Podcasts about boozman

This week's Open Mic guest is Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman. The Arkansas Republican says updating farm programs under budget reconciliation won't be easy but is a way forward to update risk management tools for farmers. Boozman believes SNAP program funds can be cut without reducing benefits for those in need and discusses President Trump's tariff tactics to bring better trade relationships for farmers and industry.

On today's program: Burgess Owens, U.S. Representative for Utah's 4th District, reacts to the Trump administration's decision to freeze federal funding for Harvard University over its pattern of anti-Semitism. John Boozman, U.S. Senator from

Chief of Staff to Senator John Boozman (R-AR), Toni-Marie Higgins, returns to Madam Policy to discuss leadership and policy priorities in the new political climate of the Republican Trifecta. Hot topics include the reauthorization of the important Farm Bill as Chairman Boozman takes gavel of the Senate Agriculture Committee; the role of bipartisanship in the new Congress; and tackling policies related to crypto and digital currencies. Hosts and proud Arkansans Dee Martin and Shelby Kelley sit down with Toni-Marie to talk about her career journey to Chief of Staff and her advice to younger staffers looking to move up in their careers. Want to hear about Toni-Marie's work co-leading and mentoring other female chiefs of staff in the Senate? Then tune in!

Republicans will take control of the Senate in January, making John Boozman chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. We asked him about his plans for the committee, including collaborating with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who's in line to be the ranking member, and how Donald Trump's cabinet nominees may influence agriculture.Then, Laura Wood from LWP Consulting and Invariant's Danielle Beck discuss the contentious House Ag Committee ranking member race and the future of the farm bill in a new Congress.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Inside Agriculture Segment 3

On Veterans Day we celebrate our military from every service and every generation. Freedom requires people of character to stand up for America…no matter the challenge. This Veterans Day, the Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance outside of Bentonville, Arkansas. Dedicated to providing our transitioning service members with the skills needed to build careers in health and fitness, and as entrepreneurs, UHP is leading the way in showing private industry just how valuable our Veterans will be for the next generation of America. While at UHP, Fran Racioppi spent some time with Senator John Boozman, an Arkansas native and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations. Senator Boozman is the son of an Air Force Master Sergeant and has made national security a top priority of his service.The Senator and Fran discussed his initiatives to improve quality of life for service members and their families, why building world class facilities is critical to recruiting, and how national security is the foundation of a strong economy. They also shared why all leaders need to bring the country together to get things done for the American people.HIGHLIGHTS0:00 Introduction1:50 Welcome to the University of Health and Performance2:37 Veterans Day in Arkansas4:52 Modernization of military infrastructure6:46 Investing for the next fight 8:13 Senate priorities post election11:53 Bringing America togetherQUOTES“Creating an atmosphere that allows us to keep Veterans right here in Arkansas is a great thing.”“We want this to be the best place for Veterans to call home.”“Having women in leadership I think is absolutely critical to the long term success of our county.”“We have to focus on things everybody can agree on and things that lift our country up.”“Remember where the enemies are; and it's not within our own country."Watch, listen or read all our Veterans Day coverage from UHP. The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of the guests and the host. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy.

Arkansas Senator John Boozman says leaders have a mandate from voters to deliver a better American economy. Boozman feels the urgency to help farmers and ranchers financially to secure financing for the new crop year. 

Secretary of State disqualifies marijuana ballot issue; Plumerville to hold annual reunion this weekend; local playwright's 'Killing Time' to be presented as dinner theatre at Rialto Arts Center; Senator Boozman says lawmakers need to work together to avoid year-end shutdown; undefeated MHS football team ranked in top 5 in class 5A; we talk with Felicia Davenport with the Cleveland Community Park project.

Arrest made in Conway shooting; Boozman discusses new fire department restrictions; Koontz Electric passes another safety milestone; Petit Jean Cemetery to present 'Ghostly Halloween' event; new fire chief working to lower ISO ratings countywide; MHS gets conference opening Homecoming win to improve to 4-0; we talk with Diane Barnes and Gladys Maltbia about 'Women To Women Table Talk.'

Delegates, elected officials, farmers, and industry representatives gathered in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week. We dove into discussions about trade, immigration, and energy proposed in the GOP platform that could change the policy landscape after the November election.Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's 2016 campaign manager and also his former counselor, joined the show to discuss the role rural voters could play in the 2024 election. She also shared her perspective on action Trump could take as president to balance trade, including potentially providing a bailout for farmers similar to his last presidency if retaliatory tariffs impact ag markets.Then, House Ag Committee Chair Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson and Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman join the show together to discuss their outlook on what a Trump-Vance administration could mean for agriculture. They look forward to the opportunity for a changing  regulatory environment for agriculture and immigration reform.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

House Ag Committee Chair and Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member react to the FY 2023 SNAP Payment Error Rate, and The National Cattlemen's Beef Association welcomes SCOTUS decision that reins in the legal concept of Chevron deference.

Senate Ag ranking member John Boozman laid out his framework for a new farm bill this week, but the bill crosses some red lines for Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. She joins us on this week's episode of Agri-Pulse Newsmakers to give her reaction to Senator Boozman's proposal as well as her thoughts on the future of the bill.Then, Anne MacMillan with Invariant and Sam Kieffer with the American Farm Bureau Federation talk about the prospects of passing a farm bill before the end of the year with the partisan divide in Congress.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

We welcome Sen. John Boozman back to the studio for an update on the farm bill, including his thoughts on the likelihood Congress will pass one in 2024. Sen. Boozman also shares some priorities he and his colleagues have for the framework of the legislation and we even find out what's on the menu for his family's Easter celebration.

SummaryJoin host James Bell in this special episode of The Bentonville Beacon podcast featuring interviews with students from Bentonville Schools's Ignite Professional Studies Program. These conversations were live-recorded at the 2023 Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit, where the students were exposed to innovators, creators and leaders reshaping the world. At the start of the show, James also sits down with the program's Director, Jessica Imel, to learn how Ignite helps juniors and seniors gain valuable work-based experience, industry-valued credentials and high-quality classroom instruction across nine different career fields. Ignite Professional Studies upholds its commitment to excellence by creating a real, relevant learning environment that helps students make informed decisions about their futures and prepares them for challenges and opportunities ahead. This nationally recognized program represents the collaboration of education, business and community to provide students with unique and immersive involvement that results in highly skilled, adaptable global innovators and leaders. Tune in now to discover how one of Bentonville's unique educational programs is shaping tomorrow's leaders today!Show Notes(1:46) Introducing Jessica Imel(3:39) About Ignite Professional Studies Program(6:23) Jessica's #BecauseBentonville Story(8:06) What's Next for Ignite(11:12) Advice for Learning New Skills(12:20) Introducing Kaushal Dhumal(12:43) Kaushal's Project with the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce(14:43) Kaushal's Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit Experience(15:43) Kaushal's #BecauseBentonville Story(17:21) Introducing Sarthak Chaturvedi(17:55) Sarthak's Experience with Ignite Health Sciences(19:32) Sarthak's Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit Experience(20:47) Sarthak's #BecauseBentonville Story(23:11) Introducing Aditya Sohaney(26:54) Aditya's Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit Experience(28:13) Aditya's #BecauseBentonville Story(29:57) Introducing Praneel Vakkalagadda(32:37) Praneel's Experience with Ignite Health Sciences(35:25) Pranee's #BecauseBentonville Story(36:57) Closing ThoughtsLinksJames BellBentonville Economic Development Northwest Arkansas Technology SummitJessica ImelBentonville SchoolsIgnite Professional StudiesKaushal DhumalSarthak ChaturvediAditya SohaneyPraneel VakkalagaddaQuotes“One year ago, the chamber offered us some complimentary tickets to the NWA Tech Summit, and it was over fall break so we weren't hosting class, but we offered this opportunity to students. We had a couple of students who took us up on it, even though it was fall break, and listened to a session and wanted to meet the speaker afterwards. And what ended up happening is they ended up getting on a call. He invited them to join his research project. They did. They spent nearly all summer working on it…Fast forward to this year's Tech Summit, they were invited to do a thirty minute session to share their findings. We have stories like that in all of the career strands that we offer, but it's just one of those things that you're like, only in Bentonville would something like that happen.” - Jessica Imel, (6:47)“One story that I have is Walmart. The Store 100 was opening a section of the store that would be directed to only fulfilling online orders. And it would be different because it would be very automated. Store associates wouldn't have to go inside the store and take up aisle space, taking up a lot of time. It'd be much more efficient. And we got to meet the CEO personally. I got to talk to John Furner, the CEO of Walmart U.S., and that's something that can only happen in Bentonville. Meeting the CEO of a Fortune 1 company in a store, that would only happen in Bentonville.” - Kaushal Dhumal, (15:43)“We were in DC for a hosted trip, and we got to go to the Capitol building and speak to our state senator. Many of the states had trouble getting access and speaking to their state senator, but Senator Boozman was so friendly with us and we were able to talk to him. And apart from that, just meeting government officials so easily. Like over at our Ignite building, we've had people like Lukas Walton come in, the Senator, the State Secretary of Education, the Walton Family Foundation that have toured our building. And I've had the opportunity to give them those tours. So having people of that level come into our school and try to see what Ignite is and what these different things that us students are doing is just something I believe can only happen in Arkansas. It's a small circle, but we're all tight together.” - Sarthak Chaturvedi, (20:57)“I moved from India here last year, to Bentonville. And I think it's the people in Bentonville, the kindness of the people and how grateful they are. I don't think I've ever made friends so fast and people being so nice to me ever like that. And I think in the past year I've made the best friend circle ever, got these internships, the high school program for Ignite, and I think it's just all these things together that make Bentonville as a whole.” - Aditya Sohaney, (28:25)“We're such a small community, right? But there's so much, there's so many companies and we're able to get those experiences more than somewhere in Dallas where there's so much competition. It's limited to what you can do…but with how small [Bentonville] is, we're able to meet so many people and they remember us too because it's not like they meet thousands of people every day. They remember our faces. So these opportunities to connect with people are helpful.” - Praneel Vakkalagadda, (35:35)

