The House on Thursday approved H.R. 1599, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, on a 275 to 150 vote. Passage of this legislation is a priority issue for Farm Bureau.

“Congress stood with farmers and ranchers today in supporting innovation that helps the environment and keeps food prices down for everyone,” AFBF President Bob Stallman said in a statement. The legislation protects consumers from confusing and misleading GMO labels and will create a national, voluntary labeling standard based on science and common sense. 

Just as it is the responsibility of all Virginians to protect our waterways, it is the responsibility of the media to accurately portray the state of our natural resources. 

In the July 5 editorial, “A degree of progress on the James and the Bay,” The News & Advance incorrectly reported that the “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay this year will be about 1.37 million cubic miles. It’s actually expected to be a much-less-dramatic 1.37 cubic miles, as reported on June 23 by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey. 

It is my hope that some of your readers saw that figure, questioned its accuracy and were able to find the correct information online. It’s readily available. It’s also my concern that the astoundingly large error overshadowed the fact that the year’s dead zone is 10 percent smaller than the long-term average as measured since 1950. 

That decrease is due in part to efforts to decrease agricultural and other runoff into the bay and its tributaries. It’s a sign that progress is being made. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged as much, noting recently that Virginia is among states on target to meet their goals for nitrogen and phosphorous runoff by 2025. 

I have to assume they checked and double-checked their math.

A circuit court judge in Richmond rejected on July 9 a lawsuit aimed at declaring a cow a fertilizer applicator.

The suit by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation asserted that Virginia should prohibit large-scale livestock farmers from allowing their animals access to rivers and streams.

The state defines “large” cattle farms as those with 200 or more animals; there are fewer than 70 such farms in Virginia. State law mandates that “waste shall not be applied” in farms’ buffer zones along stream banks, and the lawsuit argued that waste dropped by animals near streams constitutes application.

The court, however, maintained that the language of existing law refers to farmers spreading manure for fertilizer—a regulated practice that requires a permit.

Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farmers’ advocacy organization, was among agricultural groups that intervened in the case. VFBF President Wayne F. Pryor, a grain and beef cattle producer, said he was pleased with the outcome. “Pastured livestock are exempt from storm water regulations, but stream exclusion fencing is not a particularly new practice and livestock farmers are well aware of the need to protect water quality—both locally and downstream,” Pryor said.

“In recent decades, many, many Virginia farmers have voluntarily fenced their animals out of streams. And we know many more have applied for available cost-share funding to help them do likewise.”

Click here for this week’s Commodity Comments, a weekly newsletter designed to provide agricultural producers with an analysis of current market trends by Farm Bureau Market Analyst Jonah Bowles.

The House Agriculture Committee approved H.R. 1599 on Tuesday, a move that will bring greater clarity to food labeling, according to AFBF. H.R. 1599 empowers consumers by continuing to require warning labels for foods that may have adverse effects on the public, noted AFBF President Bob Stallman in a statement. “At the same time, it does away with labeling schemes that would stigmatize foods based on nothing more than the way in which they were developed,” he added.

Further, “H.R. 1599 restores reason to our food discussions and shows pseudoscience and food quackery the door,” said Stallman. “We look forward to passage by the full House in the very near future.”

The Interim Evaluation of Virginia’s 2014-2015 Milestones and WIP Progress was published June 10. WIP stands for watershed implementation plan, a specific set of conservation improvements and benchmarks established for each watershed in the state by the EPA under the overall Chesapeake Bay Program partnership.

Conservation efforts in different sectors are being tracked by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, which supplied the numbers to the EPA for evaluation. They include activities related to agriculture, urban and suburban storm water, wastewater treatment plants and nutrient-reduction credit efforts. The EPA found that farmers are currently on track for reaching the overall 2017 target for reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff by 60 percent compared to levels measured in 2009.

“Virginia farmers are doing well in implementing best management practices to reduce erosion and pollutants, although the report said additional BMP steps may be needed in the future,” Stoneman said. “It also noted that the state of Virginia has committed or spent almost $25 million in the bay watershed since 2012 to help farmers install fencing to keep cattle out of waterways.

“Farmers are grateful for the assistance, but much more cost-share funding will be needed in order to continue with this good progress. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to fence some properties—money that many producers just don’t have available to spend.”

The report noted that Virginia is expected to have 274 individual farm Resource Management Plans developed by the end of this year, well above the goal of 40 plans. The voluntary RMP program was introduced last year and entails plans developed by professional nutrient management specialists for participating farms.

“Farmers are eager to do their part to clean up the bay under voluntary programs like RMPs,” Stoneman said, “but we need the additional staff and financial resources to carry out these recommendations. And we will continue to ask the General Assembly to fully fund these efforts.”