National Farmers Union Support OFF Act

Check-offs are mandatory Department of Agriculture fees assessed on a per unit basis that fun boards designed to promote a commodity as a whole. A bipartisan bill called the Opportunities for Fairness and Farming or OFF Act has been introduced that would bring more transparency and accountability to the programs, according to proponents, such as the National Farmers Union and NFGovernment Relations team member Layla Soberanis.

“The bill, it prohibits board members or employees of checkoff programs from engaging in any act, that may involve a conflict of interest, meaning, lobbying or any of those sorts of relationships and requires checkups to push their budgets, published their budgets requires contracts to describe the goods and services provided and also requires periodic audits by the General Accountability Office, the GAO office at the USDA inspector general. So there are a lot of reforms in this piece of legislation and, you know, guests. National Farmers Union is supporting this bill.”

Soberanis notes that the farmers union does support checkoff programs.

“We support the original intent of checkups and a lot of our members. You know, checkups do not tend to have a checkoff is a good thing. And so we appreciate all the work that they have done.”

The OFF Act has been introduced into both the US House and the Senate.