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Benefits of Belonging to CGFA
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- State & Federal Legislative Advocacy
- Industry & Small Business Issues
- Business Advocacy
- Weekly Updates on Current Issues
- Networking Opportunities
- Industry Specific Directories
- Advertising Venues
- Social Media Sites
- Cost Saving Insurance Programs
- Environmental and Safety Resource
- Continuing Education and Training
- Political Action Committee Administration
- Annual Convention
- Education Programs
- District Meetings
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CARB Releases Proposed Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy
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California Air Resources Board (CARB) just announced a plan and workshop on short lived climate pollutants. The impact on ag and processing is very real and significant. Methane emissions restrictions would impact dairies and livestock as they account for approximately 50% of current methane emissions. Fluroinated gasses a by-product of commercial refrigeration, which ag relies heavily on. Diesel emissionsare a major source of black carbon.
The Proposed Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy was released on April 11 and is available here. There is a workshop webcast on the proposed strategy on April 26th
from 10 AM - 2 PM that will be available here.
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Registration Open for CANC on May 4-5
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The 2016 California Animal Nutrition Conference (CANC) will take place on May 4-5 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Fresno Convention Center in Fresno, CA..
You can register to attend online or download a registration form here.
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The
at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego is right around the corner! Don't miss the great line up of speakers and entertainers.
Thursday Business Session
- Three Fundamental Shifts Impacting U.S Agriculture for Years to Come by: Richard Brock, Brock Associates
- Dairy Economics/Outlook by: Annie AcMoody, Western United Dairymen
- CGFA Annual Meeting/Reports by: President, John Kauffmann, J.D. Heiskell & Co. and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Zanobini and Legislative Advocate, Dennis Albiani
- Agriculture, Human Health, and the Environment by: Dr. Patrick Moore
Spouse Program: Brunch & Canvas Painting Adventure!
Group Luncheon & Keynote Address
Performance by Artist David Garibaldi
"Paint, Passion & Purpose" ( see video link click here)
There are still a few spot open for the Wed JDH Golf as well as some of the Friday group activities. Join your industry friends.
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| | Grand Manchester Hyatt San Diego |
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| USS MidWay Museum for Friday Night Dinner
Watch the Luncheon Performer Preview....
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California Legislative Report
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By Dennis Albiani, Legislative Advocate
Ag Overtime Bill Moves through Labor Committee
Legislation that would require overtime for ag field employees after 8 hours in a day and 5 days in a work week passed the Assembly Labor Committee on a partisan vote. AB 2757 (Gonzalez) would phase in the requirement for agricultural field employees subject to Wage Order 14 to be paid overtime. The phase in schedule is as follows:
Commencing July 1, 2017, time and a half pay required after 9.5 hours in a day and/or 55 hours in any one work week.
Commencing January 1, 2018, time and one half required after 9 hours in a day and or 50 hours in any one workweek.
Commencing January 1, 2019, time and one half pay is required for work in excess of 8.5 and/or 45 hours any one workweek.
Commencing January 1, 2020, time and one half pay required after 8 hours in a day and/or 40 hours in a work week. Double time will be required after 12 hours in a day.
The bill heads to Assembly Appropriations Committee, Chaired by the author Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez next week and to the Assembly floor in the near future. The agricultural coalition is actively lobbying key Assembly Members encouraging their opposition to the legislation. The main talking points are:
- This exemption was created for field workers because of the cyclical nature of agriculture, planting pruning and harvesting offer opportunities for additional work, while often winter months require less labor hours, the current exemption offers an opportunity for employees to receive additional hours and for perishable crops to be harvested and planting timelines to be met.
- With the recently enacted increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour indexed to the consumer price index, this will be a devastating increase in the cost of labor for ag employers.
- This will drive more mechanizations, reducing job opportunities and hurting the very employees this bill is attempting to help.
Please call your local legislator and encourage them to oppose AB 2757 (Gonzalez).
Groundwater Legislation Usurping Local Control Moves Forward
A bill that would require a conditional use permit from the county for any new well drilled in a groundwater basin designated by the Department of Water Resources as probationary or a basin designated by DWR as subject to critical conditions of overdraft, passed a Senate committee this week. The bill includes a few exceptions including a de minimus extractor which is a residential well under 2 acre feet a year and counties that already have an equivalent ordinance in place. The legislation SB 1317 (Wolk) was heard in Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee where it met with some skepticism from Senators, however, they passed it anyway. Concerns included that it would circumvent the historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) that was a comprehensive approach to groundwater management in California. It also prescribes how local entities must address extraction and overriding the local authority. SGMA specifically left how to manage the basin and whether they use extraction permitting, groundwater recharge or any number of management tools up to the local jurisdiction.
