Agriculture Committee Hse

see conaway mfucker

dem chair collin peterson sellout/fail 1019

really powerful in terms of climate, hunger

see also GMO

==

family

House Democrats are failing to protect America’s farmers from Trump

Jeff Hauser, Eleanor Eagan / The Washington Monthly

Times are tough for American farmers. Everything from corporate consolidation to falling commodity prices is making it harder to get by. Strange, then, that the person most responsible for safeguarding…

no lnx

House Democrats are failing to protect farmers from Trump — here’s how

Written by Jeff Hauser, Eleanor Eagan / Washington Monthly October 20, 2019

Times are tough for American farmers. Everything from corporate consolidation to falling commodity prices is making it harder to get by. Strange, then, that the person most responsible for safeguarding their wellbeing, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, brought the following message to a gathering of Wisconsin dairy farmers: “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out. I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.” In other words, he was telling the farmers: you’re probably screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Contrary to Perdue’s claims, the deaths of small farms are not a result of natural forces. They are a consequence of explicit policy choices that have allowed for the rampant consolidation and disinvestment that are crushing rural communities. Only two decades ago, there were 600 companies that sold seed. Today, there are only four. It’s no wonder that the cost of seeds and plant corn has risen 329 percent in that time period, with similar increases for other crops.

Perdue hasn’t just failed to recognize the root causes of farmers’ pain; he has actively aided the forces responsible for it. From his first days in office, he has turned the full power of the USDA against farmers and rural communities on behalf of Big Agriculture, betraying one of the constituencies most vital to Trump’s 2016 win.

None of this should surprise anyone. What should be genuinely shocking, however, is that Congressman Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota and the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, has been practically silent about these attacks. Over the past nine months, he has only convened one full committee hearing. And while his panel heard testimony from Perdue in February, Peterson has yet to call him back despite his committing numerous transgressions since, including his continued efforts to impose work requirements on access to food stamps and pressing ahead to relocate the department’s research wing out of D.C.

Peterson, who declined our request for comment, has failed to fulfill his obligation to protect farmers and rural communities. That is not only bad on the substance, but it is a missed opportunity for Democrats to win back support among American farmers, who overwhelmingly pulled the lever for Trump in 2016.

In recent years, consolidated agribusinesses have translated their rising profits into formidable political power.They have successfully weakened or killed many measures that would have limited their control over farmers’ lives and livelihoods,including fighting laws that would give farmers the right to repair their own equipment, something that overzealous copyright protections have prevented them from doing. When these and other nasty practices get too much attention, Big Agwields its considerable weight to silence critics, whether that means getting a newspaper cartoonist fired or suing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to close a public comment period on a proposed merger.

Over the past few decades, Democrats have too often either supported the policies that got us here, or fallen short in resisting them. In 2008, Barack Obama made fighting consolidation a feature of his agricultural policy platform. But once in power, he failed to act decisively on those promises. His administration hesitated to enact proposed regulations that would have made it easier for contract farmers to sue packing and processing companies for unfair practices. Then, it found itself unable to move forward once Republicans took the House in 2010.

As with most things, however, the Trump administration has taken a bad problem and made it worse. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice approved a merger between two agricultural industry giants, Monsanto and Bayer, allowing for the creation of a new behemoth. And those Obama-era contracting rules? They were eventually approved in 2016, but Perdue promptly scrapped them after taking power. Worse yet, Perdue’s USDA has walked back enforcement of many of the remaining rules to protect contract farmers.

This is all without mentioning what’s at the forefront of people’s minds when they think about Trump’s impact on farmers: trade policy. Yet as these examples should make clear, the harm this administration is inflicting on farmers goes well beyond trade.

Unfortunately, House Democrats have done little to draw attention to Trump’s deleterious agricultural policies When they do respond by holding a hearing, like over the decision to move the USDA’s Economic Research Service to Kansas City, they fail to confront those responsible for their actions, or take definitive actions to stop them.

Meanwhile, in the same time span that Peterson only convened one full committee hearing, Agriculture’s six subcommittees have held a combined 19 hearings, seven of which involved testimony from USDA officials. The Committee has issued zero subpoenas to corporate or governmental actors.

