Calling for Farm BIll Passage & Assessing the RFS
Calling for Farm BIll Passage & Assessing the RFS plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.
On Friday, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell joined other Washington agriculture leaders in a call for bipartisan action on the Farm Bill. Cantwell detailed the potential impact the Farm Bill’s expiration could have on Southwest Washington farmers and the state’s agriculture exports. The Farm Bill research and export-promotion programs help support Southwest Washington’s $53 million agriculture industry by increasing crop yields and export sales. The Farm Bill’s current extension expires on September 30. If Congress fails to act, farmers will lose critical tools that increase exports to overseas markets.
On one of her first official trips, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Administrator Gina McCarthy discussed the success of working to meet the renewable fuels standards.
MCCARTHY: We are at a pretty exciting time. We are seeing a lot of activity especially here in Iowa where they have advance ethanol plants where we are working closely with the farming community and we’re looking for new feedstocks all the time; new ways of producing biofuels. We see that the renewable fuels standard is operating effectively. That the law gives us plenty of tools and flexibilities that we can move this forward and we’re excited about the growth in this industry and its ability to provide more environmentally sustainable fuels.
Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.
Anyone who hasn’t heard about the 2008 California legislation supported by the HSUS, which mandates that egg laying hens be housed in larger cages than is required by federal law, must have been living in a protective bubble or “shell” as it were. In addition, California also passed legislation that extended the same standards to all eggs sold in the state, thus dictating how egg farmers in other states house their hens. This has subsequently caused all kinds of grief to egg farmers around the country prompting Iowa Representative Steve King to include an amendment as part of the newest House version of the Farm Bill that would prevent state laws such as California’s Proposition 2 from regulating the conduct of farmers in other states, laws that he refers to as “trade protectionism”. This of course has the HSUS and all their cohorts in an uproar, calling King’s amendment “one of the most serious threats to animal protection laws ever”. Interestingly, King’s language isn’t saying that states can’t pass their own animal protection laws. He’s just saying a state can’t use their laws to keep other states’ products off their grocery store shelves.
Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
