Podcast Episode 115

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How Will the 2024 Election Results Impact Ag?

How Will the 2024 Election Results Impact Ag?

Episode 115 | 29 min

With Guest:

Collin Peterson, Former Congressman and President of The Peterson Group, Inc.

Now that the votes are counted, what do the 2024 election results mean for the future of agriculture? In this timely episode of The Water Table podcast, Jamie sits down with former Congressman Collin Peterson for a conversation about how the next four years may impact farmers, drainage contractors, and other folks in the industry.

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We’re hoping the new administration will make changes in some of these roles and make it easier for us to manage water.

— Collin Peterson

Guest Bio

Congressman Collin Peterson represented Minnesota’s Seventh District from 1991 to 2021. He served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee from 2005 to 2021 and was instrumental in writing and passing four farm bills. He is a nationally recognized expert on agriculture policy and has a strong reputation for his steadfast commitment to bringing everyone to the table while offering positive and practical solutions to difficult problems.

Congressman Peterson grew up on a farm near Moorhead, Minnesota and was active in 4H, high school music and sporting activities, and working on the farm. He earned a BA in Accounting and Business Administration from Minnesota State University Moorhead, served in the National Guard, and went on to become a Certified Public Accountant in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. He was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 1976 and served for 10 years with a focus on the agriculture and tax committees.

Mr. Peterson is the founder and current President of The Peterson Group, Inc., a government affairs and public policy firm. He also has a partnership with Combest Sell and Associates in Washington D.C. to advise and consult on policies that bolster U.S. agriculture and rural America.

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Today on The Water Table, I am interviewing former Congressman Collin Peterson. Mr. Peterson was the chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, and now serves as the president of the Peterson Group and Heads the Midwest Council on Agriculture. We’re going to be talking about the transition that takes place soon in the administration of the president and as he forms his cabinet, how this will affect agriculture. I think you’ll enjoy the episode. Please join me today.

(00:36):

Welcome back to The Water Table podcast. Today I have a former Congressman Collin Peterson with me. Collin was the chairman of the House Ag Committee for many years and involved in the House Ag Committee for most of his career, now as part of the Peterson Group and the Midwest Council on Agriculture. Wanted to get Collin on and just talk about the recent events of the election and as Trump is forming his cabinet where this thing is going, and specifically in agriculture. Talk a little bit about farm bill, will we get one? And I know Collin is fresh off from a trip to D.C. with his group, with the Midwest Council on Agriculture. So lots of good insight here. So welcome to the podcast, Congressman.

Collin Peterson (00:36):

Yeah, glad to be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:25):

Yeah, thanks. So we’re a couple weeks removed here from the election. I don’t know if it was surprising or not, but the reality of it is is Donald Trump will be the president here in a few weeks, and there’s going to be some changes in the cabinet, and agriculture seems to be bouncing around the last several administrations in which it’s been hard. The last three or four, you would know probably the number, but farm bills when it comes up to, to actually get a farm bill done. And I think there’s lots of reasons for that, but let’s talk a little, maybe start with that. We’re in farm bill season here coming up and with the changes, how do you see this progressing?

Collin Peterson (02:12):

Well, we’re, I think, two or three years behind times in doing a new farm bill. And so it looks like what’s going to happen now, we’re going to have another extension for another year to September 30th of ’25, and it’s getting pretty late, so I’m not sure if there ever will be a new farm bill in this process. So what’s overtaking it now is the hurricane that happened in the Southeast. So those guys want an economic loss bill, that’s a higher priority than the farm bill. And then the other southerners who wanted the farm bill, now they are pushing a disaster bill for ’23 and ’24. And so a lot of the folks in agriculture are now pushing that, and at the time the hurricane happened, I said, “This is going to be problematic for doing a farm bill,” and I was right.

(03:17):

So they’re going to try to do the, somehow or another, either in the end-of-the-year package or by itself or whatever, they’re going to try to do those two things. They have an economic loss passage for people that got wiped out by the hurricane and other things, or do a two-year disaster package. The South Texas especially had a drought for the last two years, and so they’d like to have a disaster package to supplement their crop insurance. A lot of those farmers in the Southeast, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, don’t have crop insurance because of the kind of crops that they grow. So they want to have some kind of an economic loss. So it’s been proposed, a couple, three different things. They’re very expensive and at this point they’re putting it together. Nobody has any idea what’s going to actually come out of this. It’s going to be negotiated in the next two, three weeks. So-

Speaker 1 (04:22):

Sure. Sure. So probably the focus there, and not really just getting an extension in place, and then working on something.

