By Jenny Hopkinson
03/22/16 10:00 AM EDT
Updated 03/22/16 08:48 AM EDT
With help from Alex Guillen, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Annie Snider and Adam Behsudi
HASTA LUEGO, CUBA: President Barack Obama and his entourage, which includes Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, will wrap up their trip to Cuba today, a visit that has been pretty notable for the agriculture industry. While in Havana, the USDA announced it will allow checkoff and other commodity programs under its purview to spend money in Cuba, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Cuban Agriculture Ministry to better share data on common issues affecting farmers in both countries, and extended an invite for the minister to come to Puerto Rico in May to chat about climate change issues.
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The agreements announced this week “will help U.S. agricultural interests better understand the Cuban market, while also providing the Cuban people with science-based information as they grow their own agriculture sector,” Vilsack said in a statement. However, while U.S. agricultural groups cheered the trip and largely support the opening of the Cuban market, there is some concern that the grand gestures by the president aren’t enough to get Congress to lift the embargo.
“The president’s visit may make for great optics, but when it comes to making changes that will actually benefit the U.S. ag industry in Cuba, the ball is in Congress’ court,” an agriculture industry rep told MA. “The real question: Is the administration doing the legwork to actually move the needle on Capitol Hill? My sense is this visit will just hurt us politically. Many on the Hill feel the administration is not doing enough during this visit to influence changes on the Cuban side, in exchange for easing restrictions.”
HAPPY TUESDAY, MARCH 22! Welcome to Morning Ag, where with all this Cuba talk, your host has quite the hankering for ropa vieja and a mojito. You know the deal: Thoughts, news, tips, Cuban restaurant recommendations in D.C.? Send them to: jhopkinson@politico.com or @jennyhops. Follow the whole team @Morning_Ag.
PERKS OF GOING WITH THE BOSS: Vilsack laid some of the ground work for the president’s trip when he visited Cuba in November, though he told MA that there are perks to taking trips with his boss. When with the president, “you get to do a few more fun things. There was no baseball game the last time I went down there.” Obama and his entourage are scheduled to see the Tampa Bay Rays face off against the Cuban National Team this afternoon.
HAPPY HOURS IN HAVANA: Public relations firm Weber Shandwick is on track to open an office in Cuba after obtaining a special Treasury Department license to do so, according to The Holmes Report, a news service following the communications industry. The firm, whose clients have included Anheuser-Busch InBev, plans to provide counsel for clients doing business legally in Cuba while the trade embargo still remains in place. Read more here.
AND THERE G(M)O-ES ANOTHER ONE: Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy wasn’t kidding when he warned on the Senate floor last week that food companies were ready and waiting to start labeling for GMO foods. Mars went the way of General Mills and Campbell Soup Monday, announcing that it will label all products that contain GMO ingredients in preparation for the July 1 date Vermont’s law goes into effect. And it’s probably safe to expect more to follow. While Campbell’s announcement in January was significant in that it was the first major food company to make the move, General Mills and Mars each double the sales of the soup company, coming in as the 10th and 11th biggest food companies, according to a ranking from the industry magazine Food Processing. Campbell is 25th.
And Leahy is cheering food companies on as they comply with his state’s laws, and using them as an example for why Congress should make labeling mandatory.
“Vermonters have long supported labeling, our fellow Americans agree, and Congress should do the same,” the Democrat said in a statement. “We in Vermont are proud that our state’s law has been the catalyst that is moving us toward a uniform national standard.”
Meanwhile, the phone has been ringing off the hook at the attorney general’s office in Montpelier with food companies seeking clarification on the labeling rules. Attorney General William Sorrell and his staff have been so inundated with questions that they are now declining to respond to email and phone inquiries from companies, the Wall Street Journal reports. “We’re just simply not in a position to answer every single hypothetical question that comes in,” Sorrell reportedly told the paper. Read the full story here.
CLIMATE LEGACY CEMENTED, OBAMA TURNS TO WATER: Whether the Clean Power Plan lives or dies in the courts, President Obama has clearly moved the dial on climate change and alternative energy. Now, in its waning days, his administration is laying the groundwork to encourage the next president to tackle the next big environmental issue: water.
The administration’s approach takes some of the same tools – and some of the same people – it used to make alternative energy more technically and financially viable and is applying them to the country’s big water challenges. The project has been building for months, beginning with a new Natural Resource Investment Center launched by the Interior Department in December, and a big boost for water research, data and planning in its budget blueprint last month.
Today the effort gets the red-carpet treatment at a White House summit featuring private sector, government and academic leaders working on cutting-edge approaches to grappling with drought, flooding and water quality problems. “We need to open the aperture on those who will contribute and invest, innovate and inspire action,” John Holden, Obama’s top science and technology advisory, told reporters yesterday. According to the White House, private companies have committed to invest $1 billion in research and development and $4 billion into infrastructures in the coming decade. The White House also yesterday formalized the National Drought Resilience Partnership to help coordinate and plan the federal government’s work on drought.
