The Hagstrom Report

Wednesday, September 18, 2019 | Volume 9 Number 183

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said today that the only reason House members would have to vote against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade would be to punish the Trump administration.

“The only reason to vote against it is not to give the administration a win,” Perdue told the United Fresh Produce Association.

Perdue acknowledged, however, that fruit and vegetable producers in the Southeast, including his native Georgia and Florida, are not happy with the agreement because it does not address surges in tomatoes and other produce from Mexico.

Perdue said he understands “the frustration” in the Southeast that “seasonality” was not addressed, but said the agreement does not go backward and helps other sectors of agriculture.

Perdue also said he believes that “the ball is in the speaker’s court,” a reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., since Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has sent her his proposed solutions to Democrats’ objections to the agreement.

Pelosi, he said, “is well intentioned” and working well with Lighthizer.

United Fresh, an organization representing the produce industry nationwide, has endorsed USMCA despite objections from growers in the Southeast.

Five House Democrats who have signed on to support the controversial Green New Deal sponsored by Rep. Alexandra Octavio-Cortez, D-N.Y., today joined a Capitol Hill news conference organized by Regeneration International and the Sunrise Movement.

Democratic Reps. Chellie Pingree of Maine, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts all appeared at a news conference that seemed intended to counter the bad publicity that the Green New Deal Resolution got among farmers and rural Americans when it was introduced and a draft referred to the elimination of “farting cows” that release methane.

Pingree, a member of the House Agriculture Committee and the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee who arranged the news conference, noted, as she has in the past, that while she endorsed the Green New Deal it is “only a framework.” Pingree said she does not expect House Agriculture to hold a formal hearing on the Green New Deal, but said the committee and its subcommittees are dealing with Green New Deal issues in a series of hearings.

People focus on “Meatless Monday” proposals, Pingree said, but it would be “a better approach” to focus on issues such as soil health, food waste and pressures to push farm land out of production.

People talk about not eating meat, Pingree noted, but she said the plant-based foods that are produced from soybeans should be subject to the “same analysis” as meat.

McGovern noted that he has 1,800 farmers in his district and said that in discussions of climate change “the people who should be at the table are the people who produce our food. What makes the Green New Deal important is vision.”

Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., noted that her heritage is both Native American Pueblo and Norwegian, and that she has co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act, which has also been introduced in the Senate. There needs to be more of a focus on water issues, Haaland said.

While most of the House members at the news conference took a practical approach, the organizers spoke more broadly, noting that the Green New Deal Resolution, introduced on February 7, “calls for a 10-year national mobilization to enact massive policy reforms to address, among other issues, global warming, income inequality, corporate monopolies and lack of access to clean air, water and healthy food for millions of Americans.”

The coalition anchored by Regeneration International and the Sunrise Movement claims to represent 10,000 farmers. According to a policy document released today, the group supports policy tools “similar to those under FDR’s New Deal – which are intended to keep surpluses low and prices high by paying farmers to cut back production of some crops, especially soil-degrading, fossil fuel-intensive crops, and/or buying and storing excess production for future sale when adverse weather or other conditions result in food/crop shortages.”

The document offered as “policy examples” parity pricing and floor prices and government-funded supply management programs similar to those that Congress ended decades ago.

Craig Hickman, an African-American farmer from Maine, said he believes that some of the opposition to the Green New Deal comes from “who” has proposed it.

But Will Harris, a farmer from Bluffton, Ga., who co-chairs the coalition, said he is too old, white, male, rural and Southern to be associated with “AOC,” as Octavio-Cortez is known, but endorses the Green New Deal goals.

President Donald Trump’s anti-urban rhetoric plays well with his rural supporters, but is not based on reality, the Los Angeles Times said as Trump visits the state.

Agriculture Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey will be the witness at a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on implementation of farm and disaster aid Thursday.

The hearing will be conducted jointly by the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Subcommittee and the Livestock and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee at 10 a.m. in Room 1300 of the Longworth House Office Building.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on perspectives of the livestock and poultry sectors.

The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. in Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The following witnesses are scheduled to testify:

Agriculture Department Rural Housing Service Administrator Bruce Lammers today announced that USDA is making almost $12 million in grants and loans in 41 community facilities projects that will benefit 214,000 Americans in 17 states.

USDA is making the investments and has additional funding available through the Community Facilities Direct Loan Program.

The 41 projects that USDA announced today are in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry today released a first-ever joint set of guidelines that children through age 5 should avoid sugary beverages, including chocolate milk and nondairy milk.

The United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington meeting is always an opportunity to see some of the latest dishes and combinations involving fruits and vegetables. Some of this week’s choices at the Grand Hyatt Hotel:

Photos by Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report