Policy Updates and Issue News December 2024

Ag groups stall year-end funding package

Negotiations on an end of year Continuing Resolution spending package to avoid a government shutdown December 20 were set to be announced last weekend.  The deal included a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill. Ag groups and members of Congress were confident the massive funding package would include economic and disaster aid for farmers and climate funding for farm conservation programs. But it didn’t. Several bipartisan members threatened to vote against the entire package if commodity price adjustments and disaster relief was not included in the deal. By Tuesday night, Senate and House leaders had hammered out a compromise package that brought agriculture interests on board. The new agreement extended the 2018 farm bill, allocated $21 billion for disaster relief for farmers, set aside $10 billion in market relief for row crop farmers, and allows E15 ethanol to be used year around. Then Wednesday evening, Elon Musk, President-elect Trump’s nominee to co-lead his new Department of Government Efficiency, came out against the latest package. Musk indicated he wanted Congress to replace the legislation with a relatively “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government into 2025.  Unclear Wednesday evening was what such a stripped-down bill might include.

Meet your new Secretary of Agriculture

Brooke Rollins is President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture. Rollins is a native of Glen Rose, Texas, a small town southwest of Fort Worth, has a degree in agricultural development from Texas A&M University, a law degree from the University of Texas, was active in FFA and 4-H, and grew up raising horses and showing goats. She was the first female student body president at A&M. Her career includes stints as President of America First Policy Institute and running the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Most farmers got nothing from record conservation funding

About two-thirds of applicants for USDA’s climate programs were rejected despite record investment from the Inflation Investment Act as demand continues to outstrip available resources. USDA supported more than 23,000 climate-focused contracts that covered more than 11 million acres with $3 billion in fiscal 2024. Despite record investment, strong demand for conservation programs meant a majority of farmers who applied received no funding.

Employer insurance should cover obesity care

The National Grange joined the Alliance for Women’s Health and Prevention and numerous patient groups to ask employers for their support in ensuring that obesity is covered by their health plans just like other chronic diseases. Comprehensive obesity coverage should include the full range of evidence -based obesity options including medical nutrition, therapy, intensive behavioral therapy, surgery and medications. Obesity is associated with health complications such as heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, fertility issues and more.

Immigration overhaul could threaten agricultural economies

Immigrants make up about two-thirds of the nation’s farmworkers and two in five of those are not legally authorized to work in the United States, according to the Department of Labor. Industries such as meat processing, dairy farms, poultry growers and livestock farms also rely heavily on immigrants. Agriculture strongly supports agriculture labor reform that provides permanent legal status to current workers and their families and gives farmers and ranchers access to a workable guestworker program. Until then however, agriculture has adopted a wait-and-see stance on President-elect Trump’s vow to invoke mass deportations.

H-2A wage rates increasing

The minimum wage rate farmers are required to pay H-2A workers is rising an average of 4.47% nationally to $17.74 per hour for 2025. The new adverse effect wage rates for temporary employment of foreign workers in agriculture vary from a low of $14.83 an hour in Arkansas to a high of $20.08 per hour in Hawaii. The adverse effect wage rate is supposed to prevent employment of H-2A from depressing wage rates for domestic labor.

DOGE spending cuts could endanger broadband funding

The $42 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment” internet for all” (BEAD) program funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law has reached a milestone. Plans from all 56 states and territories have been approved which outline how they will use their grant money to ensure no resident is without high-speed internet. The next step will be for states to request access to their allocated BEAD funding and select the providers who will build and upgrade the high-speed networks of the future. However, the new Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is poised to take a close look at the BEAD program costs, timelines and efficiencies. Some recent criticism of the BEAD program has been the requirement that alternate technologies such as unlicensed fixed wireless access and low-earth satellites would not be eligible for deployment funding. Gladly that requirement is moving toward the Grange’s long-term policy that calls for approval of all technologies that can effectively, efficiently and rapidly reach the last mile of country road. The statute calls for the BEAD program to connect those unserved residents first, those underserved next, then everyone else.

Agriculture anxious about trade wars

Agriculture in general and the Midwest in particular would bear the brunt of new trade conflicts. President-elect Trump has floated an across-the -board tariff that would increase duties on U. S. imports from every trading partner and specific tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico. If this actually occurs, retaliatory tariffs from trade partners could rock the agriculture industries in states heavily dependent on agricultural exports. North Dakota and Illinois are both reliant on export markets for more than 45% of agricultural revenues. So are Louisiana and Hawaii. During the first Trump term, China’s response to tariff escalations was targeted to hit Republican states that that made up Trump’s electoral base.

“When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things – not the great occasions –give off the greatest glow of happiness.”  ~  Bob Hope

Christmas will always be as long as we stand heart to heart and hand in hand.”  ~  Dr. Seuss

“May you never be too old to search the skies on Christmas eve.”  ~  Anonymous