Bill Huffman
Director - Government Relations

January 16, 2009

There was some interesting activity in Congress this week.  The Senate Agriculture Committee held its confirmation hearing for Agriculture Secretary-Designate Tom Vilsack and the House Agriculture Committee announced its list of new members and Subcommittee Chairmen this week.

Senate Confirmation Hearing

The confirmation hearing this week for Agriculture Secretary-designate Tom Vilsack was an easy, non-eventful hearing with little controversy.  In fact, it will probably be the easiest, non controversial hearing for any of President-elect Obama’s many cabinet appointees.  Senate Agriculture Committee members asked Vilsack a number of questions about various USDA programs.  Two committee members, Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-GA and Senator Blanche Lincoln, D-Arkansas both encouraged Mr. Vilsack to expand his understanding of American agriculture beyond corn, soybeans, hogs and cattle, the principal commodities of mid-western agriculture.  Senator Lincoln also raised the issue of fairness in the new “actively engaged” rules and the new payment limit rules adopted in the 2008 Farm Bill.

It is expected the Senate Agriculture Committee will vote on confirmation of Tom Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture on or before January 20th, the day of the inauguration.

House Agriculture Committee Names New Members and Subcommittee Chairmen

House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson has announced his committee membership for the next two year session of Congress.  Interestingly, the Committee now will have 28 Democrats and 17 Republicans.  On the Democratic side, there are 17 returning members and 11 freshmen.  California will have three representatives on the Committee.  They are Representatives Joe Baca, Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa, all Democrats.  There will be three members of the Committee from Texas, another rice producing state, one from Mississippi and Arkansas and Louisiana will have no representation on the House Agriculture Committee.

There will be a new Chairman of the House Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management.  Former Chairman Bob Etheridge, D-North Carolina has been elevated to the House Ways and Means Committee and he will be superseded as Chairman by Representative Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa. This Subcommittee has jurisdiction over programs related to cotton, rice, wheat, feed grains, corn, soybeans, oil seeds, dry beans, peas and lentils.  The Committee also has jurisdiction over the Commodity Credit Corporation, crop insurance, and commodity exchanges including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The U.S. rice industry will need to reach out to the various new members of the House Agriculture Committee because most of them are from non-rice producing states and probably know very little about our industry.  Farmers’ Rice Cooperative will be actively involved in this effort through our Farmers’ Rice Cooperative Fund and our political action program.

Our Federal rice program is vital to this industry; we need to redouble our efforts to reach out to Congress to preserve this important program for our grower-members.