By Clint Thompson
Last week’s Southern Peanut Growers Conference provided growers an opportunity to hear about various topics impacting the agricultural industry. One of the sessions focused on legislative issues.
Bob Redding, who works for the Redding Firm and serves as a lobbyist for agricultural groups in Washington D.C., attended the three-day conference and provided attendees with an update on two specific issues. One was the Farm Bill and the other was the labor bill introduced by Rep. G.T. Thompson.
“Well, the clock is ticking, as you know, and we’ve got a few more days before the August break. I think we’re going to see as much activity as possible,” Redding said. “A lot of this is fluid right now, and hopefully, we’ll move forward with Farm Bill 2.0. Chairman Thompson’s bill, we really need to move it forward on H-2A reform. That’s critical. This is the right time to do it. If there’s immigration reform or any other initiative, H-2A reform should be included. That’s really important for the future of row crop and specialty crops. They have to have it.
“We’ve got a lot piling up here, but we’ve got some more time. We have people in the House and Senate that want to move these things forward, including with the package now moving in the House that the Senate will take up relative to economic assistance. Florida Ag Disaster Assistance, all of these items, we need to move forward.”
Thompson introduced the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, which would be the first reform to the H-2A program in 40 years. The Senate is currently working on its version of the farm bill.