In this episode, Peter Lehner, head of the food and farming sustainability program at Earthjustice, gives his expert perspective on the upcoming Farm Bill and its potential impact on agricultural decarbonization in the US.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsAs longtime subscribers know — indeed, as the name makes plain — Volts is primarily focused on the energy side the climate fight. I haven't paid much attention to agriculture over the years. I understand that agriculture is a huge piece of the puzzle, both for decarbonization and for sustainability more generally. It's just not really been my jam.However! The Farm Bill — which requires reauthorization every five years — is likely to pass in coming months, and it is arguably the most important climate bill Congress will address this session.To talk me through the agriculture/climate nexus and discuss opportunities in the upcoming Farm Bill, I contacted Peter Lehner. He is the head of Earthjustice's food and farming sustainability program, and the author of Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture.We talked about how US agriculture has evaded environmental laws and become the source of 30 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, ways that the upcoming Farm Bill can be tweaked to better fight climate change, and what's next for agriculture decarbonization.Peter Lehner of Earthjustice, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming on.Peter LehnerGreat to be here, Dave.David RobertsAs you may know, if you have read my work over the years or followed me at all, I'm pretty heavily, deeply into the energy world as the source of most of my time and attention in the climate fight. I know on some level, partially because I've been lectured by people numerous times over the years, that agriculture is a big piece of the puzzle — and land use and oceans, which are other things that I also don't spend much time on. And I fully acknowledge that they're important, they're just not my personal passion. However, I've felt vaguely guilty about that for years.And I know the Farm Bill is coming up, which is a significant marker, I think, possibly the source of some significant action. We'll discuss that in a while. But at the very least a good excuse, I think, for me to check in and just sort of see like, what's the state of climate and agriculture, you know, action stuff, what's going on there? So, that's what you're here for, Peter, because you are the expert author of a book on the subject, numerous podcasts, been studying this for a long time. So before we get into the Farm Bill, just maybe — I know that the subject of the ties between agriculture and climate and carbon and methane greenhouse gases is very complicated.You've written entire books on the subject. But I wonder, for people like me who have had their nose mostly in the energy world, if you could just summarize relatively quickly what are the big kind of buckets where agriculture overlaps with carbon and decarbonization and climate generally? What are the big areas of concern that people should have their eyes on?Peter LehnerSure, you know, I should say, Dave, that I came to this really the same as you. I'd been working on energy issues for a very long time. For three decades, I've sued many power plants. I've worked on many different environmental laws dealing with regulation of the power sector. And what happened is, over time, doing general environmental law for New York State, for NRDC, for Earthjustice where I am now, I kept seeing the impact of agriculture as really being enormous and impeding our ability to achieve our environmental and health goals unless it was addressed. So that's why I'm focusing on this now.But like you, I think most environmentalists focus much more on the industrial sector, the power sector, the transportation sector. And part of what I've come to realize is that we all should pay a lot more attention to the agriculture sector. And we'll talk about the Farm Bill coming up. But really the Farm Bill is the biggest environmental law Congress will address that most people have never heard of. Now why is that? So, I'll tell you quickly. First, agriculture uses most of our land. It uses about two thirds of the contiguous U.S.David RobertsCan I pause you there?Peter LehnerSure.David RobertsThat took me two or three seconds to catch up with that before my mind blew. Two thirds of the land of the contiguous United States is devoted to agriculture?Peter Lehner62%, yeah. And that's about using rounder numbers, about 400 million acres of cropland. About half of that is used to grow food that people eat, and about half of that is growing food that animals eat. And close to 800 million acres of grazing land, some of that is federal land, some of that is state land. A lot of that is private land. But all told, it's over a billion acres of land, almost all in the lower 48 is used for agriculture.David RobertsThat is wild.Peter LehnerSo think about it. If you fly anywhere and look out the window, what do you see? You really see agriculture, whether it be the irrigation circles or just the fields or whatever. That's what has transformed our landscape. And part of the result of that, of course, is agriculture is really the biggest driver of biodiversity loss. So much of biodiversity loss is habitat loss. And look, I've spent decades working on issues like grizzly bears and wolves. But what those issues are at bottom is agriculture because we are grazing in grizzly and wolf territory. And so much of habitat loss, whether it be land or polluted waters, is driving other biodiversity loss.So in addition to that, what I was going to mention is the environmental laws that you're probably familiar with, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act have actually done a pretty good job of addressing air and water pollution from industrial sources, from the energy sector. But they really have not done a very good job addressing air and water pollution from agriculture, whether it be these hundreds of millions of acres of row crops. Or these hundreds of million acres of grazing. Or these more industrial scale facilities where thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of animals are crammed together into buildings — those are called concentrated animal feeding operations. Those are now the largest source of water pollution in the country.David RobertsDid the laws pass over them or just inadequately address them?Peter LehnerA little bit of both. What happened was in 1972, say, when the Clean Water Act was passed, Congress really wasn't thinking that much about agriculture. But also agriculture has changed tremendously since then. It has become so much more industrial. So that a small number of facilities that are gargantuan produce, for example, almost all of our meat, but those didn't exist in 1970. And as you probably know, in the Clean Water Act, it did a good job dealing with pollution coming out of a pipe. But pollution, say, coming off of city streets, that's called non-point source pollution.The regulation was much less strong, and they relied more on grants and education and sort of nudges, as we say. And much of agriculture — 400 million acres of cropland, 800 million acres of grazing land — that's not, by and large, water pollution coming out of a pipe. So essentially, the Clean Water Act doesn't cover it. And similarly, the Clean Air Act does a great job of addressing stuff coming out of smokestacks. And while there's some, like from these concentrated animal feeding operations, there's very concentrated air pollution coming out of the vents. But out of all of those acres of cropland and grazing land, those are called area sources under the Clean Air Act and are addressed much, much less.But still, air pollution from agriculture, I bet this would surprise most of your readers, kills about 17,000 people a year. It's a major source of air pollution in this country.And that is mostly methane or other criteria pollutants?Methane is actually one of the ways agriculture drives climate change. It's actually other pollutants, largely ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, which come from overfertilization and animal waste. And ammonia is a major precursor to the fine particulate matter that gets into our lungs and causes disease and kills us.David RobertsWhich we're finding out, as I've covered on the pod, is worse. You known, every time a new round of science comes out, we find out it's worse than we thought.Peter LehnerYeah. And in a place like, say, the San Joaquin Valley in central California, which has some of the worst air quality in the country, almost all of that PM, that fine particulate matter, is driven by animal agriculture.David RobertsAnd I'm also going to guess maybe you're going to get to this, but that when you take wild land and make it into agricultural land, the land subsequently captures and holds less carbon.Peter LehnerMuch less carbon. So one of the reasons why I think people don't realize that agriculture drives about as much climate change as our transportation sector is — and think about that for a minute, it drives as much climate change as our transportation sector — and yet most of the time there are conversations about climate change and conversations about agriculture. But until recently, those have been two separate conversations. Say in 2018, when we were working on the Farm Bill then, there was virtually no discussion of climate change in the 2018 Farm Bill.David RobertsI'll admit I don't think of it that way in the mental category in my head when I'm thinking about major sources.Peter LehnerYeah, well, why is that? I think that's because when we think about climate change, most people think about climate change, you think about burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide.David RobertsRight.Peter LehnerAnd that's climate change for most people. Agriculture's contribution to climate change has some of that. Agriculture uses actually a fair amount of energy for, say, irrigation and tractors and of course, food processing later on down the road. But most of agriculture's contribution to climate change is from other sources.David RobertsRight. Which is to say that even if we clean up energy sources, which everybody is working on, and even if the energy inputs to agriculture, you drive the tractors with whatever, electric tractors or electric irrigators, whatever, even if it's zero carbon energy fueling agriculture, that still leaves most of agriculture's contribution to climate change untouched.Peter LehnerExactly, that's true. And even more frightening, even if we do clean up our energy system and our industrial system to a no carbon situation where we hope to of course, that's where we're putting so much effort into, we will still almost certainly face catastrophic climate change because of the contribution of agriculture alone. In other words, if we do everything else perfectly and we don't change our agriculture system and don't address agriculture's contribution to climate change, we are blowing past 1.5 degrees centigrade, blowing past two degrees.David RobertsSo you think just taking the U.S.: The U.S. can't meet its stated Paris climate targets without reforming agriculture?Peter LehnerThat's basically correct. So let me explain a minute why this is the case. Agriculture's contribution to climate change: First, think about methane, which you've mentioned most people think about methane, oil and gas, right?David RobertsYeah.Peter LehnerActually, cows and animal agriculture emit more methane in the U.S. and around the world than the oil and gas sector. Most of that methane is called enteric methane. It's essentially belching and exhaling of cows. And their stomachs are different than ours. That's why they can eat grass in a way that you and I can't. But every time they breathe out, they're breathing out a lot of methane. So that is an enormous source of methane, which I'm sure your listeners know is more than 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 20 years.David RobertsNobody thought they're innovating a better cow, are they? That seems like fewer cows is the only solution to that. I mean, maybe we're going to touch on solutions later so maybe we should save this. But just like that doesn't seem like a technologically solvable problem. You just need fewer cows.Peter LehnerMost studies have shown that fewer cows, and therefore the consequent part of that is shifting diets to less beef-heavy is one of the fastest, most effective and cost-effective climate strategies and really has to be a part of any strategy. There are things you can do. Breeding has reduced the methane emissions per pound of beef. The way you raise the cows can make a difference. The way you graze them can make a difference. How long they live before they're slaughtered can make a difference. There is some research into feed additives that you'd feed cows, and that changes the bacteria in their gut to produce a little less methane.David RobertsOh, interesting.Peter LehnerAnd all of these are important. There's not one solution. But I think what is unfortunate is sometimes it's viewed by industry as only a technical solution. And the reality is it has to be both technical and essentially demand side. So, the other way methane is produced is manure. There's all those animals. We've got about 50 times more waste produced by animals than by humans in the United States.David Roberts50 times more?Peter LehnerYeah. Those animals produce a lot of waste. One dairy cow, for example, can produce about as much waste as 200 people.David RobertsJesus Christ.Peter LehnerSo all that waste, most of it sits in lagoons or essentially is handled in such a way that it creates a lot of methane. So that's another way that methane is produced and agriculture contributes to climate change.David RobertsWhen people talk about lagoons, I just want to clarify here, they just take all the manure and slough it into a giant pond of manure where it then sits. Is that what people are talking about when they talk about lagoons? There's not any fancy technical. It's just a big pool full of crap.Peter LehnerThat's basically correct. And that's the dominant way in both pig farms and dairy farms, we handle our waste. To get technical, when you put the manure into a big pit like this, because it's wet, there's water, it's transported by water, it is anaerobic. That means it doesn't have oxygen. So as it decomposes, it releases methane. And that is a really significant source of methane all around the country and contributes both locally, but also obviously, majorly to climate change. And I should say rice, also, rice production, also, if you think about it again, you have the image of a rice patty, it's flooded. So you have organic matter decomposing in an anaerobic, without oxygen, system releasing methane. But by far, most methane is from cow belching.David RobertsThat's the big source.Peter LehnerYes.David RobertsBigger than manure.Peter LehnerBigger than manure. Although manure is also very big, I don't want to minimize that. And the two together, again, are more than the oil and gas sector.David RobertsThat is wild. There's so much attention going to oil and gas methane right now, EPA rules coming, there's international treaties being signed, like on and on.Peter LehnerYep. And there should be. We obviously need to address those sources of methane. I think that what is often forgotten is we also have to address these other sources of methane. So the other reason it gets confusing is the other two ways agriculture contributes to climate change are also very different than burning fossil fuels. The second is that almost all of that cropland uses a lot of fertilizer. By and large, in the U.S. and around the world, people put on a lot more fertilizer than the plants take up, and a lot of nitrogen is added to the ground that is not absorbed by the plant.So where does that nitrogen go? Some of it runs off into the water, and then it causes eutrophication, algae outbreaks. It causes the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It seeps into groundwater: You have heard of blue baby syndrome, which is too much nitrate in the groundwater. But some of it also goes into the air. And some of it goes into the air as NOx, which is sort of a local smog causing pollution. And some of it goes into the air as nitrous oxide. N2O nitrous oxide, which is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and also one of the major drivers of ozone depletion, stratospheric ozone depletion.So this is a major source of climate change, nitrous oxide pollution alone, virtually all of which comes from agriculture, virtually all of which is this overfertilization and some coming from these manure pits that we talked about before. That alone is about 5% or six percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.David RobertsOh, wow.Peter LehnerSo again, it's not burning fossil fuels, but a major contribution to climate change. And then the last way agriculture contributes to climate change is what you alluded to earlier. When you convert land, say, native grasslands or forest in Brazil or forest in the U.S. to cropland, you take this carbon that is in those healthy soils or in the grass or in the trees, and you release it, and that goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. So you get two things: One is you get this slug of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when you convert land, this conversion of land from grassland to forest.But then the second part, which EPA is only beginning to really pay attention to, is what you can think of as the lost sequestration capacity. Healthy land, grassland, forest, land is this very dynamic, wonderful system that is sequestering carbon and storing carbon. And by contrast, cropland is really — the way we treat it often is largely biologically dead. It has very little carbon life in it. And that's why we have to put so many fertilizers in it.David