The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee which handles local government issues next week. In this committee the concerns about usurping local control will be more aggressively discussed. The association is working with a coalition opposing the legislation.
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On-Farm Antibiotics Foes Target Food Retailers; Senators Target FDA over Alleged Farmer Misuse
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A group of "ethical" investment portfolio managers has targeted major fast food, bar and restaurant chains to convince them to put pressure on FDA to decrease the amount of antibiotics used on farms to prevent and treat disease.
In a related development, six Democrat Senators, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), wrote to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf this week, urging him to more tightly restrict antibiotics use on farms because they don't trust farmers to cut back on their own.
The investors sent letters to companies like McDonald's, according to The Guardian newspaper, which said the letter was prompted by a separate media report that a strain of campylobacter, a human food safety risk, is resistant to antibiotic treatment. A spokesman for McDonald's told meatingplace.com, the company is already working with farmers and ranchers to raise animals with less antibiotic use, and the company has pledged to buy only antibiotic-free chicken.
The Senate letter - also signed Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY), Richard Blumenthal (D, CT), Ed Markey (D, MA) and Corey Booker (D, NJ) - alleges some producers continue to include antibiotics in feed and water to promote growth by calling such use disease prevention, even though feed efficiency/growth promotion label claims are no longer allowed.
"We are highly concerned with FDA's assertion that the agency will rely on stakeholders, including organizations representing veterinarians and animal producers, to promote compliance with these criteria," they wrote, referring to FDA's existing cooperative program with industry. "This is problematic because some of these stakeholder organizations have questioned the link between antibiotic use in agriculture and antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
The lawmakers want FDA to "fill the gaps" in enforcement, and pushed the agency to monitor more closely and set up a schedule for collecting data on how, by whom and why antibiotics are used on farms.
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House Appropriators Cut Ag Spending, Increase Projects in Flat FY2017 Ag/FDA Spending Bill Approval; Energy-Water Package Increases Corps of Engineers Waterways Spending
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The House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on agriculture/FDA this week approved a $21.3-billion FY 2017 spending bill, but that bill, while increasing spending in some areas, proposes spending that's $451 million less for ag programs than last year, and comes in $281 million less than requested in the President's budget.
Meanwhile, separate action advanced the $37.5-billion FY2017 energy-water spending package, that not only rejected President Obama's recommended $1.4-billion cut in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works programs, the House increased spending on those programs by $100 million, in line with separate action by Senate appropriators. The funding increase will go to repair, maintenance and construction along inland waterways. The House bill also contains language to assist California's Central Valley in the wake of its record drought, and language blocking EPA's "waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rulemaking, actions not expected to survive in the Senate.
Rural development and food safety saw increases, with rural development programs of various stripes reaping $2.88 billion, $113 million more than in FY2016. FDA would receive a $33.2 million increase in its food safety budget - mainly aimed at implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) - which outstripped the President's $25.3-million requested increase. The FSMA increase comes as state ag and food officials say they need $100 million to implement the new food safety rules. USDA's food safety effort received a $15.5-million increase. USDA gets $5 million to "educate" farmers and ranchers on their FSMA duties.
The bill's $250 million allocation for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) - effectively no increase over the current fiscal year - drew Democrat members' criticism, with senior members contending that level "critically underfunds the agency." About $80 million less than the President requested, subcommittee Democrats want to see more money spent on Dodd-Frank financial market regulation.
Rep. Nita Lowey (D, NY), ranking subcommittee member, took particular exception to a line item in the bill allocating $3 million to FDA to increase the "understanding and acceptance" of agriculture biotechnology among consumers. The money would be spent so FDA could work with USDA to create and distribute "science-based educational information on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic and humanitarian" benefits of genetically engineered (GE) foods. Lowey said "the verdict is still out on GMOs."
USDA will get $10 million to study the use of antibiotics on farms and ranches, dramatically less than the President's $61-million request. Subcommittee Chair Bob Aderholt (R, AL) said agriculture too often gets blamed for the rise in antibiotic resistance "when we must remember the human use of these drugs and the consequences that result when antibiotics are overprescribed or not taken according to medical advice."
The future of appropriations bills is uncertain as there is no House-Senate budget resolution agreed to. It's expected while the full committees in both the House and Senate will approve the 12 spending bills, they'll be rolled yet again into an omnibus package to be voted on during the post-election lame duck session. Failing that, Congress could simply pass a continuing resolution to fund programs at FY2016 levels until a new Congress and new President take office in 2017.
