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05/10/12Jenkins Hill IX● Senator Richard Lugar (R/Indiana) lost his primary reelection race on Tuesday. The senator, age 80, who has capably served in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, was thus denied the chance for another six years in office. While serious public policy differences were involved in Senator Lugar’s defeat, certainly the incumbent’s age had something to do with it. Why in politics do so many officials in their eighties routinely feel the need to actively seek reelection? I think this phenomenon—which is a bipartisan affliction—is a jumble of personal ego (Who could do this job well but me?); fear of the sudden obscurity of retirement; denial of the realities of the human aging process; and, the desire to protect the careers of staffers who have... |
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04/24/12Criminal Apples● The Leonardo Academy, located in Madison, Wisconsin, released on April 19 its draft document for a “National Sustainable Agriculture Standard/LEO-4000.” This latest attempt to define the indefinable is 395 pages in length. Most major agricultural groups walked away from this process over a year ago. ● Walmart, after undertaking a number of high-profile positive public relation initiatives (including one calling for its food suppliers to be “sustainable”) over the last decade intended to counter a slew of labor and image problems, finds itself this week with a new dark cloud overhead. An allegation rolled in from this past Sunday’s New York Times that the giant retailer systematically bribed officials in Mexico in order to expand... |
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04/18/12Unite● The United Fresh Produce Association sent out its ballot for 2012 officers and board members today. This brought to mind whether United might still merge with the Produce Marketing Association. Leaders representing these two major trade associations have been quietly meeting off and on for a number of months. If a deal is to be struck, I would think it might happen around United’s convention in Dallas, set for the first week in May. While I think a merger or consolidation would be a good thing, odds remain against it happening. One major stumbling block involves the future handling and funding of government relations for the nation’s produce industry in Washington, D.C. I think government relations work can be sorted out and would hope an opportunity is... |
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04/10/12Jenkins Hill VIII● Biotechnology continues to be a contentious issue. Of note is a concentrated effort afoot by the Center for Food Safety and other advocacy organizations toward convincing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to require consumer labeling of genetically engineered food. On March 12, a letter signed by fifty-five members of Congress was sent to the commissioner of FDA supporting such a labeling requirement. Those from the Pacific Northwest signing the letter: Senators Ron Wyden (D/Oregon) and Jeff Merkley (D/Oregon), along with Representatives Jim McDermott (D/Washington), Peter DeFazio (D/Oregon), and Earl Blumenauer (D/Oregon). ● The Northwest Horticultural Council is a member of many groups that organize special annual trips to Washington, D.C. As an example, on May 8 and... |
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03/28/12Jenkins Hill VII● Wednesday, January 4, was the day set for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to publish draft rules on produce safety. It still hasn’t happened. Why? The good government reason: the interagency process, as coordinated by the Office of Management and Budget, is now ironing out kinks to the initial and complicated proposals drafted by FDA before they are sent in more polished form to the Federal Register. The cynical political reason: Politically attuned people within the Administration do not want to dump hundreds of pages of new federal regulations on American farmers just months prior to this fall’s presidential election. ● The Super Tuesday primary held in Ohio on March 6 resulted, among many other electoral results, in a defeat for Representative... |
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03/19/12Jenkins Hill VI● Last Tuesday, Mitt Romney announced his agriculture advisory committee, a group co-chaired by Senator Mike Johanns, a former USDA secretary, and Adam Putman, a former member of Congress and now commissioner of Florida’s Department of Agriculture. Interestingly, two men with close ties to Western Growers (a fruit and vegetable trade association in Arizona and California) are on the 11-person committee. Both A.G. Kawamura, a former chairman of WGA, and its current president, Tom Nassif, are backing Mr. Romney. Given that Mr. Putman has a background in Florida’s citrus industry, and Randy Russell, another appointee, currently is a policy advisor to the United Fresh Produce Association, I think the produce industry will have the ear of Mr. Romney should he survive his... |
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03/05/12Jenkins Hill V● Norm Dicks will not be serving in the 113th Congress. On March 2, Mr. Dicks (D/Washington) announced he will not run for reelection this fall and, instead, will retire after 18 terms in the House of Representatives. I have enjoyed working with a string of his very capable legislative assistants over the past three decades. My predecessor, Ernie Falk, knew him from even before, when he served in the 1970s as a top staffer to U.S. Senator Warren Magnusson (D/Washington). While Mr. Dicks represents a political district far away from the orchard lands of Washington, his office has been always welcoming to our industry’s emissaries and open to any justified pleas for help. ● Often a Congressional retirement announcement from one state’s delegation... |
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02/29/12Jenkins Hill IV● A report to Congress was issue in February by the Food and Drug Administration on its foreign office program. Some interesting facts can be gleaned from the report’s bureaucratic prose (“engage more proactively,” “paradigm shift,” “embedding of staff,” “capacity- building”, and so on, and so forth). Examples: There are 300 ports of entry for products entering the United States. While 15 percent of our food is imported, some 50 percent of our fruit is. FDA now has only 13 overseas posts, three of them in China---where a total of eight Americans oversee all food and drug exported to our shores from the Celestial Empire. ● Acronyms can facilitate communication or muddle it. There is no confusion over... |
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02/24/12Jenkins Hill 3● The United Fresh Produce Association held town hall meetings in both Wenatchee and Yakima this week. Two of its staff, Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy, and Dan Vaché, vice president for supply chain management, brought local fruit shippers current on federal policy issues and the status of the Produce Traceability Initiative. Mr. Guenther is based in Washington, D.C., while Mr. Vaché, resisting the siren song of the Capital, resides in Redmond, Washington. ● Western Growers, an association representing produce growers and shippers in Arizona and California, has named Dennis Nuxoll as its new vice president for government affairs in its Washington, D.C., office, replacing Cathy Enright, who left in October to become an executive... |
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02/22/12Jenkins Hill II● A flurry of meetings will be held in Washington, D.C., the week of March 12. I will travel back then to attend gatherings of the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance; the Government Relations Council of the United Fresh Produce Association; the Minor Crop Farmer Alliance; and, finally, the Crop Protection Coalition. This heaped-up pile of meetings is the result of coordination among the various chairmen of these groups, including me, who seek to avoid duplicate travel and attendant expenses of the involved people, many of whom routinely fly to the Capital for such meetings from sites ranging from Florida to the Pacific coast. ●This week, I received word from the federal government that I have been approved for a “secret" security clearance, such being necessary for... Posted at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments: 1 |
