Negotiators seeking to address key ag, nutrition issues in year-end bill

Negotiators seeking to address key ag, nutrition issues in year-end bill

Congressional negotiators are nearing settlement on a large year-end invoice that’s anticipated to incorporate billions in agricultural catastrophe help in addition to a compromise model of the Growing Climate Solutions Act, a measure that’s geared toward accelerating the event of ag carbon markets, in keeping with sources accustomed to the talks. 

The bundle additionally might embrace the SUSTAINS Act, a invoice championed by the highest Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, Pennsylvania Rep. Glenn Thompson, that will permit companies to enhance funding for farm invoice conservation applications and authorize USDA to match the personal contributions, sources mentioned. 

The laws additionally is predicted to incorporate particular help for rice growers, who’ve largely missed out on the will increase in market costs seen by different grain producers. Additionally, lawmakers have been engaged on some baby diet provisions, together with the summer season EBT program that enables low-income youngsters to obtain money help for meals when college is out. 

The negotiations embrace leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees. 

The omnibus invoice, which can even fund the federal government for the 2023 fiscal yr that started Oct. 1, is basically the final automobile for passing vital laws throughout this Congress. The new Congress convenes Jan. 3; Democrats will lose management of the House then. 

The laws isn’t anticipated to incorporate vital ag labor reforms, resulting from GOP resistance to offering a path to authorized standing for home farmworkers. 

Sen. Michel Bennet, D-Colo., had been in negotiations for months with Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho., over modifications to the House-passed Farm Workforce Modernization Act, however the talks fell aside lately, leading Bennet to introduce a bill reflecting what they had agreed to up to that point. 

Bennet acknowledged it could take a “Christmas miracle” to get the measure handed at this level. The invoice would profit farmers by reforming wage charges for H-2A visa holders and permitting year-around employment of some H-2A employees. However, the American Farm Bureau Federation mentioned the wage reforms didn’t go far sufficient, and there continues to be robust GOP opposition to the provisions for home employees who’re within the United States illegally.

The invoice is predicted to incorporate a rise in H-2B visas, however with an exclusion for employees in meat processing. H-2B employees are extensively used within the hospitality business in addition to meals processing. 

The Seasonal Employment Alliance reported it negotiated a take care of varied unions to boost the restrict on H2-B visas from 66,000 to 125,000, however meatpacking occupations have been not noted of the rise “for no acknowledged motive,” Sarah Little, spokesperson for the North American Meat Institute, mentioned in an e-mail to Agri-Pulse.

“We assist elevating the caps for the H2-B program, however a ‘deal’ that excludes the meat and poultry business isn’t a deal for the American client,” mentioned Little. She added many meat and poultry corporations voluntarily use the E-Verify program and have beginning salaries close to or above $20 an hour plus advantages, but entry to labor stays the business’s biggest problem.

“Members of Congress needs to be suspicious of this one-sided proposal that pits one business in opposition to one other. It definitely has no place being buried within the omnibus with out public debate,” Little mentioned.

The catastrophe help provisions within the omnibus are anticipated to incorporate a brand new, multi-billion greenback spherical of funding for USDA’s Emergency Relief Program for 2022 that may very well be as giant because the $10 billion measure Congress handed for losses in 2020 and 2021.  

Lawmakers recently received an appeal for disaster aid from groups representing a wide range of commodities, together with, corn, cotton, soybeans, rice, sorghum, peanuts and wheat.

The Growing Climate Solutions Act passed the Senate easily in the summer of 2021, however bumped into opposition from Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee. Thompson objected to the measure’s certification process for farm technical advisers and carbon credit verifiers

“Growing Climate Solutions is .. prone to be one thing that we’ll be capable to attain an settlement on,” a senior congressional aide mentioned of the omnibus negotiations.  

Pairing Thompson’s SUSTAINS Act with the Growing Climate Solutions Act would increase the ways in which farmers and companies might reward the adoption of conservation practices, in live performance with the Biden administration’s $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative and the farm bill funding increases included in the Inflation Reduction Act

For extra information, go to Agri-Pulse.com.

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