Peterson should reverse course and start from the top. The USDA is a big department with a diverse set of important responsibilities, ranging from protecting farming and rural economies, to ensuring food safety and administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

There have been other ways Perdue has materially hurt farmers and others working in the industry. In addition to cancelling the aforementioned Obama era contracting rules, Perdue announced, in 2018, that the USDA would begin to allow poultry processing plants to increase line speeds, putting already vulnerable workers at even greater risk of injury.

Trump has also failed to nominate an undersecretary of rural development almost three years after taking office, meaning there is no dedicated advocate for rural communities empowered to support rural businesses, utilities, housing, broadband, and more in the federal government.

But that’s not all. The USDA is also making meat more dangerous for consumers byallowing pork processing plants to perform their own inspections. Indeed, the USDA’s chief veterinarian from 2016 to 2018, Pat Basu, refused to sign off on the system and left the agency in protest. Basu recently said, “Look at the FAA. It took a year or so before the crashes happened. This could pass, and everything could be okay for a while, until some disease is missed, and we have an outbreak all over the country.” It seems like Basu might make for an interesting witness at a Agriculture Committee hearing.

Democrats need to perform meaningful oversight of the Trump administration’s assault on American farmers. Impeachment doesn’t obviate the need for skeptical oversight. It underscores it. Oversight is, put simply, a basic fulfillment of Congress’ governing obligations. It can uncover abuse, create pressure for change, and facilitate the development of much needed policy alternatives. And, as an added bonus, the political upside seems clear.

This strategy might seem somewhat unorthodox. It contravenes the gospel that Democrats can only win agricultural districts by espousing a quiet, inoffensive centrism. But that would cede control of the political debate to Trump. If Democrats only play on the president’s terms, the conversation will always shift away from the real issue.

Democrats must therefore redefine the debate on agriculture policy through rigorous oversight. In rural America, they have to demonstrate their willingness to take on political corruption of all shades, and to challenge corporate America’s chokehold over the political process.

Yet Democrats have been surprisingly unwilling to take on one of the most unifying issues across the electorate: how the system is rigged to hurt ordinary people and boost big corporations.

Trump has created an opportunity for Democrats to take up this message in virtually every area of policy, but now especially with farmers. House Democrats have a unique opening to prove to rural voters that they are serious about taking on structural inequities. All they have to do is highlight and push back against the administration’s efforts to enrich corporations at the expense of small farmers. In other words, they have to simply do their jobs.

New Farm Bill Contains Sneak Attack on the Environment With Toxic Pesticides

By Derrick Z. Jackson

If fish could wail, they would scream over the lethal powers granted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in part of the draft farm bill recently rolled out by the House Agriculture Committee. The bill, passed out of committee by Chairman Mike Conaway (R-TX) on a party-line vote last month, desperately fails farmers and low-income families. It also contains a number of sneak attacks on the environment. One such provision would allow the EPA to approve new pesticides with no assessment of their potential impact on fish and wildlife covered under the Endangered Species Act.

That means that EPA would no longer need to wait for independent research on the toxicity of pesticides in rivers, wetlands and prairies from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Interior Department, or in estuaries and coastal waters from the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Commerce Department. The bill chillingly specifies that the EPA administrator "shall not be required to consult or communicate with the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce."

To date, most of the national publicity about the House farm bill has understandably focused on its potentially devastating effect on America's poor, with expanded work requirements that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would eliminate 1.2 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program rolls. The CBO also estimates that 400,000 households would lose benefits under higher income thresholds, eliminating free school lunch for 265,000 children. The bill also slashes child support and home heating and cooling assistance.

When it comes to wildlife, the bill envisions an EPA that pays no heed to environmental science, potentially wreaking a different kind of devastation.

Chlorpyrifos Clearance Only the Beginning

This continues the attack on federal environmental science that began in earnest a year ago when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt derailed a ban on chlorpyrifos that was long in the works during the Obama administration. In 2000, the EPA ended that neurotoxin's use in residential lawn and garden and indoor pest control for its toxicity to children. However, it remained America's most-used conventional insecticide in commercial agriculture, used so heavily that the Obama-era EPA could not conclude that human exposure in residues and water runoffs met federal safety standards. One study last year found that 7-year-old children in Salinas Valley, California who lived near farms using organophosphates such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion suffered deficits in intelligence and verbal comprehension.