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Senate Ag Panel Approves CFTC Reauthorization on Split Vote; Stabenow Says Bill Won't Pass Senate
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The long-awaited Senate version of Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reauthorization legislation - the Commodity End-User Relief Act - was approved this week by the full Agriculture Committee on an 11-9 party line vote, exposing some deep divisions between the GOP and Democrats on CFTC funding and Dodd-Frank rulemakings. The House last year approved its version of the commission reauthorization - in limbo since 2013 - and this week's action is the first CFTC reauthorization for the Senate Agriculture Committee in 10 years.
Ag panel chair Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS) acknowledged the bill as approved by committee will have a tough time on the Senate floor, but said his package addresses most concerns of market end-users, particularly farmers and ranchers, as well as cooperatives and agribusiness, who rely on derivatives and futures contracts to manage risk. Roberts said the protections are necessary because these end-users "are not speculators or risk-takers, yet they withstand the worst consequences stemming from the implementation of recent (Dodd-Frank) regulations."
Roberts told the committee in his opening statement the approval of Dodd-Frank in 2008 was a "sweeping regulatory change," and "many of us here raised a concern...that the legislation being considered would negatively impact those who had nothing to do with the causes of the 2008 crisis." He said farmers, ranchers and county grain elevators "felt the heavy hand of overregulation come down" when the commission began right Dodd-Frank implementation rules.
House Agriculture Committee Chair Mike Conaway (R, TX) applauded the Senate committee's action, noting reauthorizing the CFTC is the only unfinished agency oversight under his committee's jurisdiction.
The National Grain & Feed Assn. (NGFA) praised the committee's action. "The NGFA commends Chairman Roberts for his leadership in crafting a bill that provides vital customer protections and prevents undue regulatory burdens in commodity markets," said Todd Kemp, senior vice president for marketing. "It accomplishes several important clarifications and tweaks that will help ensure farmers, ranchers and agribusiness hedgers maintain access to risk management tools they need."
NGFA coordinated a letter from 23 national agriculture organizations and companies, including the American Feed Industry Assn. (AFIA), supporting the Roberts' bill because, among other things, it codifies customer protections to protect against another MF Global bankruptcy; provides a permanent solution to the "residual interest" problem to force pre-margining of hedge accounts; confirms the intent of Dodd-Frank that anticipatory hedging is a bona fide hedging action, and requires the CFTC to study and write a rule before changing the de minimis threshold for swap dealer registration to avoid liquidity and market access problems for end users.
The issue of CFTC funding and Dodd-Frank has dogged the reauthorization and appropriations process for the last several years. Just this week, the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on agriculture/FDA, approved its FY2017 spending bill and again held the CFTC to its previous year's spending limit.
Committee ranking member Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) said after the markup the bill passed by committee will not pass on the Senate floor. She said committee Democrats were unhappy with the bill because it does not provide enough money for the CFTC to regulate futures markets - "the folks on the other side don't support financial services reform" - and said the commission is already working on rules to protect end-users. She proposed an amendment in committee to charge market participant user fees, just as FDA and the SEC charge to raise additional money to fund their efforts. Sen. John Boozman (R, AR) was successful in killing Stabenow's move, saying the CFTC needs to stay under appropriations committee control. Stabenow argued appropriators won't increase the CFTC budget to do its job.
She accused "Wall Street" and large banks of using farm/ranch/end-user concerns to dodge regulation. "I am not going to let them hide behind end-users. This is about whether a $300-trillion swaps market should be regulated to address systemic risk," she said. Roberts said, "This bill was not written by Wall Street."
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D, OH), also a committee member who voted against the Roberts bill, offered and withdrew an amendment during markup to kill Roberts's language that maintains the $8-billion threshold definition of a swaps dealer until the commission studies what a new threshold might be, arguing Dodd-Frank requires that threshold to drop to $3 billion. He alleged the bill language "was clearly written by Wall Street," saying "average businesses" dealing with swaps wouldn't be affected by the new, lower regulatory threshold. "Who is (affected)? Big oil and Koch Industries," Brown said, "My amendment would close the Koch brothers' loophole."
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Senate GM Labeling Battle to Go or Die
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Agriculture and food industry efforts to get a Senate bill preempting state genetically engineered (GE) food labels while devising a system through which consumers can seek information on the use of GE ingredients now hinge on whether Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Pat Roberts (R, KS) and his ranking member, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) can come to a meeting of the minds over on-label disclosure of consumer information.
