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Barrasso rallies support for ACRE Act
Story Date: 3/16/2018
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Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 3/15/18
In the race to eliminate rules and regulations, Congress has its own ideas. On Tuesday, the ACRE Act was introduced, pulling together various farm-related measures intended to "help defend agricultural industries from punishing federal rules and reporting requirements."
A day later, several representatives of farmers and ranchers threw support behind the measure as part of a hearing called by Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who had put forward the ACRE Act.
One aspect of the bill would maintain an exemption granted by the EPA in 2008 that doesn't require the reporting of air pollution caused by certain normal farm conditions, such as when manure is applied in field fertilization. "The draft bill we are discussing today is designed to provide relief for hard-working people that put a shovel in the ground every day working to feed this country," Barrasso said at the hearing on Wednesday.
Tough to estimate: Doug Miyamoto, director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, testified at the hearing that exempting farmers was the right thing to do because Superfund laws were never intended to apply to livestock operations.
"I don't even know how to begin to tell producers how to estimate emissions from an individual head of livestock," Miyamoto said. "So not only do I think that it's not regulation aimed in the right direction, I don't have anything to tell my producers about how to accurately comply."
Some opposition: The ACRE Act wraps eight bills into one piece of legislation, most of which are bipartisan. Ranking committee member Tom Carper (D-Del.) said he could not support all parts of the measure and he was concerned that parts would harm wildlife protection. "The legislation recognizes and attempts to address concerns raised by some of our farmers," he said at the hearing. "As drafted though, I don't believe that it adequately balances those interests with the interests of other natural-resource dependent industries."
Companion bill: The House introduced its own version of the ACRE Act on Wednesday, which the National Milk Producers Federation immediately backed. "We fully support the House companion to the Senate's Fair Agricultural Reporting Method (FARM) Act, which would prevent dairy farms from having to generate meaningless air emissions data," the group said in a statement.
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