RobertsIs that just because of monocrops? Is that just an inevitable result of monocrops?Peter LehnerI'm not sure it's absolutely inevitable. It's in large part because of the way we grow in these sort of chemical dependent monocultures, for sure. So you have both this slug of carbon when you convert land. But, hey, look, a lot of our cropland in the U.S. was converted 100 years ago. Every year, that is not sequestering nearly as much as it could. So you were losing the sequestration capacity. That 800 million acres of grazing land — think about that, it's about 40% of the contiguous U.S. And it has been overgrazed for decades. There are reports of John Wesley Powell going out west and saying, "Whoa!"He was sent out to look after exploring some more remote areas. But everywhere he saw cattle, he said the land is getting degraded. In 1934, Congress tried to address overgrazing and erosion and soil degradation. And then 1976, they tried to do it again, so far, really not to much avail, with the result that you have hundreds of millions of acres that aren't sequestering the carbon they could.David RobertsYeah, this came up in our Biofuels discussion a few weeks ago, too. A lot of new thinking about biofuels is taking that sort of counterfactual sequestration into account.Peter LehnerExactly. And you did a great podcast with my colleague Dan Lashof, and we're working together on biofuels. That was a great podcast you did there. So if you add all of this up, what you see is that agriculture has this enormous contribution to climate change, but it's so different than the way most people think about climate change. And what happens also is EPA sort of thinks about it differently. So, first of all, their classic greenhouse gas inventory puts, say, on farm energy in a different category. They don't put that in agriculture. They put that in energy, or they put that in the manufacturer fertilizer, which itself is enormously energy intensive and releases a lot of CO2.That's in a different chapter. Land use conversion, that carbon that I was telling you about, they put that in a different chapter, and they don't even think about, in their greenhouse gas inventory about the lost sequestration capacity, this opportunity cost. So if you just look at the inventory, EPA says that agriculture contributes about 11% of U.S. greenhouse gases. But if you actually think of agriculture as a sector all, what really goes into agriculture, and you include the land use impacts, which, as I said, are usually left out, that's where you get that agriculture is basically in a par with transportation and is about a quarter drives about a quarter of climate change.And then, if you include the rest of the food system, the processing, et cetera.David RobertsFood waste.Peter LehnerAnd food waste, of course, rotting in landfills, you've got about a third or more of climate change is driven by our food system. And that's why unless we change our food system, we're not going to address climate change adequately.David RobertsWild, okay. I want to get to the Farm Bill, but one final question, which is just my — and again, this is sort of my impression from the outside over the year — is that the agriculture industry has a level of power and influence in political circles that I think most people don't appreciate. That sort of makes the oil and gas sector look like patty cakes. It's amazing. I will never forget that Oprah — I don't know if other listeners are old enough to remember this — but Oprah said on her show once, basically, "You know, beef's bad, it's not very healthy and it destroys the environment."And got taken to task by the agriculture industry and they basically took her down and forced her to publicly apologize. And if you can take Oprah down, you've got muscle.Peter LehnerYeah. And it is certainly true. There's no question that the conventional or industrial agriculture lobby is very powerful in Congress. I would point out that there's a lot of great farmers who are trying to do things right and are working to produce food, healthy food, in a sustainable way. And we work with groups like the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which is itself a coalition of a lot of these groups, I wish they had the political power that conventional AG does because they do great stuff and they are really examples of what we want to be doing, how we can produce food in a way that doesn't pollute our air and water and that rebuilds soil health.But unfortunately, the political power is with the agrochemical industries, which are very dominant. They say the meat processing companies, four companies control 85% of the beef market. These are enormously politically powerful.David RobertsSo the Farm Bill then, before we get into the details of what the Farm Bill might do or what you want it to do, let's just talk about the Farm Bill as such. This is something that they pass every year or a set number of years because it just like comes up periodically. Is this something they have to do every session?Peter LehnerNo. So, the Farm Bill is so important, and for a long time, really, when it comes up, it's really only the farm community that pays attention to it. And I think what I hope you've heard is that everybody should pay attention to it. And that's why the Farm Bill is far more important than people realize. For all of us who eat, for all of us who breathe, for all of us who drink, the Farm Bill has an enormous impact. So what is the Farm Bill? The Farm Bill was first passed actually in the Depression in 1933. There was the Depression and hunger.There was the Dust Bowl, there was the crisis on farms. And so Congress stepped in. And I can give you a long history and I won't. But basically Congress did two things. One, they tried to address the hunger and they also tried to restrict supply, pay farmers not to produce, to keep prices high. And sometimes also buy some surplus to give that to the hungry also, but as a way of keeping the surplus off the market and keeping prices high.David RobertsThat's why the Farm Bill has this weird structure where it has food subsidies for the poor in it, which I think, on the surface, seems like just an odd artifact.Peter LehnerYeah. And it's also essentially a political marriage. So, the Farm Bill, on one hand, provides nutrition assistance, now called SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, formerly Food SNAP, that helps feed about 45 million Americans every year, and that right now provides about $75-80 billion a year. It also then provides about $20 billion a year in farm subsidies. And ever since it was passed in 1933, it was amended a few times. But basically, it has to get reenacted, reauthorized every five years. And if it doesn't, these programs on which so many people depend basically stop. They won't continue without being reauthorized.So the last Farm Bill that was fully enacted was in 2018, and so it expired September 30, 2023. There was still a little extra money hanging around, so we had a couple of months. But then what Congress just did a couple of weeks ago in the continuing resolution that funded the government up to January 19, they also agreed to extend the Farm Bill until September 30, 2024.David RobertsSuch a rational —Peter LehnerYeah, exactly. We're covered right now. But it ends up being enormously important because it provides this nutrition assistance for, as I said, 45 million Americans. Really important. And it also has a series of different programs that provide enormous subsidies to farmers. And those subsidies, when you put them together, have an enormous impact on what is grown, where it's grown, how it's grown, and all of that for the reasons I was just explaining about how agriculture affects our environment, and climate change has an enormous impact on the environment. And that's why the Farm Bill is actually the most important environmental law Congress is going to address in the next couple of years.And unlike our other environmental laws that haven't been amended for decades, this one is amended every five years.David RobertsI'm so interested in the SNAP thing. I mean, it's a big safety net program, correct? That's been around since 1933, I am assuming, in fact, I know to be the case that conservatives hate social safety programs generally, and I bet they hate SNAP. So what is the magic sauce that has allowed this extremely large subsidy for poor people to survive what I can only assume are repeated conservative attempts to weaken or get rid of it? Is there some reason it has stayed in? How has it survived, I guess, is what I'm asking.Peter LehnerLook, I'm not the super political expert here, but what people have said who know this and have worked with this is, you essentially have a marriage. You have the Democrats that support the Nutrition Assistance Program, and by and large, Republicans support the farmer subsidies and neither has enough support to get either of those through separately. And in some ways there's something good there, which is that the Farm Bill has always been pretty bipartisan. And for example, right now Senator Stabenow, who is the Democratic Chair of the Senate AG Committee, and Senator Boozman who's the Republican ranking member of the Senate AG Committee, are really trying to work together because history is that this Farm Bill doesn't get passed unless it's bipartisan.David RobertsDefinitionally it will have to be this time, right?Peter LehnerExactly.David RobertsIt's going to have to go through a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. I mean, is it viewed is it widely accepted as sort of must pass, like they are going to figure something out or is there any chance at all that it could just lapse?Peter LehnerI don't think there's really any chance it would just lapse because that would largely end these programs on which so many Americans, both the Americans who need it for food — and by the way, it's often thought of as though those are urban Americans and rural Americans are the farmers. That's not the case. There are people all around the country and in many places rural communities at even higher rates that depend on SNAP assistance, on food assistance. So this is really important to everybody. And of course producing food is important. So the farm safety net is important.What could happen is, I suppose, even though I think both the House and the Senate agriculture leaders are saying they're going to work very hard to get a new Farm Bill out in the spring of 2024, if that doesn't happen, potentially they could just extend it for another year the way they just did.David RobertsThat does seem like the way we do things.Peter LehnerRight. It's not ideal, but I don't think, and people who know this area better than I do, I don't think the chances of the law just ending completely is really in the cards.David RobertsSo they're going to figure something out, so they're going to pass something. So this is a chance to get some good things through.Peter LehnerRight. And there's some good things in. And I should say one of the important elements here is the Inflation Reduction Act. And you've probably talked about that a lot and mostly focused on the many billions of dollars that went to clean energy programs. But the Inflation Reduction Act also put $20 billion into essentially Farm Bill programs, preexisting Farm Bill programs, which pay farmers to implement conservation measures. And those have always been oversubscribed, which means more farmers apply for this assistance than can get it. So the Inflation Reduction Act put an extra close to $20 billion over four years into these conservation programs, but with a twist, which we think is terrific.Most of these conservation programs are for a wide range of resource concerns: water quality, air quality, habitat, and others. In the Inflation Reduction Act these have to be conservation practices focused on reducing net greenhouse gases.David RobertsInteresting.Peter LehnerSo this was the first time — in the Inflation Reduction Act — that Congress really, in any way, really linked agriculture and climate change and said, "Here's $20 extra billion, but you got to spend it on climate change."David RobertsRight. So AG did not get completely overlooked then, in this last session, in this last round, because yeah, I hadn't really paid attention to that. I had kind of thought it was like the redheaded stepchild that got passed over. So there is $20 billion is not pocket change either.Peter LehnerNo, it's a lot of money. As I said, right now, the core Farm Bill gives farmers about $20 billion in subsidies every year. But most of those subsidies are not for conservation programs. A lot of that is for what are called either commodity support, where essentially a farmer gets paid, based on what he grew in the past, if the market price or his revenue goes below a certain price. So it's essentially a price guarantee called the reference price.David RobertsIt's an extremely Soviet sector of our economy.Peter LehnerYeah. And it's largely almost three-quarters of that goes to corn and soybean, which of course, is largely used either for animal feed or for ethanol. And then we also have crop insurance, which, again, that makes a lot of sense. We all want to eat. We need food security, there should be crop insurance. In this case, the premiums are very heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. Over 60% subsidized. And again, over about three-quarters of crop insurance went to corn, soy, wheat and cotton, those four big crops. And what happens, the environmental impact of that is it encourages farmers to essentially plant in riskier areas, which tend to be the more ecologically sensitive areas, because if it works out, they get all the benefit, and if it doesn't work out, the taxpayer funded crop insurance pays them off.David RobertsLittle moral hazard there.Peter LehnerRight, exactly. And then the last bit is these conservation programs, which got this big boost in the Inflation Reduction Act.David RobertsIs there any reason to think that that 20 billion is threatened in some way, or is that pretty secure? Is that part of the Farm Bill fight those subsidies?Peter LehnerYou nailed it. Absolutely. Much of what we've been hearing are ideas of how to essentially — we think of it as a raid on that money, that $20 billion. And some would say, well, let's put it to a broader range of conservation issues like irrigation or something, and others would say keep it within agriculture, but instead let's use it to sort of lift, say, the price guarantee that peanut farmers get. And we have been pushing very hard to try to keep this money and keep it climate focused. And fortunately, Senator Stabenow, who, as I said, is the chair of the Senate AG Committee, has been very, very firm.She has repeatedly said that it's not going to happen that we're going to lose this. Because this is really an extraordinary investment. It's big boost in conservation funding and the fact that it is climate focused is really important because this is where there has not been enough attention over the past and where there's really great opportunities. I think it's important just to pause for a moment and just remind there's a lot of things farmers can do, and some farmers are already doing, that can make a big difference in how much nitrous oxide you release, how much methane you release, how much carbon is stored in your soil. And the trouble is most of those practices are only used on about 2% or 3% of American farmland.So we know what we want to do and this is a way to really accelerate the adoption of those practices.David RobertsSo would you say that's the biggest priority here, the biggest fight, the biggest priority for the Farm Bill is preserving that money for its intended purpose?Peter LehnerYes, with a slight caveat. One is we definitely want to save the Inflation Reduction Act money, but the Farm Bill money is separate. The Inflation Reduction Act directed additional money into Farm Bill programs. But the Farm Bill itself provides money. And so we're going to want to be sure that we continue what's called the baseline amount of funding for the conservation programs in the Farm Bill and ideally make sure that those are better targeted, also more closely targeted to climate issues. And actually the federal government itself, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service has studied these practices that they're funding and they themselves have found that some of them are actually counterproductive.Needless to say, we'd like to say let's not have the taxpayer subsidize practices that the government itself recognizes are counterproductive. Let's focus on the best practices, the ones that have the best climate and environmental impact. And since there's a lot of farmer interest in these, let's really put our money where it can make the biggest difference.David RobertsYeah. So fights over the money and you mentioned also in your blogs on this subject, speaking of research, that AG research in general is undercooked, underfunded. Is there a chance to get more of that in the Farm Bill?Peter LehnerWe are certainly hoping. And again, there's two or three elements of that under President Obama, he started these climate hubs which were really areas to focus on climate aspects of agriculture. There's been a lot of research but most of it has been on productivity and what you can think of as just classic conventional agriculture chemicals. So one is to get more research. Unfortunately, publicly funded research has dropped in the U.S. And when that gets its place taken by private funded research; it's not on things like climate change, it's on things like seeds that you can sell.And then the other is that that research — so, we need more, we need it to be better focused on sustainable practices rather than on unsustainable practices. And we need it to be essentially guaranteed because research is a long-term process. If you just do it for a couple of years, you may not, especially in agriculture, things