But Pruitt cleared chlorpyrifos after meeting with the CEO of Dow Chemical, the top maker of the pesticide. The Los Angeles Times exposed the meeting after an EPA spokesman lied that it never happened.

Emboldened by that success, Dow, which donated $1 million to President Trump's inaugural committee and spent nearly $14 million on lobbying in 2016, pursued a far more outrageous free pass for its toxic products. It feared the results of a massive National Marine Fisheries Management study launched by the Obama administration that was not yet final, but that would likely render a very negative biological opinion on the effect of chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion on fish and wildlife. As reported by the Associated Press, Dow's Washington law firm wrote Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, urging them to dismiss any results that would come of that research, complaining that the methodology wrongly produced "unrealistically high and sometimes physically impossible estimates."

A Fleeting Victory for Science

For a hopeful second, it appeared that Dow had lost the argument when the fisheries service officially concluded that chlorpyrifos and malathion were each likely to directly "jeopardize" 38 species of sea life, including several species of salmon, sturgeon and killer whales, and diazinon would jeopardize 25 species. The pesticides would also "adversely" harm about the same number of critical habitats. The opinion emphasized: "Species and their prey residing in shallow aquatic habitats proximal to pesticide use sites are expected to be the most at risk."

But Conaway (who has received nearly $5 million in campaign contributions from the agribusiness sector since 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics) and his fellow republicans want to come to the rescue of Dow and the entire toxic agricultural chemical industry. Complaining that it took too long for EPA, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to complete reviews to register new compounds, all 26 Republicans, over the opposition of all 20 Democrats, voted to allow the EPA to utterly ignore any assessments by the NMFS or Fish and Wildlife.

If reauthorized as written, the farm bill would also allow the "lawful use" of pesticides to kill endangered species without fear of federal penalties and would prevent EPA and the states from requiring pesticide permits under the Water Pollution Control Act for discharges into navigable rivers. Plus, even though a vast majority of farmers embrace sustainable practices to avoid erosion and pollution, a fact recently highlighted by UCS Senior Analyst for Food Karen Perry Stillerman, the farm bill would eliminate the Conservation Stewardship Program.

For humans, the danger of chlorpyrifos alone was enough for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Working Group to write a joint letter to Pruitt last summer saying his EPA was rejecting years of the agency's own science that said the pesticide's "risk to infant and children's health and development is unambiguous."

Specter of Silent Spring

For both humans and wildlife, the Republican reauthorization of the farm bill would usher in the weakest federal protections against pesticide abuse since Rachel Carson charted the destruction of species by overuse of DDT and other pesticides in her seminal 1962 book Silent Spring. She wrote of pesticide poisonings, and mental illness to people, documented by American, British, New Zealand and Australian researchers. One study by the University of Melbourne noted how three chemical scientists, eight greenhouse workers and five farm workers suffered from impaired memory, schizophrenia and depression. "All had normal medical histories before the chemicals they were using boomeranged and struck them down," she wrote. She said their illness was "a heavy price to pay for the temporary destruction of a few insects, but a price that will continue to be exacted as long as we insist upon using chemicals that strike directly at the nervous system."

==

recent study that snap ppl who can work already are?!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/18/the-republican-plan-to-tighten-food-stamp-work-requirements-is-advancing-without-a-single-democrats-vote/?utm_term=.99fcf53900a2

House Republicans pushed forward Wednesday with a plan to strengthen work requirements for food stamps, even as Democrats excoriated the proposal as an “ideological crusade” that would hurt the poor, burden state governments and endanger the passage of major food and farming legislation.

The plan, introduced last week as part of the 2018 Farm Bill, would dramatically expand mandatory state workfare programs in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, and require that most adults between 18 and 59 enroll or work at least part time to receive benefits.

[GOP proposes stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients, a step toward a major overhaul of the social safety net]

In a 26-to-2o vote on party lines, the House Agriculture Committee moved to advance the Farm Bill, with the SNAP proposals, to the House floor. Republicans have pitched it as a common-sense revision that would refocus services on the neediest families while providing opportunities for adults who are work-capable.

