South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds attended Dakotafest in Mitchell on Wednesday. He says talk from producers was mainly about the Farm Bill itself, which will likely have an extension from September 30 until the end of the calendar year. “The House is moving along,” Rounds says. “The Senate clearly is moving fairly quickly along, and the authorization that comes with this is for those programs that make up the safety net that is found within the Farm Bill: the crop insurance, the commodity programs, and so forth.”
About 70 percent of the Farm Bill is nutrition, including the SNAP program for those who need food assistance. The other 30 percent goes into the farm production area. Rounds says the major hangup on completing the Farm Bill will be its cost, which is expected to be around $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. $1.2 trillion is for the SNAP program. $300 billion will be the actual Farm Bill itself for producers.
The senator says he is hopeful that a country-of-origin labeling amendment is added to the Farm Bill. He says it has been a deceptive practice in the past. “For the last 20 years, the Department of Ag has allowed people from outside of the United States to use this ‘Product of the USA’ label and bring in meat, and as long as they repackage it, they’d let them put a ‘Product of the USA’ label on it,” Rounds says. “That’s false advertising, and both consumers and producers were agitated with that. We’ve introduced legislation that would put into law that they can’t do that anymore, and that if they’re going to use that voluntary label, it is born in the US, fed in the US, processed in the US, and finally harvested in the US.” Rounds added that the Department of Ag said that they would voluntarily change it, but he wants it placed into law.
Senator Rounds, Senator John Thune, and Representative Dusty Johnson participated in a US Congressional Forum at Dakotafest on Wednesday. Today is the final day of Dakotafest.