take time. And so, we need a long-term commitment to these climate hubs and to research and sustainable agriculture. There was a study done by, I think it was UC Davis — I'm not sure — that every dollar in agricultural research has over $20 in payback.It's one of the most cost-effective ways we can spend research dollars. So that's a real opportunity for us.David RobertsAnd you also mentioned the crop insurance program, which I think most — even if you just explain that to a person on the street, the opportunities for that to encourage bad behavior seem quite obvious from the structure of the thing. Are substantial reforms to that on the table at all, or is that a subject of discussion?Peter LehnerI think it's a subject of some discussion and a lot of people in different ways want to make sure we get the best benefit. They recognize we do want crop insurance because it's important to recognize crops are sort of different. Most insurance is sort of trying to pool risk. So if my house burns down, I get covered. But if my house burns down, it probably doesn't mean your house is burning down. But with crops, if I have a bad crop, chances are my neighbor does too. That's why I think some amount of government involvement in crop insurance makes sense.You really have to sort of spread the risk around. And of course, food security is really important for our country. So we want to keep crop insurance, but we also want to do it to incentivize behavior that minimizes risk. And in particular, as climate change is affecting farmers more and more with droughts and floods and changing weather patterns and increased pests, we'd like to ensure that our crop insurance system is encouraging farmers to use practices that minimize risk. Unfortunately, right now a lot of the practices that farmers use actually enhance risk. They make them more vulnerable to floods and droughts.And the good news here is that many of the same practices that the Inflation Reduction Act will be funding that will help mitigate or curb climate change will also help farmers adapt or prepare for climate change or better respond and manage climate change. The same ones that mitigate can help build resilience. And that's a real opportunity.David RobertsAnd what about the Rural Energy for America program, REAP as it's called? This came up when I raised the subject on Twitter. This came up a couple of times. Is that on your radar?Peter LehnerIt is not as much. So, I'm not an expert. But there again, there was money in the Inflation Reduction Act to help convert some of the rural energies, which I remember from my time working on energy are some of the dirtiest parts of the power sector and there's great opportunity in rural communities. One thing they have is a lot of land. And so it's a great opportunity to shift from, say, an old dirty coal plant to solar and wind. And I think that's what the Inflation Reduction Act funding will help accelerate.David RobertsAnd the final thing you mentioned in your blogs was transparency. This is another thing where on the energy side I've been following, there's a lot of talk about this, a lot of talk about like California just passed a law that forces large industrial users to report their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. So there's a lot of work on transparency on the energy side, I'm guessing giant AG corporations are not super transparent. What can be done on that front?Peter LehnerWell, we need to keep pushing that. That is a real problem. And I think it's a problem both in the specifics that there's very little transparency and it's not over agriculture's contribution to climate change, but agriculture's conventional air pollution. I mentioned earlier that say these concentrated animal feeding operations are the country's largest sources of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which are poisonous gases. And EPA for a long time exempted them from reporting under the federal statutes. And we actually sued EPA and said that exemption was illegal and the court agreed with us. And then the industry was powerful enough during the Trump administration to get Congress to amend the environmental laws —David RobertsHoly crap.Peter Lehnerto exempt them from — and again, this is just reporting their poisonous emissions.David RobertsIs there any plausible cover story for that or is that just a pure power play like we don't want to?Peter LehnerIt's hard not to see it as a power play because of course, reporting is, I think, by industry seen as the first step to potential oversight or regulation.David RobertsHeaven forbid.Peter LehnerWe were talking earlier how nobody really understands how much agriculture contributes to climate change. And of course, if they don't understand that, there's going to be no pressure politically to address that contribution. And unfortunately, right now, agriculture doesn't have to report their greenhouse gas emissions. There's been a rider in Congress for almost a decade prohibiting EPA from making industrial agriculture report its greenhouse gas emissions. And there's already proposals in Congress that if the SEC rule requiring reporting ever comes out to try to exempt agriculture from that, there has been pushback in almost every way of having agriculture to report their emissions.And the sad reality is these emissions are real. They're either causing climate change or they're causing local air pollution or both. And not reporting them doesn't mean they don't cause climate change. It just means we're not going to address them as effectively. So it's really important that people begin to understand that this is a sector that has tremendous impact and we've got to be much more open about it so that we can address it in a way that makes sense. And look, we all eat: We need to have a food sector. Nobody is saying that we should get rid of the food sector in any way.Agriculture is super important, not only to the country overall, but to every state. But we also know enough today to be able to produce healthier food in a much more sustainable way.David RobertsYeah, you've laid out some specific stuff that sort of climate aware people are pursuing here. Preserving the IRA money for conservation programs, beefing up those conservation programs, aiming those conservation programs more at climate change, beefing up research, reforming the federal crop insurance program, increasing transparency. Give me a sort of realpolitik assessment. How should we think about the chances of these good things happening? Unlike on the energy side, where nothing passing at all was always an extremely real and looming possibility here, something's got to pass. Right? So what do you think are the chances of this good stuff getting in there?Like what's? Sort of the balance of political forces? And I'm thinking specifically about the House, the Republican House, which is, as you might have heard, insane and incompetent.Peter LehnerSo I think breaking it into two pieces: Senator Stabenow is so strong on protecting the climate focused conservation funding of the Inflation Reduction Act that I would like to feel that we can think that that will remain. And that's really important. And that, of course, is going to be helping. I think it's important to remember this is money that then goes to hundreds of thousands of farmers who want to spend the money in good ways.David RobertsThis is not against farmers. None of this is against farmers.Peter LehnerNot at all. More farmers have applied for these programs than could get it. Two out of three farmers in the past have been turned away because we didn't have enough money. So this is money that is going right to farmers doing exactly what they want and what we as a country want. So that's really great. I think 2018 may be a bit of a lesson for us. In 2018, the House of Representatives passed a Farm Bill with one party. The Republicans passed a very extreme Farm Bill, unlike any before. It had always been bipartisan in both houses.And then the Senate sort of ignored that and passed a bipartisan bill that was really much, much better. And then the House came around and adopted the Senate bill. So I hope something like that may happen again. I think the Senate is going to be working hard to come up with a bipartisan bill that will make some climate improvements along the way. There's also, I should say, a long history of discrimination and of unequal access to Farm Bill programs for farmers of color. And this administration is doing a lot to try to address that, to really make sure the money is getting to farmers that have been underserved in the past.And I think we will see some improvements on that score in the Senate Farm Bill. And my guess is that although there may be some noise at the House beforehand, one can be hopeful that at the end of the day, the House will go in the direction of a more reasonable bill from the Senate.David RobertsYeah, it seems like clowning around and embarrassing themselves for a while and then just sheepishly doing what they should have done all along seems to be the pattern they've set so far. So maybe that'll happen again.Peter LehnerYeah, that happened in 2018.David RobertsYes, I know. It's like the House Republican special. I hate to be in a position where I'm depending on the U.S. Senate for anything good in life, but here we are. So a lot of this seems like I don't want to say small ball, but let's say there's nothing fundamental here on the table in the Farm Bill. We're nibbling around the edges, beefing up existing programs, tweaking existing programs. So I want you to imagine — free yourself from the fetters of politics for a while — imagine some bright future day when Democrats have another trifecta and they have, for whatever reason, power to do big things, another big swing at climate, because there are a lot, I think everybody sort of acknowledges, IRA was a big deal, but there are definitely pieces of the puzzle that IRA did not get to.And so say there's Democratic majorities and Democratic will to do big things on climate in the next Farm Bill. Think big for me here, just for a few minutes. What kind of things would you like to see that would be more transformative?Peter LehnerWell, I would focus on two. One, I mentioned earlier we would have a crop insurance program that really benefits crop risk reducing behavior, which also is climate change mitigating behavior. And so instead of just having the conservation programs encouraging behavior or practices on farms that we want to encourage, you have the much bigger and much more important crop insurance program doing that.David RobertsAnd that's stuff like just rotating crops and —Peter LehnerRotating crops, cover crops, adding trees to pasture land and to crops. Having a diversity. Part of the way you can be more resilient is having a diversity of crops if you have nothing but one crop, if there's any problem there, you're in big trouble. And diversity is both biologically much more stable, but it's also economically a lot more stable.David RobertsAnd we should note and this is, I guess, implied and obvious, but I'm just going to say it explicitly anyway if farmers were not completely insured against the risks of giant monocropping, they would naturally be moving towards more variety just to protect themselves, right? It's only because they are protected entirely by this crop insurance program that they're not buffering themselves more against risk in this way.Peter LehnerThat's certainly what you're seeing, that the farmers that are using more sustainable approaches tend to be growing a much wider range of crops and products. So they have that economic as well as biological diversity. But the other big thing that would be great to change right now, the Farm Bill directly and indirectly, very heavily supports animal agriculture. And for the reasons that I mentioned, that is where most of the climate change contribution from agriculture comes from. It's the animal manure, it's the cows belching, it is the production of animal feed. And it's animal feed is very inefficient.It takes about 15 pounds of grain to get a pound of beef. And corn is the most heavily fertilized with nitrogen fertilizer crop. And all of that nitrogen fertilizer, as I mentioned, not all of it, but a lot of it is running off as nitrous oxide. So all of this animal agriculture, which also uses up that 800 million acres of grazing land and therefore losing carbon, has this huge climate impact. It also, frankly, is unhealthy. It also isn't great for biodiversity.David RobertsYeah, I mean, beef is bad. People hate to hear this and no one wants to say it publicly, but beef is bad down the line. Pick your lens: health, you know, ecology, economics, concentration of wealth. I mean, name it.Peter LehnerWRI has some great charts. They're a great organization that compares the climate, water and land use footprint of different foods. And you will see that beef is just far more than any other food that we have. So right now, the Farm Bill really heavily supports that and provides almost no support to plant-based alternatives to a healthier diet. And if you think of what we've done in the energy system, we tried to clean up coal plants, we tried to switch to inherently clean energy like solar and wind, and we tried to reduce demand by energy efficiency.Right now, most of what we talk about in agriculture is just that first one, just trying to clean up existing production. We have to think about both shifting to inherently cleaner way of getting food and that is, for example, a plant-based diet or plant-based alternatives. And it doesn't have to be going vegan. This is just Americans eat many times more meat than any other culture. We could still have plenty of meat and eat much less than we are now, with much less of an impact. And the Farm Bill can make a big difference there.People love to think that this is all cultural, but it's also economic. Right now, meat is cheap because taxpayers pay for a lot of the bill. And that can be balanced in a Farm Bill where taxpayer subsidies, the subsidies in the farm Bill are supporting a healthier, more climate friendly food system rather than a food system that is so focused on these products that have a very big climate impact.David RobertsYeah, I hate that cultural argument. I just have to say you see that in transportation too. You have decades of public policy supporting automobile infrastructure such that average people just living normal lives have to drive all the time. And then you get a bunch of people saying, "oh, it's just cultural, Americans just like their cars." That's not really it. And I think it's really the same with beef. This whole idea that Americans just have some sort of inherent love of big steaks, big meat, it's so ridiculous. I always find that absurd, although that is a real third rail.Peter LehnerYeah, that's where economics makes a difference. And right now, as I said, we're subsidizing foods that tend to have a larger environmental impact and frankly, are less healthy, and we could and should be subsidizing food that is healthier. For example, good old fruits and vegetables get comparatively much, much less support in the Farm Bill.David RobertsYeah, that's crazy. When do you think, and this will really be the final question, but when I think about all the kind of cultural hot button issues that are involved in climate change and decarbonization, I mean, there are millions. Like, we just went through this gas stove nonsense last year. But no hot button issue is hotter of a button for some reason than diets and meat. Meat in diets is just like — we're talking about Oprah — just like you can't go there. So when do you think we'll reach a point where a mainstream politician will actually broach the subject, "hey, we should encourage Americans to eat less meat" and just say it outright?Is that ever going to happen?Peter LehnerWell, Cory Booker is already saying that to some extent, and he's very aware of this impact. Part of the reason it gets so derailed is people tend to view it as an all or nothing. And we make food choices three times a day. There are a lot of chances to just slightly shift to a diet with more fruits and vegetables. And it doesn't have to mean you're going 100% vegan and just in the same way that we can shift our transportation system — and maybe you drive a little less and you take mass transit a little more — it doesn't mean you will never, ever get into a car again.So I think the conversation about diets has been, unfortunately, torqued, and actually it makes even less sense. You will only buy a car maybe once every ten years, but, as I said, you make dietary choices three times a day, and you also have the health benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables. So it's a great opportunity. But again, I think it's important in terms of what policy can do is partly it's what foods say, for example, the federal government itself buys. But it's also in the farm Bill, which is so important to every environmental matter that we care about.It can also be supporting healthier foods and more so than it does today. That way you'd have a farm Bill that is encouraging farmers to grow different foods in places with less environmental impact in a way that is more sustainable. And that's, again, it's why this Farm Bill, most people don't think about, has this environmental impact far in excess of virtually anything else that Congress will be addressing.David RobertsAwesome. Well, Peter, thanks so much for coming on. I've been meaning to do this for ages, and it sounds like this was the right time to do it. So thank you so much for clarifying this whole subject matter for me more. As you could tell, I wandered into it more or less ignorant. So this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you for taking the time.Peter LehnerThank you for your interest. It's great to spread the word on this; it's so important.David RobertsThank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe

