800 326 9054The new year promises more regulatory changes for farmers as the second Trump administration goes back to the drawing board on some of the same issues it dealt with in its first term.
The administration likes to move fast, as shown by its willingness to implement the deferred resignation program, which along with retirements and other departures contributed to USDA shedding about 18,000 jobs.
It also has announced a reorganization scheduled for implementation this year, which will relocate about 2,000 employees from Washington, D.C., headquarters to five regional hubs, in Raleigh, N.C.; Kansas City, Mo.; Salt Lake City; Fort Collins, Colo. and Indianapolis.
However, regulatory changes are by their nature slower to implement, since there are administrative rules requiring a reasonable time to comment and fulsome consideration of those comments. Then, of course, once rules are in place, those opposing them can go to court.
Such is the case with the “waters of the U.S.” definition, which is undergoing yet another rewrite. Definitions crafted by the Obama, Biden and Trump I administrations were all challenged in court, leaving a divided regulatory regime in the 50 states.
The latest proposal from EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers seeks to provide certainty and clarity to landowners, particularly farmers who have struggled with standards that have shifted based on who was in the White House.
The current administration is moving more quickly to adopt a newer definition than the first Trump administration was able to, issuing a proposal in November that attempts to incorporate the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision from 2023. That decision said “adjacent wetlands” should only be considered to be under federal jurisdiction if they are “indistinguishable” from waters clearly covered by the Clean Water Act.
The comment period ended Monday. Although there’s no set deadline for issuing a new rule, the administration is expected to try to finalize new regulations this year.
Here are some more issues federal agencies are working on as 2026 begins.
Front-of-pack labeling
The Trump administration is dispensing with a major issue when it comes to nutrition by releasing the new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans this week, but there is a another major issue facing the Food and Drug Administration.
Just before the end of the Biden administration, FDA proposed a rule that would require a Nutrition Facts label with information on certain nutrients – sodium, saturated fats and added sugars. The agency also has proposed amending certain nutrient content claim regulations “to align with current nutrition science and avoid within-label inconsistencies,” the agency said in a summary of the proposal.
Consumer and health groups are generally in favor of the proposal, while food industry groups have expressed opposition. The comment period has ended, and FDA has projected that a final rule will be issued in May, according to its Unified Agenda, whose predictions are often overly optimistic.
Labor
Getting a “fix” for the ag labor situation has been a farm industry goal for a long time, but despite some rumblings about a bipartisan legislative solution, there’s no indication Congress will deal with anything related to immigration. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act has been reintroduced in the House, three years after it died in the Senate after House passage, but the announced retirement of co-sponsor Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., could make passage this time around an even tougher lift.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department has issued an interim final rule now in effect that recalculates the adverse effect wage rate, lowering H-2A wage rates for guest workers. That rule is in litigation, and a hearing on a motion for an injunction to stop the rule has been set for Jan. 22 in federal court in California. United Farm Workers is the lead plaintiff.
Biofuels
The renewable fuels industry is anxiously awaiting EPA’s announcement of the latest round of blending rules, or renewable volume obligations (RVOs), which had been slated for release by the end of the year but are now expected any day. In addition, the Treasury Department is reviewing guidance to implement the 45Z tax credit encouraging biofuel production.
“We hope it doesn’t slip much further,” Joe Jobe, CEO of the Sustainable Advanced Biofuel Refiners, said. His group and others are pushing Congress to pass a temporary return of the $1-a-gallon biodiesel credit that 45Z replaced last year.
As rewritten by Congress in July, the 45Z credit would not grant any credits for renewable fuels made using ingredients outside of North America. The proposed RVOs would reduce by 50% the value of biofuel credits, known as Renewable Identification Number, generated to track Renewable Fuel Standard compliance for fuels made with ingredients outside of the United States.
Glyphosate/pesticides
EPA continues to review the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as the chemical goes through the registration review process. But the most closely watched issue in the new year will be whether the Supreme Court grants a petition filed by Bayer that seeks to ensure that the federal pesticide label is, essentially, the law of the land.
The court asked the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in, and the government sided with Bayer in a filing last month. The question presented by the company, the main manufacturer of Roundup, is whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act “pre-empts a state-law failure-to-warn claim where EPA has repeatedly concluded that the warning is not required and the warning cannot be added to a product without EPA approval.”
Bayer has spent billions to settle thousands of lawsuits filed by plaintiffs claiming that exposure to Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, more than 100,000 such cases remain, and the “continuing overhang of these lawsuits threatens [Bayer’s] ability to continue to supply glyphosate to farmers who need it to remain world leaders in food production,” according to the company’s Supreme Court petition.
*Sourced from Agri-Pulse.