The Hardwood Federation produces a “D.C. Cheat Sheet” newsletter to keep the industry up-to-date on the latest news from Washington D.C. Check out the June 18th edition below and sign up to receive your copy.
Senate Releases Farm Bill Text: Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) released draft text of his legislation reauthorizing the Farm Bill. The Chairman hopes to markup the bill in the few weeks between the July 4 and August Congressional recesses. The bill largely mirrors the House-passed product (the Farm, Food and National Security Act—H.R. 7567) that was approved April 30 and includes a number of Hardwood Federation policy priorities. Among them are:
- Reauthorization of the Wood Innovation and Community Wood Grant programs. On WIG, the bill reduces the non-federal dollar for dollar matching requirement to 50 percent. It also updates priorities for grants to include the use or retrofitting of existing sawmill facilities, the enhancement of carbon reduction strategies and resilience and economic benefits associated with wood products.
- Amends the Rural Innovation Stronger Economy (RISE) program to specifically include forestry and forest products. This language essentially captures the Jobs in the Woods Act (JWA), which would provide grants of between $500,000 and $2milllion to stand up job training and career pathway programs tailored to careers in sawmilling, logging or other forestry and forest products sector jobs. RISE is structured similarly to JWA but currently does not include our sector. This language rectifies that situation and will provide needed workforce development assistance for our mills.
- Includes a binding biomass carbon neutrality provision requiring the Department of Agriculture to assign a greenhouse gas emissions factor of no more than zero to any policy related to combustion of forest-based biomass for energy. The Hardwood Federation, working with our value chain partner, hopes to expand upon this provision to include an “all of government” approach to this important and legally binding carbon neutrality language.
- Reauthorizes the Bioenergy Program for Advanced Biofuels through 2031. This direct payment program incentivizes wood pellet production as “advanced biofuel” is defined in the law as including wood pellets. Producers simply report their tonnage to USDA on a quarterly basis and receive fairly lucrative payments.
- The bill updates the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program to improve national forest data collection and requires, as a data collection method, a timber products output survey and woodland owner survey. The language requires USDA to annually report inventory and analysis of timber within our national forests. Finally, the bill establishes an expert “Blue Ribbon” panel to review FIA to evaluate its effectiveness and provide recommendations for improvement.
The Hardwood Federation will continue to work on passage of a final Farm Bill.
Rep. Rose Amendment Supporting U.S. Hardwood: Following the meeting with industry leaders during the Hardwood Federation Fly-In, Rep. John Rose (R-TN) submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 8800) directing the Secretary of Agriculture, in coordination with the U.S. Trade Representative, to submit a report to Congress within one year on the importance of the domestic hardwood industry to supply chain resilience, transportation networks, and rail infrastructure, as well as key threats to its long-term viability. This builds upon the work the Federation did a few years ago to ensure that U.S. red oak was approved by the Department of Defense for use in military truck beds. We will work with the Rose team as they move forward.
Source: Hardwood Federation