On today's show, the U.S. Senate is working across the aisle to combat the global food security crisis. Also, the cost of war on people and the environment. Plus, documenting the beauty and the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest at The Momentary.

Today’s guest is Sen. John Boozman (AR-R) who is the Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee in Washington, DC. He talks about the current situation in Congress and how … Read More

How to best utilize billions in conservation funding from the Inflation Reduction Act is at the heart of the farm bill debate right now on Capitol Hill, and Senate Ag Committee ranking member John Boozman of Arkansas hopes to bring many voices into the conversation. He joins Agri-Pulse Newsmakers to discuss his thoughts on that funding and other farm bill priorities.Then, Robbie Minnich with the National Cotton Council and Laura Wood Peterson with LWP Consulting discuss the major issues facing farm bill reauthorization, including the IRA funding and the regional ag policy issues that might emerge in the process.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Longtime Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is starting to get impatient about the farm bill, saying the text for a Senate draft should have been out during the long August recess.

Pro Farmer policy analyst Jim Wiesemeyer has an informative conversation with U.S. Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, who is ranking member of the Senate Ag Committee. Topics include the status of the new Farm Bill, some of the key components that may or may not be included (such as fixing Prop 12), funding and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Be open to new and different opportunities along the way”—sage advice from Toni-Marie Higgins, Chief of Staff to Sen. John Boozman (R-AR). With an impressive tenure of over two decades on Capitol Hill, Toni-Marie has worked her way up from Staff Assistant to Chief of Staff, only 1 of 32 women to hold this prestigious position in the Senate. Toni-Marie's work is widely recognized. She was named a John C. Stennis Congressional Staff Fellow, and she co-leads the bipartisan group of female Chiefs of Staff and Staff Directors. Last year, she was part of an important team dedicated to supporting democracy through election observation in Kenya.   Tune in as hosts and Arkansans Dee Martin and Shelby Kelley sit down with Toni-Marie Higgins to discuss how “bipartisanship is still very much alive in the halls of Congress if you look hard enough.” Hear how Toni-Marie balances between the policy and politics, elevates female leaders across Congress, and aims for bipartisanship. Perhaps most importantly, hear about the Boozman Team's important work for the great state of Arkansas! Want to hear about the Farm bill, what makes a good Hill staffer, and how to make great pasta? Listen now!

On this episode, Senate Ag Committee member John Boozman (R-Arkansas) discusses the farm bill process and other policy matters important to American agriculture. In “The Dirt with Nutrien,” Senior Agronomist Mike Howell introduces us to farm data management tools from Bushel. In our Beltway Beef segment, Hunter Ihrman and past National Cattlemen's Beef Association President Don Schiefelbein discuss a recent U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Hearing at Schiefelbein's farm in Kimball, Minnesota. Also, U.S. Meat Export Federation President and CEO Dan Halstrom provides context on a strong month for U.S. pork and beef exports in May, and in “Bushels and Cents,” Ray Bohacz discusses the need for continuing education on the farm. The episode also features the music of traditional country music singer/songwriter Dave Wilbert. Timestamps Intro and News: 0:00 Goatlifeclothing.com advertisement: 6:08 John Boozman, U.S. Senate (R-Arkansas): 6:27 Mike Howell, Nutrien: 21:36 Hunter Ihrman and Don Schiefelbein, National Cattlemen's Beef Association: 27:51 Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation: 34:58 Ray Bohacz, “Bushels and Cents”: 38:41 Dave Wilbert: 40:22

The farm bill clock is ticking, with little sign of any progress toward the writing of a new law before the existing farm bill expires September 30th.

Petit Jean Swap Meet and Auto Show underway; Street lights repaired throughout Morrilton; Koontz Pre-Apprenticeship program graduates first class of participants; Boozman addresses Farm Bill; Razorback football schedule for 2024 season released; we talk with Steve Beavers from the Office of Emergency Management about the 2024 Eclipse.

He can defend Arkansas food just as well as defending an Arkansas quarterback. He will diagnose what's wrong with your eyes. And he's on a mission to make sure the Farm Bill keeps us all well-fed and secure. Senator John Boozman of Arkansas joins the podcast to discuss life, policy, and right off the top stakes a claim to an appetizer almost all of us love.

SCCSD Hall of Distinction banquet held; several local groups to meet tonight; Renewal Ranch gets grant for Naloxone kits; Boozman files bill to help with physician shortage; PJ Mtn. Cemetery sets annual Homecoming; Wonderview baseball and softball teams win Region as several local teams prep for State Tourney

Morrilton Elementary School evacuated after fire alarms sounded; Entergy offers conservation tips; Gas prices drop; Senator Boozman sponsors legislation for veterans; UACCM registration underway; update on high school regional baseball and softball tournaments; we talk with Shannon Autrey of the Conway County Extension Service.

Today’s guest is Sen. John Boozman (AR-R), the Ranking Member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, talks about the 2023 Farm Bill, trade issues, and what he’s hearing from farmers and … Read More

The week was full of hearings and other developments certain to impact the upcoming farm bill. Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member and Arkansas Republican John Boozman joins Newsmakers to discuss the latest on how the farm bill is shaping up and what changes he'll need to see in the legislation to lend it his support.Then, Mary Nowak with the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives and Andrew Walmsley with the American Farm Bureau Federation discuss the politics and the policies facing Ag Committee leaders in the House and Senate as they draft new farm policy.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Morrilton to hold special city council meeting Tuesday to discuss downtown buildings; Senator Boozman discusses farm bill, rural health care; Jobless rates increase month-over-month; Realtors plan cornhole tournament to benefit Special Olympics; high school baseball and softball roundup, along with an update on local students playing in college.

On today's episode, we sit down with Senator John Boozman to talk about the upcoming farm bill, discuss USDA's February Trade report, and more, watch here now!

