Harris' Ag Policy Views Uncertain
Published: Friday, July 26, 2024
The following is from Ryan Hanrahan, farm policy news editor for the University of Illinois.
Politico's Grace Yarrow reported Monday that "after Joe Biden's bombshell announcement Sunday afternoon, a number of DNC delegates and other top Democrats—including the president himself—quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the top of the ticket. The vice president's track record as a California attorney general, U.S. senator and Biden's second-in-command gives us limited clues about how she might lead. Though her native California ranks first in agricultural production, Harris hasn't been too vocal on any federal ag policy."
Politico Staff reported this past weekend that "as California's attorney general, Harris aligned with the state's voters' aggressive positions on animal welfare laws. Those included appealing a federal ruling that struck down California's ban on the sale of foie gras. She also defended state laws that said eggs sold in California must come from free-range or similarly humanely raised hens."
"But in 2022, Biden's Justice Department backed a move to block a new California livestock welfare law," Politico reported. "His administration filed a brief to back two major agriculture groups' challenge of the California law. The Supreme Court ultimately allowed it to stand."
However, "Harris' past position on the matter could put her at odds with politically powerful agriculture groups, including in key swing states," Politico reported. "Many of those groups are still trying to overturn the California animal welfare law, which dictates how farmers elsewhere in the country can raise pigs and other animals destined to be sold inside the state's borders."
United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said in a statement on Sunday that "the United Farm Workers endorses Vice President Kamala Harris as the best leader to defeat Donald Trump and to continue the transformative work of the Biden-Harris administration."
"The Biden-Harris administration has worked tirelessly on behalf of farm workers, from championing state legislation to strengthen farm workers' right to join a union, to ensuring undocumented essential workers were eligible for COVID vaccines and relief payments, to working to raise wages and increase legal protections in the exploitative H2A agricultural guest worker system, to proposing the nation's first ever federal standards to protect farm workers from dying during extreme temperatures," Romero said. "President Biden deserves the gratitude and respect of all Americans for his lifelong service to our country and his fierce dedication to working people across America."
Politico's Liz Crampton, Zack Colman, Meredith Lee Hill, Robin Bravender, Daniel Payne and Declan Harty reported that "large group text chains of alarmed USDA staff started to light up the night of Biden's disastrous debate, as administration officials shared their panic over the president and the future of his administration, according to two current USDA officials and one former Biden USDA official."
"Some USDA staff are now openly talking with colleagues about making plans to leave their posts early, according to the three current and former USDA officials," the Politico reporters wrote. "'One set of folks that seem to be the most concerned and bewildered would be the civil servants within USDA, who have endured so much and that really went out of their way to carry out the Biden rural agenda,' said one of the USDA officials. 'Those are the folks that really seemed to be like, do they stay or do they go? Because they just cannot endure another phase of uncertainty.'"
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