Millers are briefed on agency and agriculture bill developments.

Millers are briefed on agency and agriculture bill developments.

Regarding the association’s efforts to impact public policy on behalf of its members, the North American Millers’ Association has a lot on its plate for 2023.

Kim Cooper, senior director of government affairs for NAMA, and Molly Miller, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs, gave a thorough summary of the issues that are expected to be discussed in Washington at the organization’s annual spring conference, which was held at the Signia Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek.

The pair’s policy view points mostly, but not exclusively, focused on the impending farm bill. An outline of the cooperative conversation that Ms. Cooper and Ms. Miller gave at the spring conference is as follows:

Enhanced congressional monitoring of the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration:

The FDA, according to Ms. Miller, is under intense scrutiny for what steps they are taking to address the shortages and recalls of baby formula. Additionally, the Reagan-Udall Foundation report heavily criticized the FDA; as a result, there is now much more discussion on how the FDA ought to operate, possibly with a focus on greater transparency in the future. While USDA is slightly more transparent than FDA, they are still under investigation for other issues. Congress is targeting USDA for some of their conservation payment procedures and other initiatives that are beginning to take place as a result of the Climate Smart Agriculture Act.

On the administrative side, NAMA and Congress are navigating a divided Congress with slim margins in the House and Senate as the relatively new House speakership of Kevin McCarthy just as a debt ceiling fight unfolds.

“One of the main concessions in the fight for the McCarthy speakership was that they were going to make sure that they cut spending, revert back to levels of fiscal year 2022,” Ms. Cooper said. “That’s very difficult to do. Every member of Congress has one little thing or another thing that they care about. No one wants to cut their things. Finding what they are going to cut is going to be very difficult for them to get to 2022 levels. Republicans see a good opportunity to make food cuts there to make a deal on the debt ceiling. Democrats, on the other hand, are not going to agree to any of those. This is really a messaging bill to say this is our opening argument for the White House to then come to the table and negotiate on the debt ceiling.”

In regards to the farm bill, the NAMA pair stated that realistically, the legislation will be negotiated between late 2023 and early 2024, but narrow legislative margins will meet limited money and not all stakeholders will receive the outcomes they hoped for when the measure becomes law.
According to Ms. Miller, “international food aid, research funding, and SNP are huge parts of that conversation.” Since we are a member of the SNAP Choice coalition, I believe that discussing the work requirements for the SNAP component of the bill is currently the top Republican priority. However, we do want to confirm that the items you can purchase with those SNAP benefits are unrestricted.

Rather of handing out money, NAMA is advocating for feed-the-world initiatives to go back to using US agricultural commodities as originally intended. As a result of these increased flexibilities, such programs have “been chipped away at over and over and over and over again,” according to Ms. Cooper. This has led to a huge increase in cash-based assistance, which includes anything from cash vouchers to, in some cases, people receiving actual cash in envelopes. “The emergency Food Security Program was established under the Obama administration, back about ten years ago.”

The FSP falls under the state affairs office, so it isn’t a farm bill program, but “has $3 billion available in that bucket typically forecast for food security,” she said.

“They can use that funding on US commodities, but they don’t,” Ms. Cooper said. “This idea that the non-governmental organizations need more and more flexibility is just not true. This year we really looked at these programs and how much they’ve been chipped away over time. No more. We’re not going to stand for it anymore. We’re pushing back. We’re not going on defense on this, we’re only on offense. Our proposals are to essentially kick cash out of those food aid programs make them restore them back to fully US commodities and make sure that the cash-based assistance happening under that emergency food program is not funded by agriculture appropriations.”

To that end, NAMA administrators have this year convened 54 meetings, including with nearly every member of the Senate and House agriculture committees.

“Really positive meetings with committee staff,” she said. “Folks get it. These are food aid programs. They should have food as the cornerstone.”

NAMA is pushing to expand the definition of cover crop to include fields ultimately harvested since they still prevent erosion and build soil health.

“That message has not been super-welcomed by members of the House and Senate committees, but I think the message is that we need to make sure that we’re not giving up acres for things like conservation programs or cover crops,” Ms. Cooper said. “Moving forward, conservation became this like big buzz word in the last couple of years. But one of the challenges of the farm bill is very limited funding. And so the idea that we’re going to have millions of dollars available for cover crops is really just a non-starter. It’s important, that messaging says hey, we need to be thinking about food security, we need to be making sure the acres are there and that there’s a credit associated with that, with making sure that soil stays healthy throughout the year and that you’re going to higher yields from other crops on that same land.”

NAMA supports a coalition effort to increase mandatory funding for research by $8 billion, but expects closer to $1.5 billion in the farm bill, which likely would be supplemented with extra funding under the discretionary side and yearly appropriations processes.

“Additionally, under the farm bill research portion, we’ve supported wheat growers and all the barley growers in asking for increasing the authorization for the US Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative from $15 million to $20 million,” Ms. Cooper said. “It’s been fully appropriated at that fully authorized amount for the last few years, we don’t see a reason why they can’t bump that up. It’s not a guarantee that that funding is going to happen, but it’s at least authorizing the program to go up to $20 million.

“One snag we’ve been hearing is that not only are you going to have to offset actual spending in the farm bill, but they are talking about process for in the authorization of the farm bill. Which makes things a little bit more complicated because you’re not actually spending that money, you’re saying you’re allowed to spend that money if other people agree at a later point in time. And they’re saying ‘OK, well, you still have to provide an offset for it’.”

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The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service’s new national programming leader for small grains research, Oswald Crasta, PhD, has met with NAMA multiple times for discussion on priorities and how the funding has been used in the past.

Plus, “a few members of the health division had a virtual meeting with Dr. Crasta to introduce the companies and talk about what stakeholders are really interested in when it comes to research,” Ms. Miller said. “There are some areas where, as stakeholders, we can really help them to understand more about what’s needed in the oats space. He doesn’t have a lot of experience in oats and is very willing to learn. It’s going to be really good opportunity that to have that kind of exchange with ARS and deepen that relationship for us.”

The FDA’s rapid pace of employee turnover has impacted NAMA members and their customers vis-à-vis inspections.

“It’s really difficult to start that process over with them, basically educate them on inspections because the FDA has very few seasoned people left, so they’re going to be having a lot of dialogue with you, you’re going to be pushing back on a lot of things so,” Ms. Cooper said. “They’re going to ask you for crazy stuff. We already have some good discussions in the tech committee around FDA inspections to help support member companies.”