Farm policy’s front line
A&M intern on Capitol Hill will learn the power of trade and agriculture as politics heat up over the issues
FOR Texas A&M University senior Kate Wright, the path to a career in agricultural economics is starting with a summer internship at the center of it all: Capitol Hill.
That’s where details of the next five-year farm bill and international trade policy are being hammered out on topics ranging from food stamps, immigrant work visas and farm subsidies to food labeling and regulations on fertilizers and pesticides — and for a constituency that may not agree about what should be done.
As a suburban girl who cultivated a fascination with futures markets and planting decisions as a member of FFA in Helotes, she’d be hardpressed to find a headier post: working for the House Agriculture Committee, led by fellow Texan Mike Conaway.
“I’ve really just been soaking in what each day brings,” Wright said of her first days being surrounded by Washington, D.C., the power players.
Wright is one of 11 A&M interns chosen for this summer’s Agricultural and Natural Resources Policy internship program, which places agricultural students with Texas congressional members and national lobbying organizations such as the National Association of Wheat Growers and the National Turkey Federation.
The program sends A&M students to Washington each semester.
“Students chosen to participate in the ANRP internship in D.C. have a unique opportunity to stand on the sidelines of history, while also
helping shape the direction of agriculture policy in our country,” Conaway , R-Midland, said in an email.
“I feel like some students don’t have that kind of background, so they don’t get to learn just how special agriculture is,” Wright said. “For me, it’s a very interesting, very powerful, very impactful career path, as well as it is a way of life.”
It’s a highly competitive program in an industry drawing fewer and fewer students even as more and more agricultural career paths open up worldwide. According to AgCareers.com’s Enrollment and Employment Outlook Survey, fewer than 1 percent of students are in an agricultural major. In 2013, there were more than 56,000 career openings in the industry but only 29,000 graduates.
A good portion of those jobs are in Washington, where rural district U.S. representatives and lobbyists for commodities such as cotton and beef come up against those fighting against them in areas such as farm supports and genetically modified feed. Recent battles have been on the trade front.
Farmers and ranchers are wary of tariffs that while favorable to some manufacturers may prove to be devastating to those who depend upon agricultural exports.
For example, the punitive tariffs that Mexico levied on pork recently are already causing losses for a $20 billion annual industry.
Mexico is U.S. pork’s largest export market, accounting for nearly a quarter of all shipments. With some 60,000 producers centered mostly in Midwestern states, Oklahoma and North Carolina, Mexico’s trade experts know that the counterpunch for tariffs on aluminum and steel will hit a big part of President Donald Trump’s voting base.
The tariff battles come amid off-again, on-again fears that negotiations for an updated North American Free Trade Agreement will fall apart, ending the duty-free status that has made Mexico and Canada robust buyers.
The National Association of Wheat Growers, which has taken an ANRP intern each semester for a good part of the program’s 28-year history, represents another commodity group that has been nervous about recent trade moves.
“China is looking at imposing a 25 percent tariff on wheat, and so that is very concerning to us,” said Chandler Goule, who completed an ANRP internship some 20 years ago with the wheat group, is now its CEO.
China and Mexico are among the top importers of U.S. wheat, and Goule isn’t counting on his growers to get a pass. As of Friday, the commodity appeared to have been spared from retaliatory tariffs from NAFTA partners, but growers were continuing to anxiously watch developments.
Back in 1998, Goule thought it would be fun to spend a semester in Washington and learn a little bit about how things worked.
“Honestly, leaving Texas was not even on my agenda. I was going to be a large-animal veterinarian like every other animal science major,” he said.
During his internship, his eyes were opened to all the federal regulations that affected farmers and ranchers. What to him had been dull visits with his dad to fill out paperwork at the Natural Resource Conservation Service and what is now the Farm Service Agency became policy that could be affected by voices such as his.
He returned to Texas for his final semester and after graduation immediately went back north.
While searching for his firsttime job, he lived off Holiday Inn points he’d accumulated thanks to an internship with Syngenta, then found a boarding house. But he’d learned his way around during his internship and had honed his speaking skills through Four-H Club competitions, so it didn’t take long to get that first job.
“I didn’t know that you could come to Washington and take two of my favorite things — talking and agriculture — and turn it into a career,” he said.
The ANRP program started in 1990 with a request from thenU.S. Rep. Greg Laughlin. The A&M graduate had called his alma mater looking for an agricultural economics student who could help him and his staff. It grew from there and now is supported by a list of individual and organizational donors such as the Plains Cotton Growers, Farm Credit Bank of Texas and Texas Farm Bureau.
The internship pays for the students’ apartments and tries to prepare them for life in D.C., from offering tips for shopping on a budget to lending professional clothing from an A&M “career closet.”
Program director Stephanie McMillen came through the program herself, going from living in a horse trailer near campus to the urban bustle of Washington.
Though she grew up in a Republican home, she was matched with a Rio Grande Valley Democrat.
“My mom was totally excited but totally worried, you know, that I was going to be, like, indoctrinated into the other party and it was going to be the end of the world,” she said.
“But it was great to see another point of view from what I had been hearing growing up and to see that it’s not necessarily black or white, that it was a gray.”
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