FTX, at one point the world's third largest cryptocurrency exchange, went bankrupt, causing the entire cryptocurrency industry to crash. In this episode, hear highlights from Congressional testimony that will explain how FTX was able to grow so large while committing blatant fraud, how it's possible that the government didn't know and didn't do anything to stop it, and hear about a Senate bill that's branded as a solution but has concerning flaws of it's own. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Support Congressional Dish via Patreon (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536. Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! View the show notes on our website at https://congressionaldish.com/cd265-policing-ftx Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD264: Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain CD235: The Safe Haven of Sanctions Evaders What is FTX? “What is FTX?” Timothy Smith. Dec 22, 2022. Investopedia. Crypto Regulation “U.S. Senate Is Still Confused About How to Regulate Crypto After FTX Collapse.” Kyle Barr. Dec 1, 2022. Gizmodo. “Congressmembers Tried to Stop the SEC's Inquiry Into FTX.” David Dayen. Nov 23, 2022. The American Prospect. “We Already Have Laws to Stop Crypto Fraud.” David Dayen. Nov 17, 2022. The American Prospect. “Why Is Congress Still Writing Crypto Regulations?” David Dayen. Nov 10, 2022. The American Prospect. “Letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler Regarding Cryptocurrency Inquiries.” Tom Emmer et al. Mar 16, 2022. “Letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler Regarding Cryptocurrency Inquiries.” emmer.house.gov. Lead-up to FTX Collapse “In about-face, Crypto exchange Binance pulls out of FTX acquisition.” Elizabeth Napolitano. Nov 9, 2022. NBC News. "Crypto exchange FTX saw $6 bln in withdrawals in 72 hours." Tom Wilson and Angus Berwick. Nov 8, 2022. Reuters. “Crypto exchange FTX saw $6 bln in withdrawals in 72 hours.” Tracy Wang and Oliver Knight. Nov 6, 2022. “Binance to Sell Rest of FTX Token Holdings as Alameda CEO Defends Firm's Financial Condition.” Tracy Wang and Oliver Knight. Nov 6, 2022. CoinDesk. “Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda's Balance Sheet.” Ian Allison. Nov 2, 2022. CoinDesk. “Re: Potential Violations of Section 18(a)(4) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.” Seth. P Rosebrock, Assistant General Counsel, Enforcement, FDIC. Aug 18, 2022. FDIC. Tom Emmer “SEC Chair Gary Gensler Must Testify Before Congress, Says Rep. Tom Emmer.” André Beganski. Dec 11, 2022. Decrypt. “Meet Tom Emmer, a powerful crypto advocate in a crypto-wary Congress.” Tony Romm. Dec 8, 2022. The Washington Post. “House GOP picks Emmer as GOP whip, Scalise as leader.” Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell. Nov 15, 2022. The Hill. FTX Collapse “FTX Effort to Save Itself Failed on Questionable Assets.” Shane Shifflett, Rob Barry, and Coulter Jones. Dec 5, 2022. The Wall Street Journal. “FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Says He Can't Account for Billions Sent to Alameda.” Alexander Osipovich. Dec 3, 2022. The Wall Street Journal. “5 major revelations about the collapse of crypto giant FTX.” David Gura. Nov 23, 2022. NPR. “FTX says it owes more than $3 billion to creditors.” Steven Zeitchik. Nov 20, 2022. The Washington Post. “Declaration of John J. Ray III in Support of Chapter 11 Petitions and First Day Pleadings” [Case 22-11068-JTD] Nov 17, 2022. PACER. “Exclusive: At least $1 billion of client funds missing at failed crypto firm FTX.” Angus Berwick. Nov 11, 2022. Reuters. “FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried resigns as firm files for bankruptcy.” Jacob Bogage and Tory Newmyer. Nov 11, 2022. The Washington Post. “FTX Tapped Into Customer Accounts to Fund Risky Bets, Setting Up Its Downfall.” Vicky Ge Huang, Alexander Osipovich, and Patricia Kowsmann. Nov 11, 2022. The Wall Street Journal. Lobbying and Campaign Donations “Lawmakers who benefited from FTX cash probe its collapse.” Tory Newmyer and Steven Zeitchik. Dec 1, 2022. The Washington Post. “Inside Sam Bankman-Fried's courtship of a Washington regulator.” Tory Newmyer and Peter Whoriskey. Nov 28, 2022. The Washington Post. “Congress took millions from FTX. Now lawmakers face a crypto reckoning.” Tony Romm. Nov 17, 2022. The Washington Post. “FTX Collapse Sets Back Crypto Agenda in Washington.” Paul Kiernan. Nov 14, 2022. The Wall Street Journal. “Washington lobbyists sever ties with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried after crypto exchange implodes.” Brian Schwartz. Nov 14, 2022. CNBC. “Sam Bankman-Fried charmed Washington. Then his crypto empire imploded.” Tory Newmyer. Nov 12, 2022. The Washington Post. “Meet the mega-donors pumping millions into the 2022 midterms.” Luis Melgar et al. Oct 24, 2022. The Washington Post. “A young crypto billionaire's political agenda goes well beyond pandemic preparedness.” Freddy Brewster. Aug 12, 2022. Los Angeles Times. Aftermath of the FTX Collapse “Factbox: Global regulatory actions against FTX.” Dec 12, 2022. Reuters. “FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Is Said to Face Market Manipulation Inquiry.” Emily Flitter, David Yaffe-Bellany and Matthew Goldstein. Dec 7, 2022. The New York Times. “Clashes Over FTX Bankruptcy Go Global.” Alexander Osipovich, Alexander Saeedy and Alexander Gladstone. Dec 4, 2022. “Hot Wallets vs. Cold Wallets.” Mar 10, 2022. Cryptopedia. December 13 Hearing “Memorandum To: Members, Committee on Financial Services From: FSC Majority Staff Subject: December 13, 2022, Full Committee Hearing entitled, “Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I.” Dec 8, 2022. House Financial Services Committee. “Chart: Four Silos for Recover Purposes.” House Financial Services Committee. Sam Bankman-Fried Indictment “Here is the criminal indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried.” Dec 13, 2022. The New York Times. Bills S.4760 - Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022 Audio Sources Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I December 13, 2022 House Committee on Financial Services Witness: John J. Ray III, CEO, FTX Group Clip Transcripts Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO): Have you read the full testimony that was planned by our missing guest [Sam Bankman-Fried]? John Ray I have not read his full testimony. Some pieces of it been relayed to me, but I've not read it. I've not read one word of it actually. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO): Yeah, I don't know him personally and probably don't want to. But this testimony is so disrespectful. I mean, there's not a person up here would like to show this to their children. In line two of this message, he says, and I quote, "I would like to start out by firmly stating under oath...* And yeah, I can't even say it publicly. The next two words, absolutely insulting. This is the Congress of the United States. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH): So when when customers deposited funds into their FTX accounts, where did the cash go? John Ray: Well, sometimes the money wasn't deposited in the FTX account it was sent to Alameda to begin with. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH): It was misdirected from from the start straight to Alameda. John Ray: There was certainly some time period where there's no bank account at .com and then ultimately, if you look at the structure of this, Alameda is essentially a customer on that .com exchange, and effectively, you know, borrowed money from or just transferred money from FTX customers to take its own positions on the Alameda hedge fund. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): So Alameda research and the venture capital business, what did Alameda research do? John Ray: Essentially made crypto investments, engaged in margin trading, took long and short positions in crypto, essentially invested in crypto. But of course, we now know also invested in over $5 billion of other assets which are in a variety of sectors. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): Can you describe the differences between the FTX.com and FTX.us silos? John Ray: Yes. Very simply FTX.us was for US citizens who wanted to trade crypto; FTX.com, US citizens were not allowed to trade on that exchange. That's very simple. And I would make one other comment, which is separate apart from any of those two silos. It was ledger x, which is a regulated entity regulated by the CFTC, solvent and separate from the FTX.us silo. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): Okay, and that is a distinct silo, that's a distinct company? John Ray: That is a distinct company within the US silo, yes. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): Okay. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):: What was the relationship between FTX.com and FTX.us? Was is there a distinction between the two? John Ray: There was a public distinction between the two. What we're seeing now is that the crypto assets for both ftx.com and for FTX.us were housed in the same database. It's called the AWS system, which is just an acronym for Amazon Web Services. It was all housed in the same web format. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):: And is that distinct from Alameda's assets? John Ray: Yes, it is. John Ray: In essence you know, Alameda was a user, effectively a customer, of FTX.com. That's how it was essentially structured. John Ray: There was no audit at Alameda, no audit at the venture silo. There was audit at the US silo and also audit at the the .com silo. I can't speak to the integrity or quality of those audits. We're reviewing, obviously, the books and records. And as I've said earlier, you know, much of those books and records were maintained on a fairly unsophisticated ledger ledger which works workbooks. John Ray: It's an extensive list, it really crosses the entire spectrum of the company, from lack of lists of bank accounts, hundreds of bank accounts dispersed all over the world, lack of a complete list of employees and their functions by group or name, extensive use of independent contractors as opposed to employees, lack of insurance that you'd normally would see in certain businesses, either inadequate insurance or complete gaps in insurance. For example, the Alameda silo had no insurance whatsoever. So those are I mean, there's, the list goes on and on. You know, we could spend all day on them. John Ray: While many things are unknown at this stage, we're at a very preliminary stage, many questions remain, we know the following. First customer assets at ftx.com were commingled with assets from the Alameda trading platform. That much is clear. Second, Alameda used client funds to engage in margin trading, which exposed customer funds to massive losses. Third, the FTX group went on a spending binge in 2021 and 2022, during which $5 billion was spent on a myriad of businesses and investments, many of which may only be worth a fraction of what was paid for them. Fourth, loans and other payments were made to insiders in excess of $1.5 billion. Fifth, Alameda's business model as a market maker required funds to be deployed to various third party exchanges, which were inherently unsafe and further exacerbated by the limited protections offered in certain of those foreign jurisdictions. John Ray: I accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer of FTX in the early morning hours of November 11 [2022]. It immediately became clear to me that chapter 11 was the best course available to preserve any remaining value of FTX. Therefore, my first act as CEO was authorized the chapter 11 filings. John Ray: It's virtually unlimited in terms of the lack of controls: no centralized records on banking, no daily reconciliations of crypto assets, silos where there's no insurance, inadequate insurance, no independent board, no safeguards that limit, who controls and asset. So senior management literally could get access to any of the accounts in any of the silos. No separateness between customer money and other customer money or other other assets. It's virtually unlimited in terms of the lack of controls. And that's really the point of the unprecedent comment. I've just never seen anything like it in 40 years of doing restructuring work and corporate corporate legal work. It's just a dearth of of information. John Ray: But again, users had multiple accounts. For example, if they had a different trading position, they may have opened multiple accounts. We know it's a big number. It's in the millions on the customer accounts, and we know it's several billion dollars in losses. Assigning those losses to customer accounts will be our next challenge. John Ray: The FTX group's collapse appears to stem from absolute concentration of control in the hands of a small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company entrusted with other people's money or assets. Some of the unacceptable management practices identified so far include the use of computer infrastructure that gave individuals and senior management access to systems that stored customers' assets without security controls to prevent them from redirecting those assets; the storing of certain private keys to access hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets without effective security controls or encryption; the ability of Alameda to borrow funds held at FTX.com to be utilized for its own trading or investments without any effective limits whatsoever; the commingling of assets; the lack of complete documentation for transactions involving nearly 500 separate investments made with FTX group funds and assets. In the absence of audited or reliable financial statements, the lack of personnel and financial and risk management functions, and the absence of independent governance throughout the FTX group, a fundamental challenge we face is there in many respects we are starting from near zero in terms of the corporate infrastructure and record keeping that one would expect in a multibillion dollar corporation. John Ray: The FTX group is unusual in the sense that, you know, I've done probably a dozen large scale bankruptcies over my career, including Enron, of course. Every one of those entities had some financial problem or another, they have some characteristics that are in common. This one is unusual. And it's unusual in the sense that literally, you know, there's no record keeping whatsoever. It's the absence of record keeping. Employees would communicate, you know, invoicing and expenses on on Slack, which is essentially a way of communicating for chat rooms. They use QuickBooks, a multibillion dollar company using QuickBooks. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO): QuickBooks? John Ray: QuickBooks. Nothing against QuickBooks, it's very nice tool, just not for a multibillion dollar company. There's no independent board, right? We had one person really controlling this. No independent board. That's highly unusual in the size company this is. And it's made all the more complex because we're not dealing with, you know, widgets or, you know, something that's tangible. We're dealing with with with crypto, and the technological issues are made worse when you're dealing with an asset such as crypto. John Ray: I've just never seen an utter lack of record keeping. Absolutely no internal controls whatsoever. John Ray: The operation of Alameda really depended based on the way it was operated for the use of customer funds. That's the major breakdown here of funds from ftx.com, which was the exchange for non US citizens, those funds were used at Alameda to make investments and other disbursements. John Ray: There's no distinction whatsoever. The owners of the company could really run free reign across all four silos. John Ray: The loans that were given to Mr. Bankman-Fried, not just one loan it was numerous loans, some of which were documented by individual promissory notes. There's no description of what the purpose of the loan was. In one instance, he signed both as the issuer of the loan, as well as the recipient of the loan. But we have no information at this time as to what the purpose or the use of those funds were. And that is part of our investigation. John Ray: At the end of the day, we're not going to be able to recover all the losses here. Money was spent that we'll never get back. There will be losses on the international side. We're hopeful on the US side. He'll answer to others related to what happened here. Our job is just to find the assets and try to get customers their money back as quickly as possible. John Ray: Essentially, they had two exchanges that allowed users to trade crypto, and then there was the hedge fund. It's as simple as that. The users were allowed to make a variety of investments. They had a more expansive ability to trade crypto if you are a non-U.S. citizen on the .com exchange, but I know what's been described publicly is very complex. It is to some extent, but essentially, you had two exchanges, and you had a hedge fund. Inside both the US silos I've mentioned and inside the silos for .com there were regulated entities. We have regulated entities that are, for example, in Japan that are solvent, we had a regulated entity, ledger X, that was solvent. Those are sort of distinct from the other basic operations that we had, which are the two exchanges. John Ray: The principal issue that the company is facing in the crypto area, and from a technology perspective, it is different from the other bankruptcies because it's not a plane, not a boat. It's this crypto asset and it has inherently some difficulties. You know, the assets can be taken or lost. We have assets there in what are called Hot wallets, and those are in cold wallets. Hot wallets are very vulnerable to to hacking. If you've done any looking on the internet, you'll find that hacking is almost ordinary course in this business sector. They're very, lots of vulnerability to the wallets. So that's this company, unfortunately had a very, very challenging record here. You know, for some transfers there was no pathway for it. Our keys aren't stored in a centralized location. We don't know where all of our wallets are. Passwords were sometimes kept in just plain text format. So this company was sort of uniquely positioned to fail. John Ray: So funds were taken from customers, funds were invested, trading losses incurred in Alameda and then funds were deployed, that will never be valued at the same dollar amount. There was over $5 billion of investments made. Certainly, there's some value there and we'll try to get that value and sell those assets. But oftentimes, even when he made those sorts of investments, whether it was directly or through others in management, sometimes he would do that really without any pro forma or any valuation. Not really quite sure how some of the purchase price numbers were derived. So it gives you a sort of worry obviously, that the purchases were overvalued so there's a concern there as well. John Ray: Alameda was a customer, if you will, of the exchange and it's through that customer relationship, plus other arrangements, that allowed Alameda to borrow those funds, and then pick positions on the exchange like anyone, you know, who would hedge an asset in the market. He had unusually large positions, of course, and sometimes they were wrong in those positions, and they resulted in big losses. But ultimately, the commingling issue is the same in a different issue. He took the money from FTX to cover those positions and ultimately, when customers went to get their money back from .com there was a run on the bank. John Ray: The Alameda fund, well that's just the fund that drew resources from the exchanges, so it's really separate, it was not for customers per se, it was just simply a hedge fund. John Ray: For structural purposes and just for ease of presentation, we tried to take the over 100 entities and we put those in four silos. To demystify that, it's very simple. There was a U.S. silo, which was the FTX.us exchange for US investors. There was an international exchange called FTX.com. Again, for non-U.S. persons that invested in crypto. There was Alameda, which is purely a crypto hedge fund, which made other investments, venture capital type investments. Then there's a fourth entity which was purely investments. And although our investigation is not complete, those investments were most likely made with either Alameda money or money that originally came from ftx.com. But that fourth silo is just purely investments Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): And who owned those four silos? John Ray: All those entities are owned or controlled by Sam Bankman-Fried. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA): Now I've heard from some on the other side criticizing the SEC and in July in this room I criticized the Head of Enforcement at the SEC for not going after crypto exchanges. But the fact is that without objection I'd like to put on the record a letter signed by 19 Republican members designed to push back on the SEC, a brushback pitch if you're familiar with baseball, attacking the SEC for paying attention to and I quote, "the purported risks of digital assets." And I'd like to put on the record without objection comments from eight members made in this room that were designed to attack the SEC as being Luddite and anti-innovation for their efforts. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY): Mr. Ray, a number of their debtors in the FTX group are located in offshore jurisdictions. Will this complicate the efforts to retrieve the assets of those there? If so why? John Ray: No, I don't think it will complicate it at all. The various jurisdictions, historically in bankruptcy, and I've been in a number of cross border situations, the jurisdictions will cooperate with each other. The regulators in all these jurisdictions, I think, realize that everyone's there for a common purpose, to protect the victims and recover assets for the victims of these situations. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY): How much have you been able to secure and where are most of these assets located? John Ray: We've been able to secure over a billion dollars of assets. We've secured those two cold wallets in a secure location. It's an ongoing process, though, which will take weeks and perhaps months to secure all the assets. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY): Are most creditors located in the US or foreign jurisdictions. John Ray: The majority of the creditors trade through the .com silo and are outside of this jurisdiction, although there are some foreign customers that are on the US silo, and vice versa. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO): Reports suggest that ftx.com transferred more than half of its customer funds, roughly $10 billion, to Alameda research. Is that accurate, sir? John Ray: Our work is not done, we don't have exact numbers for you today, but I will say it's several billion dollars, in that range, so we know that the size of the harm was significant. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): Have you seen evidence of such a cover up? Have you seen evidence that there was any independent governance of Alameda separate and apart from that of the exchange? John Ray: The operations of the FTX group were not segregated. It was really operated as one company. As a result, there's no distinction virtually, between the operations of the company and who controlled those operations. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): Did FTX have sufficient risk management systems and controls to appropriately monitor any leverage the business took on and the interconnections it had with businesses, like again, Alameda. John Ray: There were virtually no internal controls and no separateness whatsoever. Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse December 1, 2022 Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Witness: Rostin Behnam, Chairman, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Clip Transcripts 18:30 Debbie Stabenow (D-MI): I've said this before and I'll say it again: the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act does not -- does not -- take authority away from other financial regulators. Nor does it make the CFTC the primary crypto regulator, because crypto assets can be used in many different ways. No single financial regulator has the expertise or the authority to regulate the entire industry. 24:30 John Boozman (R-AK): Many have asked why is the Ag Committee involved in this? The Ag Committee is involved because this committee and no other committee in the Senate is responsible for the oversight of the nation's commodity markets. Bitcoin, although a crypto currency, is a commodity. It's a commodity in the eyes of the federal courts and the opinion of the SEC Chairman, there is no dispute about this. If there are exchanges where commodities are traded, be it wheat, oil, or Bitcoin, then they must be regulated. It's simply that simple. 32:45 Rostin Behnam: I have asked Congress directly for clear authority to impose our traditional regulatory regime over the digital asset commodity market. 33:00 Rostin Behnam: I have not been shy about my encouragement of bills that contemplate shared responsibility for the CFTC and the Securities Exchange Commission, where the SEC would utilize its existing authority and reporting regime requirements for all security tokens, while the CFTC would apply its market based rules for the more limited subset of commodity tokens, which do not have the same characteristics of security tokens. 41:00 Rostin Behnam: I can though share with this committee with respect to me, my team and I have taken an initial review of my calendar and what we've observed is that my team and I met with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his team. Over the past 14 months, we met 10 times in the CFTC office at their request, all in relation to this DCO this Clearinghouse application. Nine out of the 10 times we were in Washington, one was at a widely held conference in Florida earlier this year. In addition, there were two phone calls, I believe, and a number of messages, all in relation to the DCO application, providing us updates suggesting that they were answering questions from different divisions, and trying as I said, to doggedly move the application along and to get it approved. 48:00 Sen. John Boozman (R-AK): If ftx.com had been a registered U.S. exchange, would the CFTC have been able to mitigate what happened. Rostin Behnam: Senator, you know, with our current authority, the answer is now. We need the authority to get into a CFTC registered exchange, as you point out. If we had that authority, and they were registered, given what we know from the facts about conflicts of interest, commingling funds, books and records, we would have been able to prohibit it. And I would point to what we're doing with Ledger X. On a daily basis our staff is in direct communication not only with Ledger X, but the custodians themselves, able to identify customer property, and customer money. Imagine that scenario with FTX.us if we had a daily lens into the location of customer money and customer property, you can imagine, given what we've learned about what's happened with FTX, we could have certainly prohibited many of the actions that we're hearing about. 1:16:00 Rostin Behnam: In terms of regulation of cash markets, right, the spot market, we simply do not have authority to register cash market exchanges or any intermediary broker dealer entity within that structure and that's what concerns me, this is the gap. 1:59:30 Rostin Behnam: Unfortunately, when we act, it's often after the fact because the information that allows us to bring an enforcement action in digital asset cash commodity markets, is only because information is coming to us from outsiders, from referrals, from tips, from whistleblowers, and this is in stark contrast to some of the surveillance tools and examination tools that we would have if we had a comprehensive regulatory framework over digital asset commodities. 2:07:00 Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): There'll be a reporter waiting in the hall -- I've already talked to her this morning -- who will ask you, "Did he ever contribute to your campaign?" I said "Oh, no, I never heard of the man." She said "You're wrong, Senator, he contributed to you." So the cryptocurrency people are active politically. And they are trying to achieve a political end here. It is their right as citizens of this country to do that. But it really calls on us to make sure that whatever we do is credible under those circumstances. 2:22:30 Rostin Behnam: I can't speak to what Mr. Bankman-Fried or anyone at FTX was thinking when they were advocating for regulation, but the remarkable thing is to think about it in the context of compliance and what we've learned about the FTX entities and just thinking about the bill that Senator Stabenow and Boozman introduced, they would have been so far out of compliance that it just wouldn't have even been possible. Legislative Hearing to Review S.4760, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act September 15, 2022 Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Witnesses: Rostin Behnam, Chairman, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Todd Phillips, Director, Financial Regulation and Corporate Governance, Center for American Progress Shelia Warren, Chief Executive Officer, Crypto Council for Innovation Christine Parker, Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Coinbase Heath Tarbert, Chief Legal Officer, Citadel Securities Denelle Dixon, Chief Executive Officer, Stellar Development Foundation Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States December 8, 2021 House Committee on Financial Services Witnesses: Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Circle Samuel Bankman-Fried, Founder and CEO, FTX Brian P. Brooks, CEO, Bitfury Group Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-Founder, Paxos Trust Company Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director, Stellar Development Foundation Alesia Jeanne Haas, CEO, Coinbase Inc. and CFO, Coinbase Global Inc. Clip Transcripts 23:30 Sam Bankman-Fried: We are already regulated and licensed. We have many licenses globally. Here in the United States, we are regulated by the states under the money service business and money transmitting regime, and we are regulated nationally by the CFTC where we have a DCO, a DCM, a swap execution facility, and other licensure. 1:13:30 Sam Bankman-Fried: One of the really innovative properties of cryptocurrency markets are 24/7 risk monitoring and engines. We do not have overnight risk or weekend risk or holiday risk in the same way traditional assets do, which allow risk monitoring and de risking of positions in real time to help mitigate volatility. We've been operating for a number of years with billions of dollars of open interest. We've never had customer losses, clawbacks or anything like that. Even going through periods of large movements in both directions. We store collateral from our users in a way which is not always done in the traditional financial ecosystem to backstop positions. And the last thing that I'll say is if you look at what precipitated some of the 2008 financial crisis, you saw a number of bilateral bespoke non-reported transactions happening between financial counterparties which then got repackaged and releveraged again and again and again, such that no one knew how much risk was in that system until it all fell apart. If you compare that to what happens on FTX or other major cryptocurrency venues today, there is complete transparency about the full open interest. There is complete transparency about the positions that are held. There is a robust, consistent risk framework. 1:34:00 Sam Bankman-Fried: In addition to a bunch of international licenses in the United States, we are participating in that system you referenced with the money transmitter and money service businesses license is in addition to that, however, we are also licensed by the CFTC. We have a DCO, a DCM, and other licensure from them through FTX.us derivatives and we look forward to continuing to work with them to build out our product suite. We just submitted a 800 page, I believe, proposal to them a few days ago, which we're excited to discuss and we're also happy to talk with other regulators about potential products in the United States. 2:37:00 Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN): Now it's my understanding that FTX uses surveillance trade technology akin to the technology national Securities Exchanges use to protect investors and ensure sound spot markets. What does this technology and any other tools FTX uses to protect the spot market from fraud and manipulation look like? Sam Bankman-Fried: Yeah. So, you know, like other exchanges, we do have these technologies in addition to the, you know, new customer policies that we can identify individuals associated with trades. We have surveillance for unusual trading activity. We have manual inspections of anything that you know, gets flagged either by the automated surveillance or by manual inspection. And we do this with the trading activity with deposits and withdrawals and everything else. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN): Sounds like you're doing a lot to make sure there is no fraud or other manipulation. Thank you Mr. Bankman-Fried, again, for helping us understand the extensive guardrails a cryptocurrency exchange like FTX has in place to ensure sound crypto spot markets for investors. 2:52:30 Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa): Mr. Bankman-Fried, I'd like to start by asking you the first question. FTX.us has a derivatives platform and recently bought ledger x as part of that. Is that correct? Sam Bankman-Fried: Yes. Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa): Okay, thank you. And that platform is registered with the CFTC. Is that correct? Sam Bankman-Fried: Yep. Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa): Okay, perfect. So I just want to clarify something. And this isn't to say anybody's doing any wrong. It's just to get the lay of the land. You also have an exchange for Bitcoin and other tokens, but that is not registered with either the CFTC or the SEC. Is that correct? Sam Bankman-Fried: That's correct. Currently, neither of them are primary markets regulated for spot Bitcoin to USD markets. Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa): Okay, thank you. And I know you're registered as a money transmitter, but that's not the same kind of oversight that we'll see from a federal market regulator. I also sit on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC, so a gap like this is especially concerning to me. And the big problem that I see here, from what I understand, is that the CFTC doesn't have regulatory authority for spot trading of commodities, just their derivatives. So that leaves consumers with inconsistent protections, which is a concern that I have. 2:55:00 Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa): Bitcoin, which has almost a trillion dollars invested in it, has CFTC oversight for people who are trading futures and options, but not for people who are trading the currency itself. Is that right? Sam Bankman-Fried: That is essentially correct. Full FTX Superbowl Commercial with Larry David Tom Brady FTX Commercials Steph Curry FTX Commercial Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