Collin Peterson (04:29):

Well, [inaudible 00:04:29] they intend to put the extension on whatever package they come up with because they haven’t done the work to do a farm bill, and there’s no way they would get one done by the end of the year because there’s so much stuff that has to be negotiated out, basically at the staff level on all these different titles. And nobody’s gone around to doing that, and they couldn’t even come up with a agreement about how to proceed.

Speaker 1 (04:58):

Sure. Sure.

Collin Peterson (04:58):

So it’s going to end up being an extension, which is okay for us in the Midwest. We can live with that. The southerners have been the ones that objected to this, but now they’ve decided the disaster package is more important for them. So they’re pushing that and they’re not going to get both. So-

Speaker 1 (05:19):

Sure. Sure, and that extension, you think, extension package, would be in place and moving forward by the end of the year?

Collin Peterson (05:28):

Yeah. Yeah, it will be. So that’ll be the next year’s crop. So that crop will be covered by the old farm bill, just like this last year’s crop was, and that’ll run them through September 30th of ’25. And the original farm bill that they were trying to do would’ve been ’23 to ’27, I think.

Speaker 1 (05:56):

Yeah. Yeah.

Collin Peterson (05:57):

So they’re getting out towards the end of that whole process. And there are some people out there saying they should extend the farm bill for a couple of years or extend it for the life of whatever they’re trying to do. They haven’t decided what to do with that yet.

Speaker 1 (06:11):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and because right now, I don’t know how many people know, but some of the programs, I don’t know if all of them, but things like CRP and all that are closed right now.

Collin Peterson (06:21):

[inaudible 00:06:21]. Well, but those programs are permanently authorized. So the reason CRP is closed is because it’s a decision made by the administration not to open up the enrollment. It’s not anything Congress hasn’t done. So they have authorization for 27 million acres of CRP, and I think they’ve got probably enrolled somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 or 25 million. So they got some room to grow that.

Speaker 1 (06:21):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (06:50):

But they’ve put it on hold for whatever reason, and [inaudible 00:06:55]-

Speaker 1 (06:54):

So that is not connected to this farm bill issue, that that’s on hold just to try to put some pressure on getting a farm bill or no?

Collin Peterson (07:04):

Well, I don’t know why they did it.

Speaker 1 (07:06):

Okay.

Collin Peterson (07:06):

You got some people that don’t like CRP.

Speaker 1 (07:07):

Yeah.

Collin Peterson (07:10):

So it’s hard to know exactly who they’re responding to, but that’s not going to be terminated. CRP is going to be authorized for 27 million acres. The question is, if they get a new farm bill, are they going to raise that cap to 30 million?

Speaker 1 (07:11):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (07:31):

Are they going to cut it back at 24 million?

Speaker 1 (07:33):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (07:34):

Are the environmentalists going to put a bunch of crazy regulations on it so that you can’t even afford to do it?

Speaker 1 (07:42):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (07:42):

That remains to be seen.

Speaker 1 (07:43):

Sure, sure. Good, good. Moving on to the election, and there’s the obvious is with the Republicans having control of everything, but one more significant thing in agriculture is Senator Stabenow from Michigan retiring, and she was pretty involved in agriculture in the Senate, and do you see any effects of that, anything positive, negative?

Collin Peterson (08:14):

Well, some people blame her for there not being a farm bill because she didn’t put her language out until about two weeks ago. So she wouldn’t agree with that. Her position was that the Republicans weren’t forthcoming enough to work with her and it was that standoff.

Speaker 1 (08:35):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (08:36):

So she’s going to be leaving the scene. And for us in the Midwest, Amy Klobuchar is going to take over for the Democrats and the head of the Democrats in the Senate, but of course she’ll be the ranking member. She won’t be the chair. Boozman will be the chair of the committee, and he’s a good guy, and he and Amy have a good relationship, and I think they’ll probably work better together than they did with Stabenow. Another issue is the staff. You got some people on the staff that were problematic for the Republicans, and I think some of that is going to turn over. So there’s a lot of things that are going to happen here that, at this point, it’s all speculation-

Speaker 1 (09:27):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (09:28):

… other than we know that Stabenow’s going to be out, Klobuchar’s going to be in. So is she going to take Stabenow’s staff or are some of them going to retire? That’s one of the questions. And they’re going to be taken up with these other two issues, the economic loss, disaster programs, they’re going to be taken up with that until they get into next year.

