Federal News
2020 census to add question on citizenship status
NBC News | Posted on March 28, 2018State attorneys general warned such a question could lower immigrants' voting and cause a population undercount.
FDA Investigates Pattern of Contamination in Certain Raw Pet Foods
FDA | Posted on March 28, 2018The FDA has detected Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O128 and Salmonella in samples of raw pet foods manufactured by Arrow Reliance Inc. The samples were collected by the FDA to determine whether the firm had addressed an ongoing pattern of pathogenic contamination in Darwin’s and ZooLogics raw pet foods.The firm has recalled the affected products.
China urges WTO members: Put U.S. tariff 'beast back in the cage'
Reuters | Posted on March 28, 2018China called on World Trade Organization members to unite to prevent the United States “wrecking” the WTO, and it urged them to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs targeting China’s alleged theft of intellectual property.
How the Omnibus Spending Bill Impacts Agriculture
Texas Agriculture Law Blog | Posted on March 28, 2018When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill back in December, there were provisions giving additional advantages in form of deductions to producers who sold grain to cooperatives that did not exist for farmers selling to independent buyers. When this was discovered, numerous Congressmen said this was an inadvertent error that would be remedied. The spending bill corrected this “grain glitch” in Division T, Section 101, which essentially does away with the deduction advantaged given to coops under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Congress passed the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method (“FARM”) Act. This provision states that the reporting requirements of CERCLA do not apply to the application, handling, or storage of a FIFRA registered pesticide by an agricultural producer or to air emissions from animal waste at a farm. The spending bill includes language in Division L, Section 132 prohibiting funding being used by DOT for enforcing the FMCSA regulations related to electronic logging devices for livestock and insect haulers through September 30, 2018. The House included an instruction in their Report to the FDA to develop a standard of identity for dairy products and to issue guidance to the industry on how to implement this standard. The bill includes language that exempts farmers and ranchers from the System for Award Management “SAM” and Data Universal Numbering System “DUNS” reporting requirements when enrolling in conservation programs with USDA.
Participating insurance companies annual rate of return on crop insurance
Daily Yonder | Posted on March 28, 2018A Minnesota farm group says that the federal crop insurance, the nation’s largest “safety net” program for farmers, is a profit bonanza for private insurance companies. Farmers, taxpayers and rural environmental quality are paying the price. “I appreciate crop insurance. It does make a risky business less risky,” said Randy Krzmarzick, a crop farmer from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. “But crop insurance is not subject to any limits. The largest recipients have received over a million dollars in subsidies. This comes at a time when a lot of good programs are being slashed in Washington.” Their research, based on public data from the Government Accounting Office, documents that crop insurance company profits have risen to a 35 percent return-on-investment in the past few years. “Comparing those profits with the returns for farmers, which has been negative for a number of years now, that’s a big concern,” said Tom Nussmeier, a farmer from La Sueur, Minnesota.
Budgetary Restraints Force CDC to Downsize International Programs
Egg-News | Posted on March 26, 2018The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forced to reduce international epidemic detection and prevention programs. For many decades, the CDC has maintained a presence in as many as 49 nations to work with local health officials and to monitor outbreaks of disease. According to Dr. Rebecca Martin, Director of the CDC Center for Global Health, the agency will have to scale back the Global Health Security portfolio to focus efforts based on existing resources. Addressing her colleagues in an internal CDC E-mail, Dr. Martin noted “Faced with this anticipated fiscal reality, we have to make some very difficult decisions.” The wind-down will commence in October 2019 unless additional funding is provided. The CDC was a recipient of a five-year supplemental grant following the Ebola outbreak in 2014.Short changing the CDC is unjustified. It is far better to recognize and address a serious epidemic in the nation of origin and interdict spread before it extends to the Homeland. Stationing and rotating CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers and research workers in countries with the likelihood of emerging serious diseases with epidemic or even pandemic potential provides experience which may be required to control naturally-occurring diseases or bioterrorism in the U.S.
Congressional Spending Bill Allocates $600 Million in New Rural Broadband Funding
telecompetitor | Posted on March 26, 2018New rural broadband funding is included in the $1.3 trillion congressional omnibus bill to fund the government this year. The bill calls for an additional $600 million to be distributed through the Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The funding authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to create a pilot program within RUS that distributes the new funding in the form of grants and loans. There are details to be worked out, but the authorization calls for “expedited” delivery of the program.A few conditions were mandated by the funding bill. They include:Ninety percent of the households served by any project funded through this program must be unserved or underserved and can’t currently have 10/1 Mbps broadband access. Any entity receiving funds from the program is prohibited from overbuilding an existing RUS borrower. No more than 4% of funds received through the program can be used towards administrative costs
New tariff sparks ag steel price increases
Capital Press | Posted on March 26, 2018Agricultural steel users are already seeing higher prices due to President Donald Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariff on imports. Mark De Kleine, an agricultural engineering consultant in Prosser, Wash., said he found big price jumps in just a few days when sourcing trellis wire for orchards.“A 25 percent increase in steel — that’s going to be passed down to the consumer and be difficult for the ag industry. There’s a lot of steel in one acre of trellis,” De Kleine said.
Spending bill rejects Trump’s proposed EPA cut
The Hill | Posted on March 26, 2018The $1.3 trillion government-wide spending bill released late Wednesday rejects President Trump’s proposal to slash the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget by 31 percent. Senior lawmakers negotiating the omnibus appropriations bill instead chose to give the agency $8.1 billion for fiscal 2018, keeping it at the same funding level as 2017.
Global trade can make or break American farmers
The Hill | Posted on March 23, 2018The new tariffs are in direct response to China’s overproduction of steel and aluminum, keeping costs artificially low so that other countries can’t compete — a practice widely known as “dumping.” While the administration has called this act out as cheating, it fails to acknowledge that U.S. agricultural policy has done the same for decades, with an even more critical resource: food. Agricultural dumping — the practice of exporting commodities at prices below the cost of production — can be devastating for farmers in importing countries, while creating unfair competition for producers in exporting countries. The irony in the administration imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum is that one of the U.S.’s main complaints about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) involves Canada’s protection of its dairy industry. Canada’s production quotas prevent farmers from under- or over-producing milk and limit the amount of dairy that can be imported without tariffs. The policy takes farmers’ cost of production into consideration and pays them a fair price, stabilizing prices and supply. This guarantees a fair price to consumers while ensuring a fresh, local milk supply from family farms and does not involve any taxpayer-funded subsidies.Meanwhile, U.S. farmers are now in their fourth year of receiving milk prices below their cost of production. Farmers have had to pour out millions of gallons of milk, literally watching their incomes run down the drain.Farm and trade policies encourage U.S. dairy farmers to produce as much as possible, leading to boom-and-bust cycles that drive small farms out of business and compel mid- and large-sized farms to keep getting bigger.