House small business subcommittee hears how cost of regulations is intensifying already dreary situation for nation’s ag industry.

Jacqui Fatka, Policy editor

June 21, 2018

4 Min Read
Farmers testify on impact of overregulation
filmfoto/iStock/Thinkstock

Complying with federal regulations continues to be one of the biggest challenges for America’s small businesses, including small farmers. Many federal agencies have the authority to issue regulations that affect the agriculture industry. As a result, small farmers often struggle to comply with expensive, confusing and time-consuming regulations, which affects their ability to grow.

On Thursday, the House Small Business Committee's subcommittee on agriculture, energy and trade held a hearing to examine how federal regulations affect small farmers and to explore ways to provide regulatory relief to the industry.

America’s farmers and ranchers are facing an economic storm. With farm income levels that have been slashed by half since 2013, a continued slump in crop prices and export markets in serious peril, the hit farmers are taking from costly regulations only intensifies the storm, according to Kansas farmer Glenn Brunkow.

“Right now, every penny counts in agriculture,” Brunkow today the subcommittee on Capitol Hill. “In tough economic times like this, farmers feel the impact of regulations even more because money dedicated to compliance – especially when it is of doubtful value – is money that cannot be reinvested in the farm or put in the bank to cushion against hard times.”

Related:Testimony details how overregulation threatens family farms

Brunkow, a crop and livestock farmer who serves on the Kansas Farm Bureau board of directors, told members of Congress that when it comes to regulations and agriculture, one fact cannot be overlooked: “Farmers and ranchers today are highly regulated and face an increasing array of regulatory demands and requirements that appear to be unprecedented in scope,” he said.

Brunkow told the subcommittee that regulatory agencies often assert undue authority when it comes to enforcement and appeals. One particularly egregious example is so-called “swampbuster” regulations, where USDA agencies sit as both “judge and jury,” he said. Many of the compliance problems farmers face arise when they undertake basic, everyday farming activities, such as removing or cleaning up fence rows, squaring off or modifying a field footprint, improving or repairing drainage, cleaning out drainage ditches or removing trees in or adjacent to farm fields, Brunkow explained.

He said Congress clearly wanted to ensure that prior converted cropland was classified as farmland eligible for farm programs, but farmers repeatedly find themselves fighting the federal government to assert their rights to manage their land in light of an appeals process “that is heavily weighted in favor of the government and against farmers.”

Related:Trump cracks down on overregulation

Brunkow also highlighted flaws in the 2015 waters of the U.S. rule, which, if allowed to go into effect, would pose “tremendous risks and uncertainty for farmers, ranchers and others who depend on their ability to work the land.” He testified that the American Farm Bureau Federation is advocating for repeal of the 2015 rule in favor of a commonsense approach that ensures “clean water and provides clear, understandable rules.”

In his testimony, Brunkow also highlighted the reforms needed regarding the Endangered Species Act, duplicative regulatory burdens, labor regulations, the need for cost/benefit analysis and transparency in the regulatory process itself.

National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) past president John Weber, a pork producer from Dysart, Iowa, also testified, noting, “Regulations add to the cost of doing business.”

The U.S. pork industry has had to contend with several ill-conceived, burdensome and potentially costly regulations over the past 10 years, including ones related to buying and selling livestock, labeling meat, trucking, air emissions, clean water, antibiotic use and organic livestock production.

“Many of the rules we’ve seen coming out of Washington have had harmful unintended consequences, including stifling innovation and impeding the inherent motivation of farmers and small business people to get better and more efficient at what they do,” Weber said.

The Trump Administration and Congress have done a good job of beginning to reel in the red tape from Washington, D.C. NPPC’s written testimony mentions, as examples, the White House rescinding several burdensome rules and directing agencies to eliminate two existing regulations for each new one proposed, but “more needs to be done,” Weber told the small business panel.

NPPC is urging Congress to take steps to ease the federal regulatory burden, including updating the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs the rule-making process; increasing public participation in developing regulations, and requiring congressional approval for all major regulations – those with an economic impact of $100 million or more.

“Certainly, there must be rules, but eliminating expensive, confusing and time-consuming regulations and making sure the ones that are necessary aren’t too burdensome will go a long way to ensuring that farmers like me can continue to produce the safest, most abundant food supply in the world,” Weber said.

Craig Martins, testifying on behalf of the National Council of Farmer Cooperative and GROWMARK, said they support regulatory reform and want to work with Congress to find solutions. Some of those reforms are included in the farm bill, such as streamlining the regulatory procedures from the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act to create an efficient and effective process that ensures protection of species as well as American agriculture, public health and safety and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit reform to remove duplicative and unnecessary procedures for pesticides that have already been approved.

About the Author(s)

Jacqui Fatka

Policy editor, Farm Futures

Jacqui Fatka grew up on a diversified livestock and grain farm in southwest Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications, with a minor in agriculture education, in 2003. She’s been writing for agricultural audiences ever since. In college, she interned with Wallaces Farmer and cultivated her love of ag policy during an internship with the Iowa Pork Producers Association, working in Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Capitol Hill press office. In 2003, she started full time for Farm Progress companies’ state and regional publications as the e-content editor, and became Farm Futures’ policy editor in 2004. A few years later, she began covering grain and biofuels markets for the weekly newspaper Feedstuffs. As the current policy editor for Farm Progress, she covers the ongoing developments in ag policy, trade, regulations and court rulings. Fatka also serves as the interim executive secretary-treasurer for the North American Agricultural Journalists. She lives on a small acreage in central Ohio with her husband and three children.

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