On the Huckabee Show, Senator John Boozman is discussing the Senate plans and leadership CHANGES following the midterm elections. Jenny Beth Martin joins Mike Huckabee to discuss the Tea Party Patriots and the Innovation Race film. Elizabeth Groff received an Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift as a young girl. She OPENS UP about being a National Spokesperson for this Samaritan's Purse program. Barry and Dari Anne Amato PERFORM a We Need A Lot of Christmas Dinner Show Christmas medley to kick off the holiday season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S. Senate passes marriage protection bill; Boozman, Cotton among opposing senators; Shoppers returning to stores and online for Christmas deals, survey says; LR board hears recommendations from crime-reduction panel

U.S. Senator John Boozman, Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee and major U.S. rice supporter, joins the podcast to talk about challenges facing rice farmers, the looming Farm Bill, bipartisanship, educating people with no farm experience, and what percentage of Americans have never seen a cow. But first, Michael and Lesley sit down with three USDA NASS officials to talk about the statistical survey work they do and why it is so important for farmers to participate. With special guests: U.S. Senator John Boozman, Arkansas, Michael Klamm, Deputy Regional Director of NASS's Delta Region – Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, Lance Honig, Chief of NASS's Crops Branch and Tony Dorn, Chief of NASS's Environmental, Economics and Demographics Branch Hosted by: Michael Klein and Lesley Dixon

A third year of drought is causing a drop in production for California farmers and ranchers, and U.S. farmland prices increase 12.4 % over last year.

University of Florida study looks to improve strawberry flavor, and U.S. farmland prices increase 12.4% over last year.

On today's show, paying for back-to-school supplies. Plus, Arkansas Senator john Boozman on regulating cryptocurrency, what to expect in this special session, and much more.

Heya Cryptozens, Tonight's Show: Solana Wallets Hacked Stabenow, Boozman introduce pro CFTC bill It's 10 PM Pacific time and the date is August 3rd, 2022. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter. My name is Nikodemus, I'll be your host. The cover model, mascot and co-host for this podcast is Tex and together we take a nightly look at the crypto, nft and metaverse space and the industry that surrounds it.  And keep in mind, nothing in this show should ever be considered financial advice. Email: crypto.overnighter@gmail.com Salem Friends of Felines: https://sfof.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptoCorvus1 Torum: https://www.torum.com/u/corvusforge

On this episode, American Farm Bureau Federation Golden Plow Award Winner Sen. John Boozman (R-Arkansas), discusses the state of the agriculture industry, rural broadband and the 2023 Farm Bill. White House Council of Economic Advisors Member Jared Bernstein returns to discuss the second-quarter GDP report and the latest Federal Reserve interest rate hike, and Golden Harvest agronomist Steve Wilkens discusses strategies for mitigating tar spot in corn plants. In this week's “Meat Monitor” segment, U.S. Meat Export Federation CEO Dan Halstrom shares how continued labor strife at the Port of Oakland is once again slowing agricultural shipments. In our “Bushels and Cents” segments, Ray Bohacz talks about the importance of having “as built” schematics for any short-run farm equipment. The episode also features the music of singer/songwriter Steve Markwardt. Timestamps Intro and news: 0:00 Goatlifeclothing.com advertisement: 5:58 Sen. John Boozman: 6:18 Concept AgriTek advertisement: 21:04 Jared Bernstein, White House Council of Economic Advisors: 21:38 Steve Wilkins, Golden Harvest: 29:07 Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation: 32:45 Ray Bohacz, “Bushels and Cents”: 35:13 Steve Markwardt: 36:46

5 days left in Facebook Jail. Arkansas Primary Election Results. Sen. Boozman avoids runoff; other Arkansas congressional incumbents win. Power outage affecting polling location, election headquarters in Arkansas. Meet the candidates running to be the next governor of Arkansas. Ford settles false advertising claims for $19 million, according to a news release by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. Firefighters Wrangle Man Who Attempted to Steal Firetruck While they Battled Blaze

Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman says Washington is looking for ways to boost ag production.