Speaker 1 (09:55):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (09:56):

So it’s a kind of influx, and then we have a new secretary now being appointed, so that all of that stuff shakes up everything.

Speaker 1 (10:10):

Yep. Yep, and not a lot of information yet, that was just over the weekend, but on her as new secretary.

Collin Peterson (10:18):

Well, she doesn’t have a lot of her background in production agriculture. She’s very smart. She set up this nonprofit, American First, for Trump. So she’s pushing. So her big thing in agriculture has been to limit Chinese purchase of farmland. That’s been her big thing, but there isn’t a whole lot of that going on anyway, that’s more of a political issue than anything else. But the people I’ve talked to, I don’t know her, I’ve never met her, people that talk to me about this say that she’s very smart. She’s very loyal to Donald Trump, and that was one of his main criteria in pointing these new secretaries. Everybody’s appointed, there are people that have been very loyal to him and part of his whole operation. So we’ll see. He won a mandate, and I’ve been trying tell the Democrats, he won on mandates, you need to help him put together his program and not fight him all the time, but some of them won’t listen. So it’ll see how that all plays out.

Speaker 1 (11:31):

Yeah, so in regards to that, and the presidential election, and then the cabinet that he’s putting in place, you hear a lot in the media just around some sweeping changes that could happen in agriculture with RFK being involved in the health of America and how that could bleed out into agriculture. And is that all smoke and mirrors or is there some reality in that, and how should we think about that?

Collin Peterson (12:06):

Well, I am concerned because we don’t know how this is going to go ago, but I think it has a potential of being a problem. Now, as I say, the president has a mandate, people need to work with him, but RFK Jr. has got some off-the-wall ideas in my opinion. So we’ll see what he ends up doing. The other thing that you need to worry about is the DOGE committee. That’s Elon Musk and Ramaswamy. So they’re going to go in and overhaul these departments, and I don’t think those guys have a lot of time for agriculture. So I think that’s a potential problem too, but we don’t know. We have no idea, but I can tell you neither one of those guys have a very deep understanding of agriculture. So I think there’s some issues there that could be a problem, but we don’t know. We don’t know.

Speaker 1 (13:13):

Yeah. Yeah, and as the-

Collin Peterson (13:15):

Donald Trump, he had 70, 75% of the vote in rural America, in farm country. So he was elected not only by the farmers, but he had strong support. And so I can’t imagine that if he goes off in a direction that farmers don’t like, that he isn’t going to hear about it from the people that supported him. But it’s all speculation, so who knows.

Speaker 1 (13:45):

Right. Right. Right, and then in regards to the House, and maybe I should know this, but the leadership on the Republican side, is there any idea who will be the chairman of Ag?

Collin Peterson (13:59):

You mean in the House?

Speaker 1 (14:00):

Yes, for the-

Collin Peterson (14:01):

It’ll be GT. GT-

Speaker 1 (14:02):

It will be. It still will be. Yep, okay.

Collin Peterson (14:03):

Yeah, he has two more years.

Speaker 1 (14:03):

Okay.

Collin Peterson (14:06):

So it’ll be him. He’ll keep his staff. There isn’t a whole lot of turnover on the Republican side of the committee, so they’ll be the same folks. The question is, can they make some changes in the nutrition area to get more Democrats on board? And I know they’re working on that. We met with GT and his staff. They understand they have to do that to get more bipartisan support. And he said in that meeting, he said, “There will not be a farm bill if it’s not bipartisan.” So they’ve got to figure out a way to work this out, and he understands that. And I think we met with the Democratic staff of the committee in the House, and they were very much on board with working with the Republicans and working this out, and they were optimistic they could get this resolved. So that’s all good, but that’s not going to happen until next March or April, to start.

Speaker 1 (15:01):

Sure, sure. Sure, so lots of speculation on where this is going to go, but not really all that much different than past times when there’s new administration, right?

Collin Peterson (15:14):

Yeah, probably not. No, probably not. It’s-

Speaker 1 (15:17):

Just more emotion.

