U.S. House members were expected to vote today on a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee passed it on to the whole House without changes on a near unanimous vote. But it won’t see that quick a vote in the Senate because Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the Senate will handle the impeachment first and won’t get to a trade agreement vote until after the first of the new year. Most farm groups in the country supports the new agreement.
Agriculture, especially the biofuels industry, is happy with the $1.4 trillion spending bill the House passed on Tuesday. That’s because it included a package that retroactively extends the $1 a gallon biodiesel tax incentive program from 2018 through 2022. That credit has been part of spending bills for the past 15 years. The Senate is expected to vote on that bill yet this week so President Trump can sign it, which he is expected to do before a temporary spending bill expires tomorrow.
When members of the National Farmers Union gather for their 118th national convention in March in Savannah, Georgia, they will need to do more than establish the group’s policies for the next year. They also will need to select a new president. Roger Johnson, who has led the Farmers Union since 2009, is retiring. Before becoming Farmers Union president, Johnson served as the North Dakota agriculture commissioner and is a third-generation North Dakota farmer. Johnson said he plans to eventually move to Colorado to be closer to his family.
Farmers only have through business hours Friday to sign up for the Dairy Margin Coverage Program and the Market Facilitation program for 2020. That deadline was extended from last Friday because of bad weather. The DMC program is for dairy farmers and offers some price protection when the all–milk price and the average feed cost — or margin — falls below a certain amount. That program paid dairy farmers more than $300 million in 2019. The Market Facilitation Program was set up by the Trump Administration to make up for farmers’ income lost because of tariffs imposed on products from other countries, and the lost markets for U.S. goods because of retaliation over those tariffs.
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