Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Presses AG Sec. Brooke Rollins On Ensuring 'Guaranteed Market Access' For Small Farmers

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-WA) spoke about 'regulatory burden' imposed on small farmers.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Gluzenkamp-Perez. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you,

00:05Secretary, for being here. Thank you. So I represent Southwest Washington. We're a big

00:10shellfish, timber, and we have a lot of small and very small farms. Average size is about 60 acres.

00:20Filberts, blueberries, some dairy still. And it is in many ways, like, we have persisted in

00:29these smaller farms not being consolidated. People really working to try to get food to

00:36their communities. And I guess one of the things that I've heard from some of my shellfish growers,

00:42you know, they've suffered terribly under a regulatory burden, you know, doing anything

00:47in water, right? It's been difficult for them. But during these reductions in forests, during the

00:54Doge, what they told me was that, look, they fired the guy that does our water quality testing,

00:59but they still have somebody tweeting. They still have a comms director. Could you talk to me about

01:04how you're, you know, who has this been? Like, where are we going? Right. No, I would be happy to. And

01:10in fact, I'm happy, so excited to use my chart. I wasn't sure I was going to get to use that. But I

01:15think it's important, my handy dandy chart here. When we left before the last administration came in,

01:21USDA was staffed at about 97,000 employees. In the last four years, when we came back, we were closer

01:27to 113,000 employees. So the staffing up in the last administration using mostly IRA and IIJA

01:36funding, the infrastructure and the Inflation Reduction Act money that was supposed to be

01:41spent over 10 years was actually, under Secretary Vilsack, infused in a massive amount as the staffing

01:49up happened and happened and happened. And you can see it was absolutely unsustainable. We don't

01:54and can't keep up the money. To answer your question, though, to be fair, on the FSA side

01:58and the specific offices, we are going office by office. So if you and if your farmers are in a

02:04position where you've got a comms person, but you don't have anyone that's interacting with those

02:08farmers, would you please let us know and let us work to solve for that? I think that as we move

02:14forward, the intentionality of what we are doing becomes more hyper-focused on those priority areas,

02:19as I mentioned at the beginning of the hearing. And that's important.

02:22It does feel, to a lot of us, like it is not addressing this balance of work boots to clipboards,

02:30of spreadsheets to work boots.

02:32Well, that's why we need your partnership.

02:34And, you know, people say, well, I don't know why these loggers can't trust the, you know,

02:38trust the science. Well, because in living memory, we were told to, you know, bring a bulldozer to the

02:45stream beds, take all the woody debris out. And now they're, you know, now they're helicoptering in

02:50root wads when we don't have air conditioning in our schools, when we haven't had SRS reauthorized.

02:55They're firing all the paraeducators. They're still tweeting.

02:59Like, well, no one's been fired, but I hear you. And these are the sort of stories that we need

03:04to hear. And that would be really, really helpful. And I know we've worked on timber a lot,

03:09which hopefully your smaller timber guys can feel some positivity from that, but would love to

03:14continue that conversation. You know, it's, it's, we have fought hard. And, and I, one of the most

03:19haunting memories I have from being, you know, I used to run an auto repair shop. This is new to me.

03:24And, and the, the most haunting memory was a, as a farmer, he's like a grown man, like crying,

03:30starting to cry. Like, I don't know if I can get this farm to the fifth generation.

03:36And like the, the, the suicide rate, like, I think there's a lot of useless metrics.

03:41And I think one metric I would really ask you to focus on is, is the suicide rate going down?

03:45Mental health.

03:46It's three and a half times higher than any other population.

03:50What the fuck are we doing?

03:52Other than veterans, you're right. Our veterans and our farmers.

03:55It's, it is, um, it's profound. And I think what I hear is that, why is it so difficult for me to

04:02just sell school food to the school? My smaller schools, they can't go through the regulatory

04:07burden of, of getting in those programs. Um, what my farmers want is guaranteed market access. They

04:14want to be able to know that they can grow real food and, and bring it to our schools. And a lot of

04:19these programs, we're starting to crack that door open. And as you're rebuilding, like the bigger

04:24question has to be like, can people just do the thing that's right? Do we, are we, are we, are we

04:30empowering our farmers to stand up to the consolidation, to stand up to the foreign land

04:34ownership and just be able to sell food to their schools? I agree. I agree with that. Really

04:39quickly though on the, the local food, because I think it's important that when that money was

04:44pulled back, your state of Washington has 7 million of $11 million left in that fund. And so part of

04:50the reason that that was really became a conversation piece and a part of the decision making is because

04:56many of the states, not Maine, but many of the states had so much money left, they couldn't

05:00spend it quickly enough. And so while we're looking at the $405 million a day, we're spending

05:06in nutrition just from USDA, there's got to be a better way to balance the taxpayer interest

05:11with the interest that you just outlined. So I look forward to working on that. Hopefully

05:15expanding the markets worldwide will help, but understanding with your local farmers, these

05:20programs and, and continuing to build those partnerships with local and state help is really

05:24important. Thank you.

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