tenth. The company blamed the Trump administration’s recently-imposed tariffs and a glut of beef and pork in the domestic market for the move. Hayes will be replaced by Noel White, who was formerly group president of Tyson’s beef, pork and international division, beginning Sept. 30.

McGuireWoods Consulting has hired Edward Hill, a legislative assistant to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., as its vice president of federal government affairs, focusing on agriculture and trade issues. Hill, who holds a law degree from Howard University, had worked for Butterfield since 2015.

The North American Meat Institute is adding Clarissa Moreaux to its regulatory and scientific affairs staff as director of regulatory affairs. Most recently, Moreaux served as quality systems manager at Dine Brands Global Inc. in Glendale, Calif. She also previously worked as an enforcement officer for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service in Diamond Bar, Calif.

Dewitt Ashby, the director of trade shows for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, tells Agri-Pulse he’s retiring at the end of September after 35 years with the association. Ashby, who joined NASDA in 1983 to work on the association’s first trade show in Atlanta. has worked on all 34 trade show events co-sponsored by NASDA and USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

The Livestock Marketing Association has a new marketing and communications manager. She’s Sam (short for Samantha) Capoun, a former account manager for a livestock sale marketing firm and ag communications and journalism grad from Kansas State.

The American Feed Industry Association is honoring Kirk Bowman as its 2018 Liquid Feed Hall of Fame inductee. A 33-year veteran of the industry, Bowman currently serves as director of operations for PerforMix Nutrition Systems. The induction took place at AFIA’s recent Liquid Feed Symposium in San Diego.

Archer Daniels Midland appointed Clint Piper as president of its Golden Peanut and Tree Nuts business. Piper has been with ADM since 2007, holding a number of leadership roles, including commercial management of the firm’s site in Kershaw, S.C. He most recently served as ADM’s general manager, North American Cotton and Canola Risk Management. Golden Peanut, based in Alpharetta, Ga., operates 12 processing plants in the U.S., one in Argentina, and three in South Africa.

Satyaki Lodh was named chief information officer at Dallas-based Borden, a leading U.S. dairy processer and distributor. Lodh joins Borden from snack-maker Snyder’s-Lance Inc., where he served as vice president of enterprise applications.

Two new chairmen have been selected for the Next Generation for Scientists for Biodiesel program. They are Shyam Paudel, a chemical engineering Ph.D candidate at Missouri University of Science and Technology, and William Gray, a chemical engineering undergrad at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. The National Biodiesel Board program for college science students is intended to foster professional relationships between budding and established scientists and increase collaboration with academia and the biodiesel industry. Paudel and Gray join one other sitting co-chair of the organization – Jennifer Greenstein, who is studying plant and microbial biology at North Carolina University. A fourth co-chair, James Brizendine, recently graduated from Missouri University of Science and Technology with a degree in environmental engineering.

Ian Jefferies, the top Washington lobbyist for the Association of American Railroads, will be AAR’s next president and CEO starting Jan. 1. Until then, Jefferies, now the group’s senior vice president of government affairs, will be coordinating with the current CEO, Edward Hamberger, to ensure a smooth transition. Before joining the AAR in 2013, Jefferies worked for more than a  decade in government, including as a senior policy advisor to the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

CORRECTION: In the Sept. 12 newsletter, we incorrectly reported that the Grocery Manufacturers Association had hired Mari Stull as its director of international regulatory policy. The item was written based on a dated news release. Stull worked at GMA in the early 2000s.

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