GOP Introduces Bill to Exclude Ag from SEC Climate Rules

Source: High Plains Journal

Congressman Frank Lucas (R-OK), who serves on the House Committee and Financial Services and is a former chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, along with U.S. Senators John Boozman (R-AR), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and Mike Braun (R-IN), reintroduced legislation to protect family farmers and ranchers from burdensome greenhouse gas emissions reporting rules proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Protect Farmers from the SEC Act would exempt family farmers and ranchers from being included in the indirect GHG reporting requirements, ensuring they would not be required to track and disclose granular on-farm data regarding individual operations and day-to-day activities in order to stay compliant with the companies that purchase their products.

“America’s family farmers and ranchers face many challenges in the marketplace as they work to produce more commodities while using fewer resources. The SEC’s efforts to use financial regulation to implement a climate agenda would hinder the ability of American farmers and ranchers to compete in global markets and creating onerous compliance requirements for operations with few or no employees,” Lucas said. “Nevertheless, federal securities laws already require publicly traded companies to disclose material risks to investors; the SEC’s ill-advised climate disclosure rule undermines the materiality standard for environmental policy purposes.”

“All it takes is a basic understanding of how agriculture works to see how misguided