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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Thursday, May 25, 2023
The chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service expressed confidence that the agency could hire the staff it needs to handle a sharp increase in climate-related funding, despite many applicants for soil conservationist positions lacking a key job requirement – a class in soil science.
The House Appropriations Committee this week will takes up an unusually partisan funding bill for the USDA and FDA that highlights some major cuts to spending Republicans would like to make, even as President Joe Biden even as debt ceiling negotiations lurch toward a June deadline.
The Agriculture Department will be distributing $500 million this fiscal year through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which allows the agency to share costs for regional conservation projects with private entities and state governments.
House GOP appropriators proposed Wednesday to slash fiscal 2024 funding for USDA by one-third, in part by eliminating some climate-related funding, restricting Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s use of the Commodity Credit Corp. spending authority and expanding work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is updating the processes for its Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) around appraisals, land surveys and certifying eligible entities that help NRCS and producers enroll land into easements.
House Republican leaders on Wednesday narrowly won approval for their bill to raise the debt ceiling while also slashing federal spending and expanding SNAP work requirements.
House GOP leaders, struggling to shore up Republican support for their debt-ceiling bill, gave in and moved to preserve some, but not all, of the biofuel provisions that would be repealed or scaled back by the legislation.