McCARTHY TO DEFEND EPA’s BUDGET: Just a few days after she took a drubbing over the Flint water crisis, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will once again enter the lion’s den today when she appears in front of a House Appropriations subcommittee to defend her agency’s budget. Lawmakers may build on last week’s Flint criticisms, but there’s always ample EPA fodder for Republicans to attack — including the Clean Power Plan and other air regulations, Waters of the U.S., water funds, oversight of pesticides that could be related to pollinator declines and ongoing concerns with porn-watchers and other ne’er-do-wells at EPA. Details here.
FORMER EPA PESTICIDE CHIEF TO SERVE ON NAS BIOTECH PANEL: The former head of the EPA’s pesticide program is one of 13 experts selected to serve on the National Academy of Sciences committee tasked with looking at the future of biotechnology and what the federal government will need to know in order to regulate it. Steven Bradbury served as the director of the Office of Pesticide Programs from 2010 until 2014, which marked the end of more than 20 years at the agency. He is currently a professor of environmental toxicology at Iowa State University.
And Bradbury isn’t the only Obama administration alum on the panel: Mary Maxon, who is currently at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2010 until 2013. The full list of committee members is here.
The NAS was tasked with reviewing the future of biotechnology in food and agriculture as part of the administration’s review of the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology, which details agencies rolls in the oversight of genetically engineered plants and animals. The committee’s first public meeting will be held on April 18. Details here.
ORANGE YOU GLAD IT DIDN’T GET WORSE? The outlook is still bad for Florida’s orange growers, but it’s better than it could have been. In the March forecast for the 2015-2016 citrus harvest, the Agriculture Department reports that it expects the orange harvest in the Sunshine State to be just 71 million boxes. While that’s down considerably from the 96 million boxes harvested in the 2014-2015 season, it’s an improvement over the 68 million boxes forecast for 2015-2016 in February. But things are still dire for the industry, which has been ravaged by citrus greening disease. If the USDA’s forecast holds, this harvest will be a little more than half the size of the 2012-2013 haul. The USDA’s latest forecast is here.
WILL FSMA RULES TIGHTEN OVERSIGHT OF IMPORTED POTS PANS? FDA officials aid in a public meeting Monday that new food safety import rules will apply to cookware. How exactly food contact substances will be treated has been somewhat overlooked in the long-running discussion about how Foreign Supplier Verification Programs will work to ensure importers are monitoring the safety of products they bring into the U.S. On top of food for human consumption, the regulation– which is expected to go into effect as soon as the spring of 2017 — will also apply to food packaging and other contact substances.
The big question is what exactly this will mean in practice. Will imported cookware, silverware or cutting boards be covered by FDA’s new food safety import rules? Domenic Veneziano, director of the Division of Import Operations within FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, responded to a question about this on Monday with a pretty definitive answer: “Right now, it falls under FSVP and the requirements will still have to be met.”
INSTANT OATS:
— Eastern monarch butterflies are in danger of extinction and would need a fivefold increase in number to get back to safe levels, according to a new report in Scientific Reports.
— Duke Energy is building a plant in North Carolina to turn methane from hog and poultry waste into energy, The New York Times reports.
— The Iowa Farm Bureau and other commodity groups are picking up the tab for county drainage districts in the state that are defending themselves in a lawsuit over nutrient runoff from the Des Moines Water Works, the Des Moines Register reports.
THAT’S ALL FOR MA! See you again soon! In the meantime, drop your host and the rest of the team a line: cboudreau@politico.com and @ceboudreau; jhopkinson@politico.com and @jennyhops; hbottemiller@politico.com and@hbottemiller; mkorade@politico.com and @mjkorade; and jhuffman@politico.com and @jsonhuffman. You can also follow @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Ag on Twitter.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this alert misstated the number of boxes of oranges harvested in Florida last year and expected this year. The USDA this month is forecasting 71 million boxes in the 2015-2016 citrus harvest, up from the 68 million forecast for the year made last month. In the 2014-2015 season, 96 million boxes were harvested.
About The Author
Jenny Hopkinson covers agriculture and food policy for POLITICO and POLITICO Pro.
Before joining POLITICO, she spent three years at Inside Washington Publishers reporting on the EPA with a focus on chemicals policy, pesticides and water issues. Prior to that, Hopkinson was a reporter for The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times where she followed local governments as they tackled falling tax revenues and stagnating rural development, in addition to playing almost every mini-golf course in Ocean City, Md., in the name of a feature story.
Hopkinson earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Maryland. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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