National wheat board meets, farmers visit Hill

The annual gathering, known as the Wheat Industry Winter Conference, included meetings of all of NAWG’s and USW’s standing committees, two joint committees, both Boards in a joint session and in separate sessions. The National Wheat Foundation Board of Directors also met.

At the conference, the NAWG Board approved the following new resolutions:

• NAWG encourages USDA-[Risk Management Agency] to allow producers the option of having enterprise units cross county and state lines.
• NAWG supports allowing irrigated, limited irrigation and non-irrigated wheat to be insurable within the same insurable unit to be classified as separate [enterprise] units.
• NAWG urges Congress to ensure that in the implementation of the U.S. Patriot Act, producer and custom harvesters retain their 150-mile exemption from their base of operations.
• NAWG supports the exemption of [commercial driver’s licenses] and gallon limitation requirements for custom harvesters and farm suppliers transporting input to and from the farm.
• NAWG encourages the [Surface Transportation Board] to provide for the mediation and arbitration of service and rate disputes.
• NAWG and U.S. Wheat Associates support the inclusion of the ‘WTO-plus’ SPS provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, and we support making these provisions fully enforceable. Read More