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NASDA members are discussing food and ag issues at Winter Policy Conference

Commissioners, secretaries, and directors of agriculture from across the nation are developing policies addressing agriculture and food issues at the 2023 Winter Policy Conference.  

National Association of State Departments of Agriculture President Doug Miyamoto says members are well positioned to address these issues.

“When we talk policy, we’re talking as members of NASDA about cooperative federalism and that’s the theme for all of our policy discussions. An important underlying point of cooperative federalism that we continually key upon when we have our discussions with our partners in the federal government is that we have delegated authority for many of these federal programs as state departments of agriculture and we have to remain vigilant against what we all know usually happens with a lot of delegated authority programs on the federal side of the equation in that the money decreases and the demands increase.”

He uses the farm bill as an example of how members need adequate resources.

“It’s a responsibility that we have to make sure all of our producers, our economies, our communities of every size have a forward-looking and fully funded farm bill,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of discussions about baseline and what has the bipartisan infrastructure law done to conservation programs and how that will impact baseline for the farm bill. We’ve got to make sure we do this correctly. We can’t start splintering off programs and splintering off ideals from the farm bill and then hoping that we’re going to be able to get a comprehensive farm bill that’s going to be on time.”

United We Thrive is the theme for the annual policy conference. NASDA says the theme reflects the 50 states and four territories, multiple levels of government and industry leaders from across the food system the organization brings together to develop policy solutions for food and agriculture.