Evening Report | June 9, 2021
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Back to the drawing board on waters of the U.S. definition… Confirming ag sector fears, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today it plans to revise the definition of U.S. waterways that can be regulated after completing a review directed by President Joe Biden. Farmers and ranchers breathed a sigh of relief when former President Donald Trump rolled back the onerous Obama-era waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule that many in the sector deemed a federal land grab and overly restrictive, replacing it with the Navigable Waters Protection Rule. But the Biden EPA says the Navigable Waters Protection Rule “significantly” reduced clean water protections,” citing western drought. The Department of Justice will request a remand of the rule.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan says his department and the Army Corps of Engineers intend to “initiate a new rulemaking process that restores the protections in place prior to the 2015 WOTUS implementation and develops a new rule to establish a durable definition of "waters of the United States."
Additional details will be forthcoming, including the opportunity for public participation, according to EPA.
IKAR raises Russian wheat and corn crop forecasts... The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) raised its Russian corn crop forecast by 600,000 MT, pegging the crop at 15.1 MMT, according to the news agency Interfax. “The forecast has been raised due to the fact that areas under corn are approaching record highs and the conditions for crop growth are good,” IKAR CEO Dmitry Rylko told the news organization. Last year’s corn crop totaled 13.9 MMT.
Rylko also reported that IKAR added 500,000 MT to its wheat crop forecast that now stands at 80 MMT, citing improvement in crops in Russia’s southern and central federal districts.
Unions press Biden on biofuel mandate costs... Labor leaders are pressing Biden to waive a U.S. mandate to blend ethanol with gasoline in response to requests from governors, mayors and others. “Action is urgently needed to reduce the skyrocketing cost” of biofuel compliance credits “and preserve American union jobs,” labor union heads wrote in a June 2 letter to Biden. High costs for ethanol credits used to track blending compliance are slowing refinery upgrade projects, they said. The credits, known as RINs, have more than doubled since the start of the year, and traded Tuesday at all-time high of $1.97, according to Jordan Fife, trading manager at BioUrja Trading LLC in Texas. Biofuel advocates say refiners have the option to invest in more blending infrastructure and generate their own RINs.
Vilsack: USDA may take second look at GIPSA, other regulations to ensure fairness in ag markets… “Many socially disadvantaged and small and mid-sized producers do not have equitable access to markets,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “USDA will support new and expanded access to markets for a diversity of growers while helping eaters access healthy foods,” Vilsack said. He indicated the effort could include a new look at regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act, which might include the Undue Preferences rule promulgated under the Trump administration. Cattle producers are increasingly upset as beef values have surged while prices they received for livestock barely budged, a pattern they argue is now all-too-familiar. Six cattle and farm groups last month united behind demands for action to help level the playing field.
Tyson targets net-zero emissions by 2050, but efforts to date have fallen well short of goals… Tyson Foods set a goal or reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050. To do so, Tyson says it plans on U.S. operations using 50% renewable energy by 2030. It also plans to extend a program to verity sustainable production practices for cattle. This effort represents an expansion of the company’s previous plans to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030.
This comes against the backdrop of Tyson promising three years prior to improve environmental practices on 2 million acres of U.S. farmland by 2020. So far, just 408,000 acres have been enrolled in a 2019 pilot program by Farmers Business Network. Tyson was also involved with MyFarms, but it discontinued that pilot this year due to a lack of data. Tyson now plans to hit its 2 million-acre target by 2025. Two million acres is enough land to grow and feed all Tyson chickens for a year.
Arkansas court alters dicamba deadline… Soybean and cotton growers in Arkansas are free to spray dicamba on their crops until June 30 under an order from the Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday. This overrode a temporary restraining order from the Pulaski County Circuit Court that had effectively made May 25 the cutoff date for dicamba application during the growing season.
IRS is investigating the release of tax information of wealthy Americans, including Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett… U.S. officials said Tuesday the Treasury Department has asked law enforcement authorities to investigate the disclosure of tax records cited in a media report that showed that some of America’s richest people paid little to no income taxes. ProPublica said it obtained “a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.” The data “indicated that billionaires including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla founder Elon Musk paid no federal income taxes during some years.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that “any unauthorized disclosure of confidential government information” is illegal, and Treasury spokesperson Lily Adams said in an emailed statement that the matter has been referred to the FBI, federal prosecutors and two internal Treasury Department watchdogs, “all of whom have independent authority to investigate.”
The New York Times reports the ProPublica analysis “showed that the nation’s richest executives paid just a fraction of their wealth in taxes — $13.6 billion in federal income taxes on $401 billion of their wealth, which was tabulated by Forbes.” The NYT says “the documents and the conclusions of the analysis could renew calls for Biden to consider a wealth tax, given that a higher marginal tax rate would do little to raise the tax bills of the 25 richest Americans.”
The Wall Street Journal is an opinion item wrote: “The story arrives amid the Biden administration’s effort to pass the largest tax increase as a share of the economy since 1968. The main Democratic argument for a tax hike is that the rich should pay their ‘fair share.’ The ProPublica story is a long argument that somehow the rich don’t pay enough. The timing here is no coincidence, comrade. Someone at the IRS — or someone who hacked the IRS — leaked the documents to influence the debate in Congress. And right on time, Ron Wyden, the Senate’s chief tax writer, opened a Finance Committee hearing Tuesday by mentioning the ProPublica data dump. ‘What this data reveals is that the country’s wealthiest—who profited immensely during the pandemic — have not been paying their fair share,’ Mr. Wyden said. ‘I’ll have a proposal to change that.’ You can bet he will.” Find more details.