The first priority is to preempt state labeling laws, industry says. Timing is key because Vermont's GE labeling law kicks in on July 1. So far, four major food companies have announced they will label all of their products so they're legal in Vermont. However, none of those labels is identical. At the same time, one food company's Vermont-compliant label was rejected by California regulators because it said "partially produced with genetic engineering." California's existing food labeling law, as well as pending bills in New York and Pennsylvania, don't allow for "partially produced" labeling.
Roberts' has pushed his bill that would preempt the states, while creating at USDA a voluntary program under which companies would provide on-label methods for consumers to find out about ingredients, e.g. QR codes, 1-800 numbers, etc. If after a couple of years, at least a certain percent of food labels did not carry those legends, then then the program would become mandatory. Stabenow wants the program mandatory from the onset, with a limited number of means by which a consumer would search for information.
Stabenow was instrumental in killing Roberts's effort when it hit the floor for a final vote last month, but has continued to negotiate with him, this week providing specific language which modifies her original position. Roberts has remained open to her suggestions and requirements. If no agreement is reached, however, the likelihood of the Senate taking the issue up again is slim.
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Food Security Act Passes House
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As part of President Obama's "Feed the Future" initiative, the House this week approved 370-33 the Global Food Security Act, a bill that provides about $1 billion to confront global hunger issues, create food production independence and help farmers in developing countries, with assurances to U.S. lawmakers the new program would not impact existing federal food aid programs.
House Agriculture Committee Chair Mike Conaway (R, TX) said in his floor statement of support: "I rise in support of the Global Food Security Act...with the world population rapidly increasing - particularly in some of the most impoverished and food insecure regions - it is of critical importance that the U.S. maintain its position as a world leader in the effort to alleviate global hunger and enhance food security."
Given both the political and humanitarian importance of U.S. food aid, Conaway said his committee worked closely with the Foreign Affairs Committee to make sure the federal government uses USDA expertise, along with that of ag businesses, commodity groups, producers and research institutions and universities to provide aid and assistance. He also insisted the bill improve the monitoring and reporting on the various programs and funding that will go into the "feed the future" program.
He also took on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has pushed to kill off in-kind international food programs and replace them with direct payments to developing nations. Conaway said, "To ensure this legislation does not provide USAID with an unintended opportunity to overhaul time-tested food aid programs, the bill contains carefully crafted language protecting the funds and authorities of those existing programs."
Whether a Senate companion bill will surface is unknown at this point, but the successful House vote may provide incentives to move a bill in the Senate.
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Ag Groups Ask EPA to Postpone Chlorpyrifos Meeting - Citing inadequate notice of the meeting, a coalition of agricultural groups this week formally asked EPA to postpone a scheduled scientific advisory panel (SAP) meeting to review human study data on potential risks from chlorpyrifos, an insecticide, and the core ingredient of Monsanto's RoundUp. The meeting, announced March 8 and scheduled for April 19-21, is designed to look at biomonitoring data related to the chemical based on a Columbia University study of low income New York residents. The ag groups say the session is "hasty and rushed," an attempt by EPA to change its process for evaluating risks that could lead to additional regulations. For its part, EPA said its meeting will go ahead as "an appropriate part of the process" of reviewing the chemical. The letter was signed by the National Corn Growers Assn. (NCGA), the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), CropLife America and 39 other groups.
EPA Says Pesticide Approvals Slow Due to Funding Cut - EPA this week told an industry group that the reason it takes so long to get products approved is because the agency needs more money. The average approval time has increased from 700 days in 2011, to over 900 days in 2015, the agency said at a CropLife America meeting. The agency said the increase correlates to a cut in EPA's budget from $136 million for the pesticide program to $120 million, with a loss of 16% of the pesticide program staff. Over time, Congress has authorized about $128 million - in line with President Obama's request - but appropriators have not gone along with the funding request.
Getting Pesticides to Market Takes Longer, Costs More - In a study released this week by CropLife International, the group says its survey of five major chemical companies shows it takes on average 11 years and $286 million to bring a new pesticide product to market. Between 2005 and 2008, it took an average of 9.8 years and cost $256 million to overcome research/development, testing and costs. CropLife said the biggest factor in the change is the 32% increase in costs associated with approvals in the U.S. and the European Union (EU).
Glyphosate Gets Seven-Year OK by European Parliament - This week the European Parliament recommended the European Commission (EC) renew the approval of glyphosate for seven years and release the data used by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in evaluating the herbicide chemical. The recommendation is non-binding, and comes just ahead of a scheduled vote by the EC's Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food & Feed on whether to accept the EC's proposal to approve the herbicide for 15 years with some conditions. The Parliament's resolution would allow the seven-year approval to be withdrawn "based on new scientific evidence that demonstrate it can no longer satisfies the criteria for its approval."
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