Collin Peterson (15:18):

Yeah, and as I say, especially in farm country, Trump got them on mandate, so he’s going to have lots of sway in what ends up happening here. And it’s not exactly clear where he’s at either on all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:37):

Right.

Collin Peterson (15:37):

So that remains to be seen, but he was there when we did the ’18 bill, he signed it, and I was one of the people that negotiated that. And really the administration didn’t have much to do with that. We did that at the congressional level, and he signed it. Whether he’s going to take that kind of approach this time, who knows?

Speaker 1 (16:00):

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Collin Peterson (16:02):

But-

Speaker 1 (16:03):

Was there-

Collin Peterson (16:04):

I wish him-

Speaker 1 (16:04):

Go ahead.

Collin Peterson (16:05):

I wish him well. I hope he’s can be successful.

Speaker 1 (16:08):

Yeah. What about this? Is there anything about this last election cycle that surprised you or that you didn’t see coming?

Collin Peterson (16:18):

No, not at all. I thought he was going to win, and I told people that six months ago, a year ago, and the Democrat didn’t believe me, and then they switched to Harris and they got its little excitement going for a while. And I still said to people, “I just don’t see this. I don’t see that she’s going to be able to pull this off.” And then they pick Walz from Minnesota, and he did not help. He actually probably hurt. He was supposed to deliver the farm vote and the rural vote, and you know how popular he is in rural Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (16:59):

Right. Right. Right.

Collin Peterson (17:00):

So none of it surprised me, no.

Speaker 1 (17:03):

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was interesting that Trump ended up winning Blue Earth County, Mankato, where he’s from.

Collin Peterson (17:10):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:10):

And so I think that tells the tale a little bit of how people are thinking.

Collin Peterson (17:14):

Well, I think, yeah, and we were always voting Democrat by 10, 15%. I think this time it was, on president, I think this time’s about 3%, three and a half statewide. So it was significantly narrower in Minnesota than it’s been in the past.

Speaker 1 (17:32):

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and maybe just thinking of where the country has gone and where it’s going, maybe this a little bit off subject, but you were first elected to the House of Representatives, I think in 1992 and-

Collin Peterson (17:45):

[inaudible 00:17:45] ’91.

Speaker 1 (17:45):

’91, and at the time, 90-plus percent of the districts of which elect you went Democrat. Is that right? And today it’s completely the opposite in rural Minnesota and rural America, and that isn’t necessarily… That’s an interesting dynamic because when you try to get things done like a farm bill, you need both sides.

Collin Peterson (18:11):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (18:11):

And when you don’t have Democrats in the farm country, it’s hard to get that understanding.

Collin Peterson (18:18):

Yeah, they’re good people on the committee, but they don’t have the understanding of production agriculture. They don’t have a deep understanding of these issues or the politics of the issues. So it makes it harder to do.

Speaker 1 (18:31):

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. For sure. What else do you see coming down the pike that you’re thinking about, or concerned about, or involved in right now that is going to be an issue in the next-

Collin Peterson (18:45):

Well, it’s going to be, the first thing that’s going to come out of the gate then, in addition to the farm bill, is going to be what are they going to do with these tax cuts that are expiring? And for a lot of farmers, the tax issue probably is bigger for them than the farm bill. So I think what they’re going to do is they’re going to have a push, the first a hundred days, to get that done. So that’s an overall taxation issue, but it also has these sustainable aviation fuel tax credits and some other tax credits for renewable energy that affect agriculture. And that’s a place where you could see some changes because Trump is not big, and his people that he’s picking are not big on those tax credits.

(19:39):

They’re very critical of the Inflation Reduction Act, mostly on the spending, but they’re also critical of some of these tax cuts. So I think that’s going to be a big issue and probably going to maybe overwhelm the farm bill at the beginning, and it might take longer to do because of it. So that’s one thing that’s out there. I think that somebody’s got to get ahold of this deficit. This can’t keep going on. We just can’t keep adding to the deficit like we’ve been doing. And that’s got to be a priority in my opinion. Now, and I think they want to do that too, whether they’ll be able to do it, whether they’ll be able to get any kind of bipartisan consensus remains to be seen.

Speaker 1 (20:28):

Well, the challenge with that becomes that it’s like everyone’s going to feel some pain in that, I think as programs either are cut or they certainly aren’t growing. So-

Collin Peterson (20:39):

Yeah. Yeah, and they’re going to be down to three seats. If those three seats voted the other way on a bill, they could sink it. So it’s a much narrower majority they have now.