But over the course of more than five hours, Democrats on the usually placid committee denounced the Republican plan as “heartless” and “deceitful” and accused Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) of shutting them out of negotiations.

Farm groups have begun to fear the divisions could delay or prevent passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, the $867 billion package that covers the bulk of the country’s agricultural and nutrition programs, including crop insurance, farm credit, trade, conservation, agricultural research and rural development.

“What are we doing here? Is this half-baked effort what passes for bipartisanship in our chamber?” asked Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.), the ranking Democrat. “We used to be able to get stuff done, but the way the chairman has gone about this is turning friends into enemies.”

The current law expires Oct. 1, and a number of rural development and agricultural research programs will lose funding if a farm bill is not passed before then. The House likely will not vote until next month.

Both sides have indicated they are unwilling to negotiate on the Republican plan.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 1 million people would leave the SNAP rolls over the next 10 years because of the new work requirements, mandating 20 hours a week of training or work, and stricter eligibility guidelines for low-income families who qualify for SNAP through other welfare programs, a practice known as Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility.

Republicans on Wednesday said their proposals would focus benefits on people who truly need them, eliminating payments to families with incomes significantly above the poverty threshold and helping work-capable adults find work and afford food for themselves.

“Today’s vote was about America’s farmers and ranchers. It was about a better future and greater opportunities for SNAP recipients,” Conaway said in a statement.

“I’m disappointed,” he continued, “that my Democrat colleagues have turned their backs on America’s heartland.”

But Democrats accuse Conaway of preparing the SNAP proposal in secret instead of allowing staff from both parties to hash out the issue together, as they did for the rest of the bill. The minority did not offer any amendments during the hearing because, Peterson told one farming talk show Monday, “you can't put lipstick on a pig.”

“This is the most partisan Farm Bill in 20 years,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who later tweeted that the proposal should be called the “#HarmBill.”

Democrats maintain that the SNAP program already contains sufficient work rules and that tightening them further may cut off adults who have legitimate reasons for not working.

They also argue that the $1 billion per year budgeted for the new mandatory employment and training programs would fall short. The mandatory program will also overburden poor families and state welfare offices, Democrats said.

In one tense exchange, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) peppered Conaway and Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), the chairman of the nutrition subcommittee, with questions about how many government employees would be needed to manage the workfare programs and how Republicans plan to track the employment status of all 42 million people on SNAP.

“If we had a hearing on this stuff we could go into this in more detail,” he said, as Thompson began to answer one of the questions. “But I only get five minutes.”

The Farm Bill now moves to the House floor, where the acrimony is likely to continue. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed the Republican food-stamp plan, which dovetails with his agenda to reform welfare programs.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, said on Wednesday that her party could not support what she called a “radical, harmful bill.”

Read more:

GOP proposes stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients, a step toward a major overhaul of the social safety net

The Trump administration takes its first big step toward stricter work requirements for food stamps

'Blue Apron for food stamps' already exists. And some recipients hate the powdered milk.

no linx

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/farm-bill-endangered-species-environment-2561444014.html

see conaway, pesticide, deforestation

lamar

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-lawmakers-whether-epa-staff-influenced-glyphosate-review-194036039.html?ref=gs

U.S. lawmakers probe EPA staff over possible bias in herbicide review

June 7, 2016

yahoo news oddly void on names: REUters

what's wrong w/ EPA infl WHO?!

By P.J. Huffstutter

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers are investigating whether U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff influenced the World Health Organization's review of glyphosate and its finding that the herbicide probably causes cancer, according to a letter sent to the agency on Tuesday.

The letter from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology is part of an ongoing investigation into the agency after the EPA posted and withdrew an internal report that said glyphosate was not cancer causing.

One question that lawmakers are trying to answer, according to legislative sources, is whether EPA staff allowed personal bias to color the agency's scientific review of glyphosate, the chemical in Monsanto Co's Roundup herbicide.

Some EPA staff participated in both the U.S. review and the WHO review. While the committee's line of investigation was not clear, lawmakers cited the contradictory findings of the two reviews.

