(NewsDakota.com/NDFU) – At the North Dakota Farmers Union annual meeting, Senator John Hoeven outlined his efforts as the lead Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee to:
– Gather feedback from North Dakota farmers and ranchers as work begins on the next farm bill.
– Establish a cattle contract library at the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) to improve transparency and competition in cattle markets.
– Allow the year-round sale of E15.
o Last month, Hoeven helped introduce legislation to allow the year-round sale of ethanol blends higher than 10 percent and make permanent the Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) waiver extension to allow year-round sale of E15.
– Protect private property rights, which includes:
o Sponsoring legislation with Senators Mike Rounds and Kevin Cramer to safeguard farmers, ranchers and landowners from the bureaucracy of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
o Pushing back on the Biden administration’s efforts to revive the Obama-era Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule.
“North Dakota’s farmers and ranchers feed our nation and the world, and producers’ essential contributions to our food security and quality of life can’t be taken for granted,” said Hoeven. “That’s why we’re working to ensure our state’s producers have the opportunity to give direct input on the next farm bill. At the same time, we are advancing important priorities like improving cattle market transparency through the new cattle contract library we secured at AMS, as well as our bill to allow the year-round sale of E15. These efforts are all about creating good farm policy, which benefits every American, every day.”
Earlier this year, Hoeven hosted Senator John Boozman, Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, in North Dakota for a discussion with local producers and commodity groups on the following priorities for the next farm bill:
– Maintaining strong crop insurance, the primary risk management tool for many producers.
– Improving the farm safety net, including the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs.
– Strengthening livestock disaster programs, including the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP), the Livestock Forage Program (LFP) and the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program (ELAP).
– Cutting red-tape and ensuring programs are farmer-friendly.
Following Hoeven’s efforts to fund the initiative and advance its implementation with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and AMS Administrator Bruce Summers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a final rule this week establishing a cattle contract library pilot program, which:
– Requires any meatpacker with more than 5 percent of the annual national cattle supply to report to AMS information on the purchase of fed cattle at the end of each calendar month.
– Collects information on cattle amount, purchase price and contract timeframe, among other information, to be aggregated and released publicly.
– Will not include personally identifiable and confidential business information.
The final rule can be read here and will go into effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. The library will be publicly available early next year.