Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue heads to Capitol Hill this week to face lawmakers eager to hear about progress on the Trump administration’s trade disputes and implementation of the farm bill.

 

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, says he's nearing a deal to settle his trade dispute with China after the latest round of negotiations continued into the weekend. He announced Sunday that he was extending his March 1 for China to reach an agreement or face additional tariffs. "If all works well, we're going to have some very big news over the next week or two," Trump said Sunday night at a dinner with the nation's governors.

 

The Agriculture Department will hold its first listening session on the new farm bill on Tuesday ahead of Perdue’s appearances before the House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday.

 

On Friday, Perdue will be in Orlando, Fla., to speak at the Commodity Classic, the annual meeting of corn, sorghum, wheat and soybean producers.

 

He will also speak in Washington this week to annual meetings of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the School Nutrition Association.

 

The Senate, meanwhile, this week could take up the nomination of Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the EPA, a position he has been filling on an acting basis since Scott Pruitt resigned in July. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., teed up consideration of the Wheeler nomination by filling cloture on it ahead of last week's congressional recess.

 

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved Wheeler’s nomination on a party-line 11-10 vote Feb. 5, and no Democrats other than Joe Manchin III of West Virginia are likely to support him on the floor either. Manchin was the sole Democrat who voted for Wheeler’s nomination as acting administrator who is still in the Senate.

 

USDA officials have yet to provide a timeline for implementing changes to farm bill programs or to even say when farmers will be allowed to change their selection of the main commodity programs for row crops, Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, or when dairy producers will be allowed to sign up for the new Dairy Margin Coverage program, an overhaul of the old Margin Protection Program intended to keep smaller scale operations in business.

 

“There are a lot of moving pieces coming together” in the implementation process, said Bill Northey, USDA’s undersecretary for farm production and conservation programs.

 

Tuesday’s all-day listening session is intended to provide the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Risk Management Agency input on how commodity and conservation programs and crop insurance should operate under the new farm bill. Much of the comment is expected to focus on conservation programs, where the most substantive changes were made.

 

“We have to understand Congress’ intent, and we have to understand how" the programs are "best delivered,” said Northey. “It might be different for somebody who’s looking at a conservation project in Vermont versus Arizona, and we need to be able to hear those suggestions to make sure that the rules are written in a way that works.”

 

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