Those reviews were by the EPA's cancer assessment review committee or CARC and the WHO's cancer arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC.

“Given the apparent contradictions of the CARC and IARC findings for glyphosate ..., the committee has concerns about the integrity" of the WHO review, the role of EPA officials in that review and their influence on the outcome of the EPA study, the committee's letter to the EPA seen by Reuters said.

According to the letter, lawmakers want congressional staff to interview four top EPA officials who were involved in one or both reviews of glyphosate.

An EPA spokeswoman said Tuesday the agency had received the letter, was reviewing it and would respond.

In an earlier letter EPA sent to the committee, the agency said that publishing the cancer assessment review committee's report was an accident and that the cancer review was still ongoing.

The EPA said it was "currently reviewing our standard operating procedures for the release of documents to avoid the inadvertent release of pre-decisional information in the future."

The congressional committee began its investigation into the EPA last month after the report by the EPA's cancer assessment review committee became briefly public.

The report found that glyphosate was "not likely" to be carcinogenic to humans. It also appeared to dispute the IARC report and questioned its analysis.

The WHO's IARC last year classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

The House's Agriculture Committee previously said it too was examining the agency's review of glyphosate and atrazine, another chemical used in agricultural herbicides.

The Agriculture Committee also wanted to know what steps still needed to be taken to finalize and issue the glyphosate report, which it had expected in July 2015.

(Reporting By P.J. Huffstutter; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Cynthia Osterman)

==

==

http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/14/china-chicken-export-import-deal maybe unrelated to comm

http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/13/gmo-labeling-bill-dark-act

pompeo

This week the House Agriculture Committee is expected to mark up and vote on a bill that would take away the right of states to label food with genetically modified ingredients, orGMOs. According to Environmental Working Group (EWG), the latest draft of the measure shows it to be a bad bill that keeps getting worse.

The bill originally only prevented states from labeling products with GMOs. The version to be considered this week goes a step further, prohibiting state and local governments from protecting the environment and public health from the side effects of the production of GMO crops. The bill also allows companies to make “natural” claims on foods with GMOs and blocks state efforts to prohibit these misleading claims. These are more reasons that clean food advocates call the bill the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act.

“This bad bill just keeps getting worse,” said Mary Ellen Kustin, EWG senior policy analyst. “The DARK Act has always been an infringement upon the well-established rights of states to regulate food labeling, but the most recent versions of the bill takes that overreach to a new level.”

Use of herbicides linked to cancer, especially glyphosate, has exploded alongside the increase in production of GMO crops engineered to withstand the application of these toxic chemicals. In the last 20 years, use of glyphosate, which was recently identified as a probable human carcinogen by the world’s leading cancer researchers, has increased 16-fold.

As glyphosate use has increased, weeds have started to develop resistance to it. In response, Dow Agrosciences has produced Enlist Duo, a combination of glyphosate and another herbicide, 2,4-D, which was recently labeled a possible human carcinogen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of Enlist Duo in 15 states, though the agency has not examined the safety risk of the two active ingredients when combined together.

“Because of the risks to human health posed by the widespread application of herbicides linked to cancer and other terrible diseases, like Parkinsons, of course local governments would want to keep farmers and farmworkers safe from exposure,” said Kustin. “If the federal government isn’t going to protect public health, responsible local officials will want to step up—but the DARK Act wants to make it impossible for them to do so. Backers of the bill keep adding more ways to keep Americans in the dark.”

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==

5/15

Recently introduced legislation (H.R.1599) would prohibit any state efforts to require labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs), overruling legislation already passed in Maine, Vermont and Connecticut as well as bills moving in many other states.¹

That's why I started a petition to the U.S. House of Representatives, which says:

I urge you to reject Representative Mike Pompeo's "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act" (H.R.1599), which would prohibit states from requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods, or GMOs. 

This bill, which is being promoted by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, would prevent states from requiring GMO labels at any time. In fact, this bill is so anti-consumer it is commonly referred to as the "Deny Americans the Right to Know (or DARK) Act."

==

ajority

Minority

K. Michael Conaway

Conaway, K. Michael

(R-TX-11)

Committee Chairman

Collin Peterson

Peterson, Collin C.

