Posted June 17, 2014
Agriculture
Commissioner Doug Goehring announced the formation of a regulatory review
committee to help farmers and ranchers address the increasing load of federal
regulations, according to a Farm & Ranch Guide article available here.
A previous blog post on the Clean Water Act federal regulations is available here.
“Agricultural
producers are being swamped with federal regulations that impact their
operations, increase their costs and reduce their profits,” Goehring said. “I
have asked the state’s agricultural organizations and commodity groups to
appoint representatives to the committee to study and review proposed
regulations with the goal of addressing concerns and defending the agriculture
industry.”
Goehring
also stated that farmers and ranchers must comply with rules from several
federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of the Interior,
and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The
committee will provide input to the North Dakota Department of Agriculture to
construct comments on proposed federal and state rules before they are
implemented.
“Committee
members bring to the table knowledge about specific sectors of our agriculture
industry,” Goehring said. “Some, perhaps most, will also be farmers and
ranchers themselves with firsthand knowledge of regulatory impacts.”
The
meetings and deliberations will be open to the public, and the first meeting
will be held in July or August.
For more information on the Clean Water Act, please visit
the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