This week's Open Mic Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman. The Arkansas Republican says the Russian-Ukraine conflict is disrupting a major food production region and exacerbating global hunger. Boozman says it is time for Washington to act, not only addressing the immediate needs of starving people but enhancing opportunities to encourage American farmers and ranchers to step up production to meet global shortfalls. Boozman is encouraged that an upcoming committee hearing on new farm policy will include a southern perspective on production, sustainability, and climate-smart farming practices. Boozman favors the Senate version of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act and would like to see the legislation approved in short order.

Costs continue to soar for producers and consumers, according to Arkansas Senator John Boozman.

The C Report for Monday, April 4, 2022 (9:00 PM) In a world overwrought with fake news and propaganda from a biased media monopolized by six media corporations, The C Report emerges as an America First news show sifting through the aggregate to bring people around America and the world a different view that is independent, fair and patriotic. Join Mr. C weekdays for The C Report on The Foxhole.app, Pilled.net, Twitch, Clouthub, or Rumble. === === === === === === SIGN UP FOR THE E-MAIL LIST: https://www.TheCReport.com === === === === === === SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE TO THE PODCAST: https://www.anchor.fm/thecreport === === === === === === SUPPORT: https://cash.app/$MacX5x5 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/macx99336 https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mrctv === === === === === === SHOP: https://shop-mr-ctv.creator-spring.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thecreport/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thecreport/support

GOP Senators say Administration needs to do something about soaring fuel prices,and do it NOW!

The inaugural episode of Agri-Pulse Newsmakers comes as USDA announced a $1 billion investment in climate-smart ag spending. In this week's episode, we talk with Sen. John Boozman, the top Republican on the Senate Ag Committee, about how the announcement – and the funding source – will be received on Capitol Hill as well as where he stands on legislation to reform the cattle markets. There's also a panel discussion featuring Randy Russell and Laura Wood Peterson on the impact of USDA's announcement on the nation's farmers and ranchers, a look at foreign land ownership, and the latest on efforts to expand the nation's meat processing capacity. Want to receive Newsmakers direct to your inbox every week? Sign up!  http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

On today's show: Chris Smith, U.S. Representative for the 4th District of New Jersey, discusses the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and why many are referring to it as the "Genocide Games." John Boozman, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, talks about

On today's show: Chris Smith, U.S. Representative for the 4th District of New Jersey, discusses the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and why many are referring to it as the "Genocide Games." John Boozman, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, talks about

On today's show: Rand Paul, U.S. Senator from Kentucky, talks about how several senators are introducing a measure to revoke President Biden's vaccine mandate on private employers and his letter demanding answers after the National Institutes of

Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany speaks to Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) about the latest from the 50-50 Senate, the countdown to the 2022 midterms and the future of the GOP.

The longest-running farm program in West Texas, the AgriBusiness Report is our daily interview program with decision-makers in the world of Agriculture. Today's guest is Sen. John Boozman, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

On today's show: Rand Paul, U.S. Senator from Kentucky, discusses President Biden's vaccine mandates and Dr. Fauci's latest comments, Project Veritas's undercover video showing Pfizer scientists admitting that natural immunity is "probably better"

Pennsylvania Republican Glenn "GT" Thompson is urging everyone to become familiar with President Biden's tax plan as it applies to farms and ranches, and why it's could have a devastating impact.

This week's Open Mic guest is Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman. The Arkansas Republican isn't pleased with the process of budget reconciliation for the Build Back Better Plan now before Congress. Boozman questions not only the sum of funds but the lack of detail in how the agriculture dollars will be used. While stepped-up basis may be preserved with the plan in its current form, Boozman says that can quickly change and says lowering the minimum inheritance tax thresholds could have the same detrimental effect on the transfer of farms and small businesses to the next generation. Labor is still a top issue for agriculture, but he's doubtful this Congress will embrace the challenge.

Pennsylvania Republican Glenn "GT" Thompson is urging everyone to become familiar with President Biden's tax plan as it applies to farms and ranches, and why it's could have a devastating impact.

This week, we hear about what's happening in the equine industry in Arkansas and we learn about a new "mobile" meat processing trailer. We also talk about Senator John Boozman's tour of farms and agriculture operations in the state and learn why these visits from Congressional leaders are so important.

In our local news today: a Morrilton man has been arrested in the stolen vehicle case; an accident on I40 in Conway was fatal to a Fort Smith man; COVID hospitalizations are on the decline while cases remain high; a Center Ridge brush fire burns 72 acres; Senator Boozman conducts his annual Ag Tour this week; a retrial has been scheduled for Gilbert Baker on bribery and fraud charges, and we'll check sports.

In our local news today: $2500 reward offered for the safe return of a service dog from stolen vehicle; Conway Co. records 38th COVID death; Holyfield Place moving forward in downtown Morrilton; Senator Boozman continues fighting for veterans; we'll check sports, and have a visit with Gary Gibson on behalf of the Southern Christian Children's Home in Morrilton.

In our local news today: Arkansas runs out of COVID ICU beds; MHS is bringing back the Homecoming Parade and production; Senator Boozman critical of Afghanistan situation; Museum of Automobiles to host Ford Econoline Show; ARDOT is hosting an online public meeting for proposed Conway roundabout, plus we'll check sports.

In our local news today: FDA gives full approval to Pfizer vaccine; Quorum Court gives approval for grant application & hears 911 update; Morrilton & Conway Co. officers assist Conway PD with drug bust; Senator Boozman visits with constituents during in-state work; AG files civil lawsuit against Conway doctors; we'll check sports, and have a visit with Conway County Judge Jimmy Hart.

In today's show, we report on the senate's vote to revoke a Trump administration methane rule. We also hear from Senate Ag Committee members Senator John Boozman (R-AR) and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Supporting the People who Support Agriculture Thank you to our sponsors who make it possible to get you your daily news. Please feel free to visit their websites.   Agromillora – https://www.agromillora.com/ California Citrus Mutual – https://www.cacitrusmutual.com/ The California Walnut Board – https://walnuts.org/ Soil and Crop – https://mysoilandcrop.com/ WRT – http://wrtag.com/promax/   For advertising inquiries, please contact us at 559-352-4456 or jay@jcsmarketinginc.com

In our local news today: the dedication of the new Hardison Visitor Center will take place today; the Russellville School Board issues a statement on the firing of their superintendent; Senator Boozman urges Arkansans to get vaccinated; a fundraiser is planned to benefit Robert Majors; we'll check sports, and visit with Ross Harmon on behalf of the East End Masonic Lodge.

Today's show features: John Boozman, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, on his legislation that increases penalties for those who attack law enforcement officers, the latest on the border crisis, and on Democrats refusal to compromise on infrastructure

In our local news today: Senator Boozman visited Morrilton on Friday; Arkansas Sky Observatories celebrates its 50th anniversary; we'll update you on COVID in Conway & Perry Counties; we'll talk about Arkansas Drug Take Back Day & the UACCM Links for Learning golf tourney; we'll check sports, and visit with Joann Gardenhire with the Vinson Chapel Community.

Senator John Boozman tackles the border crisis and more. Franklin Graham reveals the inequality in the Equality Act. The talented Mandy Harvey performs her new single. Tune in to the Huckabee show right now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Margo Hale, NCAT's Southeast Regional Director, visits with U.S. Senator John Boozman of Arkansas. Margo has known the senator since she was a child and has worked with Sen. Boozman's office on agriculture issues since he entered Congress.With Senator Boozman's new role as Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Margo welcomed an opportunity to visit with the senator about issues affecting small farmers. In their conversation, Senator Boozman shares his connection to agriculture, and they talk about the diversity of Arkansas agriculture.They also discuss the impact COVID-19 has had on the food supply and farmers, opportunities for small farmers in local food systems, the economic situation for farms, and looking ahead to the next Farm Bill.Senator Boozman has been a long-time supporter of NCAT's ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture Program and Armed to Farm.Senator Boozman has been a long-time supporter of NCAT's ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture Program and Armed to Farm.Watch the video version of this interview here and the related ATTRA Blog.Related ResourcesATTRA COVID-19 ResourcesArmed to FarmOther Resources:Senator John BoozmanFor more information on this topic, you can contact Margo Hale directly via email at margoh@ncat.org.Please call ATTRA with any and all of your sustainable agriculture questions at 800-346-9140 or e-mail us at askanag@ncat.org. Our two dozen specialists can help you with a vast array of topics, everything from farm planning to pest management, from produce to livestock, and soils to aquaculture.You can get in touch with NCAT/ATTRA specialists and find our other extensive, and free, sustainable-agriculture publications, webinars, videos, and other resources at NCAT/ATTRA's website.You also can stay in touch with NCAT at its Facebook page.Keep up with NCAT/ATTRA's SIFT farm at its website.Also check out NCAT's Regional Offices' websites and Facebook Pages!Southwest Regional Office: Website / FacebookWestern Regional Office: Website / FacebookRocky Mountain West Regional Office: FacebookGulf States Regional Office: Website / FacebookSoutheast Regional Office: Website / FacebookNortheast Regional Office: Website / Facebook

Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., joins NGFA Vice President of Legislative Affairs and Public Policy Bobby Frederick to discuss agricultural policy and what to expect in 2021. With the retirement of Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Sen. Boozman is expected to be the leading Republican on the committee.

This week's Open Mic Guest is Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark. Few events in history have been as challenging as the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture makes up one-fourth of Arkansas' GDP and has hit the state's rural economy especially hard. As a member of both the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees in the Senate, Boozman approves of additional funds to support the industry but is keeping an eye on the additional financial burden. He supports the Agriculture Department and Secretary Sonny Perdue's guidelines for dispersing CFAP funds, is in favor of increased annual limits for the Commodity Credit Corporation, and believes the silver lining of the pandemic may be heightened efforts to improve rural broadband service.

This week's guest on Open Mic is U.S. Senator John Boozman. In this interview, the Arkansas Republican discusses the need for policy to address climate change that includes a favorable role for agriculture, the goals for infrastructure and rural development, trade and the upcoming debate on child nutrition.

This week's guest on Open Mic is U.S. Senator John Boozman. As a member of senate committees on Appropriations, Agriculture, Budget as well as Environment and Public Works, the Arkansas Republican will be in the thick of major issues for agriculture and rural America. In this interview, Boozman discusses scaling back the Obama administration's regulatory agenda, budget reconciliation, a Trump appointment for the Supreme Court, comprehensive tax reform, the challenge of balancing the agriculture and manufacturing agendas in U.S. trade policy as well as the process of writing comprehensive food and agriculture policy.Jeff NalleySenator John Boozman, R-Arkansas

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Born and bred in the great state of Arkansas, John Boozman recounted recent economic conditions and possibilities for conservative economic stimulus for his home state.

This week's guest on Open Mic is U.S. Senator John Boozman. As the U.S. Congress returns to Capitol Hill this week, the Arkansas Republican expects much attention will be devoted to the appropriations process with a view of accomplishing the major work on spending bills before the end of the fiscal year. In this week's interview, Senator Boozman shares his view on crafting federal rules on GMO food labeling, funding sources for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the need for fair trade agreements and calls for flexibility in child nutrition standards. Senator Boozman says the appointment of a Supreme Court nominee adds to the agenda of the race for the White House in 2016.Jeff NalleySenator John Boozman- Arkansas

This week's guest on Open Mic is U.S. Senator John Boozman.  The Arkansas Republican sees strong opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed clean water rule and says Congress must quickly address the COOL rule. As co-chair of the hunger caucus, Boozman has strong interest in nutrition programs and expects policy reform this year. In this interview, Senator Boozman explains his thoughts on Cuban trade reform, Trade Promotion Authority and currency manipulation.Jeff NalleySenator John Boozman Arkansas

Dr. John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas, is in his first term in the U.S. Senate following five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the Agriculture Committee and is keenly aware of the needs of Arkansas farmers who grow a wide variety of crops. Boozman addresses the long process of getting the Farm, Food and Jobs bill through Congress and delves into specifics on commodity and food and nutrition titles. He also challenges his northern counterparts in their efforts to tighten the definition of "Actively Engaged In Farming". He explains the workings of Congress, or lack thereof, in a contentious environment and the challenges it brings to producing good legislation.Dr. John Boozman

Our guest this week on Agri-Pulse Open Mic is Arkansas Senator John Boozman, a freshman member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, who voted against passage of the 2012 Farm Bill in committee. He talks about ongoing negotiations in the U.S. Senate and his expectations for a southern farm safety net that offers more flexibility for growers of all types. The former cattle rancher also shares his concerns over food stamps, crop insurance and other aspects of the farm bill, as well as his frustrations over U.S. energy policy.Sen. John Boozman