FARM FRIENDLY
McCarthy, Valadao among 10 members of Congress at World Ag Expo
TULARE — Still feeling out the swing of his gavel, newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy brought his congressional cohorts here Tuesday for opening day of the 2023 World Ag Expo.
“Instead of asking (farmers) to come to Washington,” McCarthy said. “I want to make sure Washington comes to them. Because they are the farmers; they make America continue to grow and feed the world.”
The expo, an annual affair, sees more than 100,000 attendees from more than 60 countries, including countless advocates from the spheres of food, environment, energy, health and business.
Ten U.S. congressional members — including those on the House Agriculture and Nutrition Committees — flanked McCarthy and toured the grounds. They fawned over tractors and traded testimonies with farmers and advocates interested in the upcoming Agricultural 2023 Farm Bill.
“Nobody that does it better than the American farmer,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Penn., who chairs the House Agriculture Committee. “With the speaker’s support, with the agriculture committee, with the House — we’re going to work on this farm bill.”
Come spring, the Republican majority is expected to present its new farm bill, a dense packet of legislation renewed roughly every five years. Among other things, it authorizes the funding of everything farming, from subsidy programs to grants, insurance, research and more. In short, it shapes American food and agriculture policy.
The stop in Tulare is the first legislators will make in hearing out the farmers of America. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the ag committee is
“kind of behind” and further allusions were made during speeches that final decisions on the bill’s major features remain to be made.
“(The representatives) are here at this farm show, not to tell people what will be in the bill, but to listen to what needs to be in the bill,” McCarthy said. “Instead of sitting back in Washington and having somebody tell them, they’re here, on the forefront to actually see it firsthand. That means a better policy
will come to fruition.”
The current farm bill, signed in 2018, expires in September. And with a fight over the debt ceiling looming, lawmakers are looking to write a bill that effectively reflects current needs. Representatives present urged people to share their ideas on how to improve upon the last one.
“Farmers come here to learn about the newest technologies and the newest things affecting their industry,” said Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford. “So it makes sense for Congress to come here to learn from farmers as well.”
Lawmakers said their top priorities in the new farm bill are water access, fair trade and the rising costs of farming.
“Eggs used to be a cheap protein,” McCarthy said. “Now it’s become almost a delicacy.”
Also discussed was the issue of water, an ever-pressing topic in California.
LaMalfa said the issue of water is about “taking advantage of what we have,” in reference to continued snowpack that flows through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the Pacific Ocean. Current environmental rules require stormwater flow into the ocean to protect imperiled fish and current habitats.
“We have an amazing resource in this state with the water supply even in drought years,” LaMalfa said. “And yet we’re watching it all be flushed out to the ocean, 95 percent — hundreds of thousands of acre feet.”
A common sore point among Central Valley lawmakers is the vast amount of stormwater — nearly 95 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — that flows into the Pacific Ocean instead of being stored for future use.
“Don’t let our water woes be contextualized as fish versus humans,” said Rep. John Duarte, R-Modesto. “The data’s in. We’ve depleted our aquifers, we destroyed our farms. We’ve left America hungry with out-of-control inflation.”
“The fish are dead, the delta smelt are dead, the data is in,” he continued. “We’ve destroyed abundance and we destroyed affordability.”
With much overlap, farmers at the listening session urged lawmakers to ensure crop insurance, conservation investments and continued funding for research were in the new bill.
Ian Lemay, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, said his organization alone submitted 120 recommendations.
“I think the challenge before you, and we are here to support you, is how do we not just hold the line, how do we not take a step backwards?” Lemay said. “How do we think outside of the box and try to give the tools to individuals who can really answer the call?”
All sides championed the idea of helping farmers, from relatively well-off growers of big crops like corn, wheat and soybeans to “specialty” growers of commodities such as almonds, artichokes and broccoli. Numerous crop advocacy groups and farm associations had their say on common woes like water shortages, lack of research on diseases and wildfires.
“Global pandemic, labor shortages, wildfires and other natural disasters, rising input costs, inflation rates, disputes of life change, at our ports and overseas,” said James Johanson, president of the California Farm Bureau, which represents more than 20,000 members statewide. “For the farmer, those challenges have resulted in economic disruption, tighter margins, even some permanently closing farms. While some of these have been addressed in meaningful ways, there’s still much that can be done.”
Farm bills, once an example of bipartisanship, have in recent sessions been mired in gridlock. The 2018 bill originally stalled after including work requirements in the food stamp program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2018 Farm Act cost $428 billion over the five-year period through 2019–23, with 71 percent of it going toward nutrition programs, such as food stamps.
Some advocates asked lawmakers to continue funding for SNAP, while reminding them that it is one of the most effective programs in the country.
“Inflation, and more specifically, the rising cost of food, has resulted in more and more neighbors turning to the bank for support,” said Natalie Caples, CEO of the Central California Food Bank.
Based in Fresno, the food bank serves people in Madera, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties where “one in four adults and one in three children are food insecure.” According to Caples, 4.4 million Californians were fed through SNAP in 2022.
“Robust and comprehensive investments in SNAP in the farm bill is more important than ever,” Caples said. “SNAP provides nine meals for every one provided by charitable food networks. We cannot close that gap if SNAP benefits or eligibility will be reduced in this coming farm bill.”
Legislators present did not specify the new bill’s requirements, but did allude to a need to move people away from welfare and a “dependence on the government.”
“The fact is for decades, we’ve had employment and career technical education components to the SNAP benefits,” Thompson said. “We want to make sure it’s working for Americans, an American family so that they can find opportunity and that only comes when we can get them into a position where they’re no longer dependent on the government.”
When asked for a status on the Workforce Modernization Act, Thompson said that the ag committee has a “vested interest,” but that the matter is decided by the judiciary committee. He then spoke on the U.S. border with Mexico, which he and McCarthy said is a continued problem that “once solved, we can move forward.”
“The farmers do need certainty,” Thompson said. “They need certainty and workforce and without certainty in workforce, you have food insecurity, and without food security, you have national insecurity.”
In a 2019 study, the California Farm Bureau Federation found 56 percent of 1,071 California farmers reported worker shortages. More than half of the state’s farmworkers are undocumented.
The bill, which passed the House floor in March 2021, received largely bipartisan support, including 30 Republican representatives.
“Farmers across the country depend on their families,” said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League. “But their family includes farmworkers. And after 30 years, these workers are still not getting work authorization.”
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, more than half the state’s farmworkers are undocumented. The act would establish a program for ag workers currently in the U.S. to earn legal status and have a higher minimum wage, through an expansion of protections known as the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protections Act. It has stalled since it was introduced on the Senate floor nearly two years ago.
“They were here for COVID, they worked with the farmers, they made things happen,” Cunha said. “I would hope that the House committee will have some influence on immigration in keeping families together.”