EPA's Data Sharing Incident a Debacle

By Nebraska Sens. Mike Johanns and Deb Fischer

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adding yet another chapter to the dismal saga of its strained relationship with American agriculture.

Its sordid history of aerial surveillance over ag operations, attempts to regulate farm ponds and ditches and efforts to corral dust clouds are just a few examples of how the agency has actively made life difficult for the folks who dedicate their lives to putting food on the plates of millions of people around the world. But this time, the agency really outdid itself.

Earlier this year, EPA provided information on 80,000 livestock operations to activist groups Earth Justice, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Natural Resources Defense Council in response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The information EPA released was littered with private material, including names, home addresses, personal telephone numbers and employee records—data that should have been protected under federal law. It wasn’t until after this information was released that EPA informed the ag community of the disclosure.

The stunning display of incompetence that followed is bewildering. EPA realized that it had disclosed too much information, attempted to redact the sensitive data, and released a revised version of the information. But EPA once again failed to eliminate all of the private material. The revision still included personal data, which should have never been disclosed under FOIA, on a number of ag producers from Montana and our home state of Nebraska. So EPA had to issue a third version with even more redacted records.

The first release of the information without scrubbing the records of sensitive data protected by federal law was bad; the apparent ineptitude to correct the problem on the first revision was worse, but here’s the real punch line: EPA’s only attempt to rectify its egregious errors has been to simply ask these organizations to return or destroy previous iterations of the information.

Many ag producers have been in the business long enough to know how EPA operates and how relentless these activist groups can be. The horse is out of the barn, and naively asking that sensitive documents be returned is not a solution to the problem EPA manufactured.

EPA now has a real mess to clean up. It should seek sworn statements from each recipient of the information to help prevent the use of the private data which has already been sent and resent. This sensitive data is protected for a reason.

No honest and upstanding ag producer should be subjected to the harassment of activists—some of which have clearly adversarial agendas. This data breach, which publicized home addresses for some producers who aren’t even regulated by EPA, opens the door for unwanted and unwarranted attention from folks with an opposing view of American agriculture. But the implications stretch far beyond ideology.

Since 9/11, the agriculture sector has been especially mindful that our food supply could become a target of terrorists. Releasing sensitive data such as the locations and personnel of ag operations unravels all of the work done to strengthen our biosecurity. The government has an obligation to ensure this material does not fall into the wrong hands. The Department of Homeland Security recently expressed these security concerns to EPA when it was developing a reporting rule for animal feeding operations, which EPA ultimately withdrew. This recent FOIA breach threatens the security of our food supply, suppliers and producers as well as their families.

It’s no secret that EPA has a serious problem with modern ag production. EPA’s former administrator, Lisa Jackson, even acknowledged that her biggest regret at EPA was her poor relationship with rural America. But there is no excuse for reckless management of important private data entrusted to the agency.

This is an opportunity for EPA to improve its relationship with the ag community by taking quick and decisive action to contain this leak and prevent the further use and spread of personal records, starting with requiring recipients to sign sworn statements promising to destroy all copies of the sensitive material. It’s the right thing to do for those hardworking Americans who work tirelessly to feed an ever-growing global population.



Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) is a former Secretary of Agriculture, and current member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and her family own and operate a cattle ranch in the Nebraska sandhills; Fischer is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Beltway Beef Commentary: 2013 Farm Bill, Animal Drug User Fee Act and Immigration

In this week's Beltway Beef audio news, NCBA Executive Director of Government Affairs Kristina Butts talks about recent and upcoming congressional action on immigration, the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA) reauthorization and the farm bill.

Immigration Reform, Border Security Benefits the Beef Industry

By Scott George, NCBA President

NCBA members have made immigration reform one of the organization’s key issues for my term as
president, so I have been pleased to see our elected officials also take it up as a priority. Although we are a long way from final legislation, we are optimistic about what we have seen so far from both the House and Senate. As you know, agriculture relies on a viable year-round workforce for our success. We depend on these workers and so a workable, common-sense, guest worker program is vitally important to our future.

When I was growing up, my father and a lot of neighbors depended on migrant laborers. We would get together as a community to feed and house them and in return the laborers would come and work thinning beets, weeding beans and hauling hay. They were happy to do the job and have the work and when they were done, they went home. We had a viable immigration program and it worked for years. Today we’re down to just a single program for immigrant workers, the H-2A visa program, and quite frankly it’s broken. There are so many hoops and hurdles and restrictions that it just doesn’t work for agriculture or the workers we depend on anymore.

