U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., talks with Pennsylvania Ag Secretary Russell Redding, left, and Penn State ag dean Richard Roush during an Aug. 10, 2022, town hall at Ag Progress Days.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., talks with Pennsylvania Ag Secretary Russell Redding, left, and Penn State ag dean Richard Roush during an Aug. 10, 2022, town hall at Ag Progress Days.
ROCK SPRINGS, Pa. — The top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee has a prescription for improving Pennsylvania agriculture.
Here are three suggestions that U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., laid out Wednesday at Ag Progress Days.
Thompson said farmers can’t thrive when federal regulations could change on a dime.
For example, the list of waters that fall under federal control has shifted multiple times in the past 20 years due to Supreme Court cases and the preferences of successive presidential administrations.
Farm groups were generally comfortable with the rules set under President Donald Trump, but the Biden administration is reconsidering those. A case involving the waters rule is also before the Supreme Court, Thompson said.
At the same time, Thompson wants the Environmental Protection Agency to continue allowing farmers to access pesticides, including glyphosate and atrazine, that he said have become political footballs.
And he wants to protect provisions that limit the number of farmers who pay estate tax. Some Democrats have proposed changing these rules to increase levies on wealthy families, though the rules could also frustrate farmers’ ability to pass on their valuable land and capital to their children.
“What part of the farm do you sell to get $1.4 million and still have a farm at the end of the day?” Thompson said.
Technical education could help the ag industry bring in a new crop of workers with specialized skills, and this training path has regained respect in recent years. As a result, Thompson said, career and tech centers have gone from being under capacity to stacking students on waiting lists.
“Not only that. Every student in those schools has job offers,” he said.
Thompson believes school counselors have been saddled with too much of the responsibility for helping troubled students, which has limited their efforts to dispense career advice.
Thompson is backing new legislation to help career counselors stay current on career fields and has co-sponsored a bill that would increase funding for high school ag programs.
By national standards, nearly all of Pennsylvania’s farms are small. These operations might not achieve the economies of scale that big Western farms do, but Thompson said modest farms aid food security by spreading risk over many operations.
By contrast, if a large business goes down — as some major meatpacking plants did early in the pandemic — the food supply can quickly become a concern, he said.
Small farms are also important to the success of rural Pennsylvania.
“If agriculture fails, the rural economy fails,” he said.
As a new Farm Bill looms, the GOP seeks balance in tackling climate change.
Lawmakers are aiming to alter the current rules on how much could be owed in federal estate tax after farmers die.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, told Ag Progress Days attendees yesterday that work is progressing on ag legislation.
Jesse Darlington, the manager of the ag trade show at Penn State’s Centre County research farm, praised this year’s Ag Progress Days.
Phil Gruber is the news editor at Lancaster Farming. He can be reached at 717-721-4427 or pgruber@lancasterfarming.com. Follow him @PhilLancFarming on Twitter.
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