(D-MN-7)

Ranking-Member

Randy Neugebauer

Neugebauer, Randy

Vice-Chairman

(TX-19)

Rep. Goodlatte

Goodlatte, Bob

(VA -6) Rep Lucas

Lucas, Frank D.

(OK-3) Steve King

King, Steve

(IA-4)

Mike Rogers

Rogers, Mike

(AL-3) Glenn Thompson

Thompson, Glenn

(PA-5) bob Gibbs

Gibbs, Bob

(OH-7) Austin Scott

Scott, Austin

(GA-8)

Rick Crawford

Crawford, Rick

(AR-1) Scott DesJarlais

DesJarlais, Scott

(TN-4) Christopher Gibson

Gibson, Chris

(NY-19) Vicky Hartzler

Hartzler, Vicky

(MO-4)

Dan Benishek

Benishek, Dan

(MI-1) Jeff Denham

Denham, Jeff

(CA-10) Dough LaMalfa

LaMalfa, Doug

(CA-1) Rodney Davis

Davis, Rodney

(IL-13)

Ted Yoho

Yoho, Ted S.

(FL-3) Jackie Walorski

Walorski, Jackie

(IN-2)

Allen, Rick

(GA-12)

Bost, Mike

(IL-12)

Rouzer, David

(NC-7)

Abraham, Ralph

(LA-5)

Kelly, Trent

(MS-1)

Moolenaar, John

(MI-4)

Newhouse, Dan

(WA-4)

Minority Members

David Scott

Scott, David

(GA-13)

Rep. Costa

Costa, Jim

(CA-16) Rep Lucas

Walz, Timothy J.

(MN-1) Rep Fudge

Fudge, Marcia L.

(OH-11)

Rep. McGovern

McGovern, Jim

(MA-2) Rep DelBene

DelBene, Suzan

(WA-1) Rep. Vela

Vela, Filemon

(TX-34) Rep. Lujan Grisham

Lujan Grisham, Michelle

(NM-1)

Rep. Kuster

Kuster, Ann M.

(NH-2) Rep. Nolan

Nolan, Rick

(MN-8) Rep. Bustos

Bustos, Cheri

(IL-17) Rep. Maloney

Maloney, Sean Patrick

(NY-18)

Rep. Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick, Ann

(AZ-1) Rep Aguilar

Aguilar, Pete

(CA-31) Rep. Plaskett

Plaskett, Stacey

(Virgin Islands) Rep Adams

Adams, Alma

(NC-12)

Rep. Graham

Graham, Gwen

(FL-2) Rep Ashford

Ashford, Brad

(NE-2

U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, or Agriculture Committee is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. The House Committee on Agriculture has general jurisdiction over federal agriculture policy and oversight of some federal agencies, and it can recommend funding appropriations for various governmental agencies, programs, and activities, as defined by House rules.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 History of the Agriculture Committee
• 2 Role of the Agriculture Committee
  • 2.1 Jurisdiction

• 3 Members, 113th Congress
• 4 Subcommittees
• 5 Chairmen since 1820
• 6 References
• 7 See also
• 8 External links

History of the Agriculture Committee[edit]

The Agriculture Committee was created on May 3, 1820, after Lewis Williams of North Carolina sponsored a resolution to create the committee and give agriculturalissues equal weight with commercial and manufacturing interests. The committee originally consisted of seven members, from the states of Maryland, New Hampshire,New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. Thomas Forrest of Pennsylvania was the first chairman. The Agriculture Committee remained a seven-member body until 1835, when two more members were added. It was not until 1871 that the next two members were added. Since then it has gradually grown to its current size of 46 members.

The U.S. Senate counterpart to the House Agriculture Committee, the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, was created on December 9, 1825.

Role of the Agriculture Committee[edit]

The Agriculture Committee is not generally considered to be a particularly powerful one. However, it is an important committee to be on for Representatives from manyrural areas where agriculture is the main industry. The committee has jurisdiction over agriculture, forestry, nutrition, water conservation, and other agriculture-related fields.

Jurisdiction[edit]

As prescribed by House Rules, the Committee on Agriculture's jurisdiction includes the following:

Members, 113th Congress[edit]

Subcommittees[edit]