While some in agriculture depend on seasonal guest workers to help with harvest and other short term needs, there are many NCBA members who need year-round help and need it for multiple years. Feedyards, dairies, packing plants and others can’t afford to continuously train new employees. We need laborers who can stay for perhaps three or five years at a stretch before they return home for their touchback to spend time with their families. I truly believe that those laborers want that too. We need stability in our workforce and a labor pool that is here legally so they can be identified and traced and so they can take part in our economy by paying taxes.

Border security is one of the cornerstones of NCBA’s policy on immigration reform and it must be a part of any solution from Congress. Our farmers and ranchers near the border deserve to be safe on their property and secure inside this country. I believe that an effective and workable immigration program that will allow workers to come here and help provide for their families back home will help cut the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border. In turn, we’ll be more effective at halting the flow of people crossing illegally.

Both the House and Senate have unveiled their plans to address the needs of agriculture, both in their own way. The Senate has taken up a comprehensive immigration bill with a border security component. This proposal from the “Gang of Eight” would look to secure the border and provide a non-seasonal guest worker program. In the House, the Agricultural Guestworker Act of 2013 has been introduced. The House guestworker act would replace the impractical H-2A program with the H-2C program, which would be administered by USDA, who understands the needs of agriculture. While it is important to remember that these are only the first steps toward a workable solution and they will be followed up with hearings and mark-ups over the months to come, we believe these are positive steps forward toward sensible immigration reform.

We’re supporting and expecting Congress to reform immigration programs to work for agriculture. What we want is a workable program that provides the stability and flexibility we need as an industry to ensure immigrant laborers are available when they are needed. Immigrant labor has been and will continue to be a vital part of our nation’s food security and I would urge each of you to call your elected officials in Washington, D.C., and explain why we need immigration reform to address the needs of year-round workers now.

Beltway Beef Commentary: 2013 Farm Bill

In this week's Beltway Beef audio broadcast, NCBA Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall discusses the timeline for the 2013 Farm Bill and NCBA’s priorities for this legislation.

FUELS Act Will Provide Relief from Overreaching EPA Regs

By Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.)

When I talk to farmers and ranchers who run small operations in my congressional district in
Arkansas, they consistently tell me how regulations from Washington hurt their bottom line. When I ask them which agency seems to impose the most oppressive regulations, I always get the same answer:  the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 2003, the EPA quietly passed a rule requiring farmers and ranchers to prepare a spill containment plan for oil products stored on their property. The program, commonly referred to as the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) program, requires oil storage facilities with a capacity of more than 1,320 gallons to make costly infrastructure improvements to reduce the possibility of oil spills. The regulations require farmers to construct a containment facility such as a dike or a basin. These mandated infrastructure improvements – along with required inspection and certification by a specially licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) will cost many farmers tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes compliance costs reach higher than $60,000 for some farmers in my district.

To combat this intrusive and unrealistic regulation, I have introduced the Farmers Undertake Land Stewardship (FUELS) Act. The FUELS Act is simple; it revises the SPCC regulations to be reflective of a producer’s spill risk and financial resources. The exemption level would be adjusted upward from an unworkable 1,320 gallons of oil storage to an amount that would protect small farms:  10,000 gallons. The proposal would also place a greater degree of responsibility on farmers and ranchers to self-certify compliance if their oil storage facilities exceed the exemption level. Although the House of Representatives passed the FUELS Act in 2012 without a single dissenting vote, the bill stalled in the Senate. I look forward to renewing efforts to pass this bipartisan bill before the EPA imposes the SPCC rules, which is set for the beginning of the new fiscal year in October.
The SPCC program dates back to 1973, shortly after the Clean Water Act was signed into law. In the last decade the rule has strictly come down on agriculture and been amended, delayed and extended dozens of times. The Obama administration updated the rule in 2009 to make the SPCC program more burdensome than ever before – applying to nearly all farms, and lifting a 2006 rule that suspended compliance requirements for small farms with oil storage of 10,000 gallons or less. It applied to crop oil, vegetable oil, animal fat and even milk.

The FUELS Act will provide much needed regulatory relief and save farm families thousands of dollars they can use to invest in their businesses. The University of Arkansas conducted a study that concluded the FUELS Act could save up to $240 million in Arkansas alone. For the entire country, it could save farmers and ranchers up to $3.36 billion. By nature of occupation, family farmers are already careful stewards of the land and water. No one has more at stake to protect the environment than those who derive their livelihood from working the land. When Washington bureaucrats, many of whom have never set foot on a farm, decide to enact new regulations, they should not do so without talking to the best stewards of our land - the farmer.



Congressman Rick Crawford represents Arkansas’s First Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Crawford serves on the Agriculture Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. On the Agriculture Committee, Crawford is Chairman of the Livestock, Rural Development and Credit Subcommittee. Congressman Crawford and his wife Stacy live in Jonesboro with their two children.