Ag leaders, legislators talk

BOISE — Farm and ranching advocates are pushing for Congress to pass the House version of the 2024 Farm Bill, and to deregulate the industry as much as possible.

The Western Caucus Foundation held a panel of leaders in agriculture and members of Congress on Friday morning at the Simplot campus to discuss challenges faced by farmers and what they thought the federal government should do to help alleviate some of them.

“We have a unique set of issues that affect us as western congresspeople and western states. Trying to talk to our friends back east about this, they just don’t get it, because they’ve never lived it,” U.S. Idaho Sen. Jim Risch said in brief opening remarks before he had to leave for another meeting.

Idaho Congressmen Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher were joined on the panel by California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, Minnesota Republican Rep. Michelle Fischbach, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, President and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation Gregg Doud, CEO of the National Potato Council Kam Quarles, and Policy Division Chairperson of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and southern Idaho rancher Kim Brackett.

The industry leaders bemoaned the burden of government regulations and called for the passage of the House Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024. The $1.4 trillion bill funds Department of Agriculture programs through 2029, including farm programs and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The bill passed the House Committee on Agriculture 33-21 in May and has yet to have a vote in the full House.

Congress failed to pass a new five-year farm bill in 2023, so food aid programs such as SNAP and farm-assistance programs are operating on a one-year extension passed last September.

The bill would expand farm commodity supports, diminish SNAP funding, and reallocate almost $20 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which were intended to fund climate-friendly farm practices but would be redirected to conservation programs without climate requirements, Reuters reported.

Quarles of the Potato Council said he chaired the Speciality Crop Farm Bill Alliance, which provided recommendations to lawmakers, and the House Farm Bill contained a “substantial number of those recommendations.”

“We recognize that there are political and mathematical challenges in terms of getting that to the finish line, but that is a good bill for the specialty crop industry,” Quarles said.

The House version of the bill would need to be reconciled with a Senate bill, led by Democrats. The House version garnered very little support from Democrats, with just four voting in favor in committee, and several Senate leaders have said they oppose the cuts to food aid and the reallocation of the climate funds. These factors make its passage unlikely.

Fulcher said he suspected that the House farm bill had not received a full vote yet because the majority of its funding went to food assistance programs.

“One could argue it’s not a farm bill anymore, and there’s a lot of members that struggle with that,” Fulcher said.

The panelists Friday also spoke about their desire for fewer regulations for agriculture and solutions to a significant workforce shortage, which would include immigration and visa reforms.

Duvall, who lives in Georgia, said that at a recent Farm Bureau meeting with western presidents, he heard an “earful” about the impact of wildfires. He said western farmers want to be able to do more to prevent them.

“They want the authority and the ability to play a major role in land management, because they’re the ones that have lived on the land for generations and they know what it takes to manage this land, and they know the importance of timber harvest,” Duvall said.

Brackett, of the Cattlemen’s Association, said that more than half of cattle in the West spend time grazing on federal lands, which she said underscores the value of those lands for the national beef supply but also the “outsized impact these federal regulations have on food producers here in the West.”

She said requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and Clear Air Act are burdensome to manage for cattle ranchers such as herself and her husband.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” she said.

She and others expressed concern with a proposed rule from the Bureau of Land Management that would allow land to be permitted for environmental protection, along with existing permits for timber harvest and grazing. A main concern is that the conservation permits would displace grazing permits, she said.

There was also talk of a severe agriculture labor shortage, and the need to improve visa and immigration programs. A large percentage of farm workers in America are foreign born — in Idaho, 90% of dairy workers are foreign-born, the Idaho Dairymen’s Association has said.

Simpson and the California representative, LaMalfa, have worked extensively on the Farmworker Modernization Act, which would establish a system for agricultural workers to earn temporary status with an option to eventually become a permanent resident. The bill has passed the House twice but stalled in the Senate. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo is one of the leaders of the bipartisan Senate negotiating team.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has opposed a part of the bill that would allow migrant workers to sue their employers if they believe labor laws have been broken, NPR reported.

Duvall highlighted labor as the “No. 1 issue facing American agriculture.” He argued farmers couldn’t “continue to work under a program that demands salaries running way far ahead of what the average salary running in the general public out there.”

The minimum hourly wage that must be paid to H-2A visa workers differs by state — in Idaho it is $16.54, according to the Department of Labor.

The policy forum continued Friday afternoon with a panel on “improving permitting at the Department of the Interior” and Saturday morning with a planned panel on wildfire impacts across the West.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.