A Farm Bill is now eligible for debate in the U.S. Senate, but Iowa’s U.S. Senators objected when two of their own proposals were blocked from consideration yesterday before the Senate Ag Committee voted to advance the bill.
Republican Senator Joni Ernst quarreled with the Republican who chairs the committee for several minutes. The Ag Committee’s chairman said yesterday’s meeting was to vote on the Senate’s Farm Bill in its current form and not re-open debate over additions to it.
Ernst wanted to add language to address the California law that says pork sold in that state must come from pigs raised in certain conditions. Ernst said her proposal would not override California’s law, but would prevent other states from enacting mandates that set production standards for all U.S. farmers. “For years I’ve worked to find a reasonable solution for America’s livestock producers,” Ernst said. “…This is a serious attempt to find common ground and give our producers certainty going forward.”
Ernst called her proposal a “balanced, middle ground approach, but most importantly it prevents future mandates from creating an unaffordable patchwork of 50 different standards for farmers across this country.”
Senator Chuck Grassley said he was hoping the committee would vote on Ernst’s proposal. “We’re the number one pork producing state of the nation,” Grassley said. “…it’s just stupid that we don’t have a chance to bring Iowa’s interests to this debate.”
Grassley also wanted to add language to the Farm Bill to ensure large corporations pay all they owe to the poultry producers they’ve hired to raise birds. “I just want to express my irritation about the whole thing, and just hope that somewheres along the line, at least the Secretary of Agriculture will wake up and draw back her delays of these rules,” Grassley said. U.S. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins has said the USDA needs more time to review the rules which were drafted during the Biden Administration.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the Ag Committee but didn’t wade into the disagreements among his fellow Republicans. Thune, who’s from South Dakota, criticized Democrats on the panel for voting against the bill because of changes in federal food assistance funding. “I appreciate the opportunity to actually get this bill out of the committee. This is an important step forward,” Thune said. “…Our farmers need certainty and one of things that’s included in here is E15 which is something I think a lot of us have fought hard for and which is really important to a lot of producers across this country and I would argue to help lower gas prices.”
The Farm Bill that passed the House this spring did not get rid of the EPA’s smog-related regulations that prevent the sale of E15 during the summer months, but the House passed a stand-alone bill to allow E15 to be sold all year long. The Biden and Trump Administrations have been waiving the summer-time ban on E15 sales.