Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart about the outcome of the election and what it means for the beef industry.
“My first four years at NCBA were the four years of the first Trump administration,” Hart shared. “I’m happy to be back in a position playing offense, working with an EPA that really understands the needs of farmers and ranchers, and will interpret some of these supreme court decisions that we’ve gotten in the last few years in a way that is very workable for agricultural producers across the country.”
In 2018, during Trump’s first tenure in the Whitehouse, he enacted the Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR) which the Biden administration subsequently recalled and replaced with their own. Biden’s version of the rule was vacated by the Supreme Court in the Sackett v. EPA ruling in 2023.
“Looking forward, we have a couple of terms that were in the Sackett decision that need to be effectively defined,” Hart detailed. “EPA has crafted the rule that implements those standards, but they haven’t done the work to define the standards yet.”
The standards she is referring to include continuous surface connection as a concept and the concept of relative permanence. “Those are going to be the two things that WOTUS jurisdiction hinges on, so we are excited to work with the Trump administration to define those terms in the next four years,” she related.
Hart believes that the ultimate task would be getting Congress to delve deeper into WOTUS and provide a statutory definition of it; however, she warned that the last time they tried, the word “navigable” was almost removed from the Clean Water Act, which would have been disastrous.
Like other agricultural entities, the top priority for NCBA is to get a farm bill. Questions surrounding that include whether or not Congress will have to draw up an entirely new farm bill if the one as it currently stands isn’t completed during the lame duck session, and how long will it take if they do. Also, what opportunities might become available if it is rewritten?
“A couple of other things that are going on at EPA: This administration started the process of reviewing the CAFO permit, and I think it is going to be important to continue that process through the Trump administration,” Hart said. “There are a couple of other supreme court decisions that we got in the last few years that we would love to take the opportunity to interpret and apply with this administration and with this EPA.”
Hart feels like the all-important first 100 days of the Trump administration for EPA won’t be livestock-centric, but rather more about chemical use. “We are happy to let those play out in the first few days,” she said. “Our efforts at EPA for this administration, we hope, are going to be very collaborative which means that we have four years to get some good work done. We aren’t in a rush to make things happen at EPA; we want to make sure that whatever rules and guidance documents that we get across the finish line are effective and can stand the test of time.”
When Hays brought up EPA’s strict policies surrounding the Endangered Species Act, Hart asked to shift the focus away from EPA’s application of the ESA to the ESA itself. “Within the last few weeks, this administration finalized a set of ESA rules that are pretty aggressive, but I believe they were done well within the window for the Congressional Review Act to apply, so as far as NCBA is concerned, I do think one of our priorities for the new congress is going to be a review of those ESA rules.”
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