Speaker 1 (21:01):

Right.

Collin Peterson (21:01):

It’s going to make it hard to do.

Speaker 1 (21:02):

Right. Right. Right.

Collin Peterson (21:04):

So we’ll see what happens, but I think there’s a lot of people that want to try to work to get the Democrats and Republicans in rural America, in farm country, to work together. And that’s part of what I’m doing, why I stayed in the game here to try to help with that. So-

Speaker 1 (21:26):

So a lot of the listeners of The Water Table know who you are from past experience. Some of them know you personally, but I’m sure a lot of them would want to know, how are you feeling just about your role, what you’re doing now and not having to be in Washington every week?

Collin Peterson (21:43):

I love it. Well, I enjoy what I’m doing. I’m making a difference, I think. I’m one of the few people that gets along with the Republicans as well as the Democrats. There aren’t many like that anymore, and so I think I’m making a difference. And not having to travel out there every week is a plus, and it’s different. Right now, we have a contest going on in the Democrat side on the House Ag Committee where initially Jim Costa is going to challenge Scott. David Scott’s the ranking member, was the chairman. So Costa has announced that he’s going to run for that, that happens in January. And then Angie Craig has thrown her hat on the ring, and I think she’s getting some support and she’d be good. So would Costa.

(22:50):

They’re both very good. And then there’s Jahana Hayes who’s also being talked about, but I don’t think she’s going to go anyplace. She’s from Connecticut. She’s on the committee, mostly concerned about nutrition. They don’t have a lot of agriculture in Connecticut, so I’m not sure she’ll be a factor, but I think it’d be quite a race between Angie, and Costa, and Scott, and they’re going to be probably spending a lot of time the next two months campaigning for that.

Speaker 1 (23:22):

Well, and I’ve heard some rumors that Angie Craig will be in the running for governor of Minnesota the next time around too. So-

Collin Peterson (23:30):

Well, not if she gets this top spot on the Ag Committee. I don’t think she will, and that could be a free for all. I expect Walz is going to run again, even though I don’t think he should, but he probably will. And then I think Ellison wants to run, and there’ll probably be others out there as well.

Speaker 1 (23:57):

Sure.

Collin Peterson (23:57):

So I think if she could get the top spot in the Ag Committee, and get a staff, and get something to sink her teeth into, I think she’d stay or [inaudible 00:24:10] to the House. [inaudible 00:24:10]-

Speaker 1 (24:09):

Yeah, I think the good thing about that, I tend to lean a little more right. But the good thing about that is she does have some agriculture in her district, and she has a lot of familiarity with it, just the state that she’s in and being around members like you that have [inaudible 00:24:25]-

Collin Peterson (24:25):

Yeah, well, I spent a lot of time working with her, helping her understand this stuff. She calls me a lot. I got her connected with a lot of farmers down in her district, so she’s been working with them. And then I introduced her to Les Anderson, and she put Les on her staff, part time. He’s a former president of the Minnesota Corn Growers, a farmer down around Cannon Falls down in that area. So Les is working for her part time, and that’s helpful. So she told me, I talked to her a couple of days ago, and she told me she’s on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is a tough committee to get on. Everybody wants to be on that committee. But she told me that she’s a lot more comfortable talking to farmers and working with farmers in the Ag Committee than she is on her other committee. So if she gets this spot, she will have to give that committee up, and she’s apparently willing to do that. So-

Speaker 1 (25:29):

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.

Collin Peterson (25:32):

And she’s got some support already. These elections are really inside baseball, and I prefer to stay out of them because I don’t think it’s helpful to get in the middle of that. It’s personal relationships and they have to work it through, and it’s a secret ballot, so nobody’s going to know at the end of the day who voted it for who.

Speaker 1 (25:32):

Sure, sure. Sure.

Collin Peterson (26:07):

But anyway, I think she’d be great. Jim Costa is very knowledgeable about agriculture. He was chairman of the Senate Ag Committee in California for over 10 years before he came to Congress. So he’s got a lot of background, but his problem, he’s from California, and that doesn’t go over with some people.

Speaker 1 (26:28):

Yeah. Yeah, understood. Well, Congressman, thank you for all you’ve done for us here at The Water Table, for agriculture in general. And it’s been great to visit with you here on the podcast and get some really fresh, new information that we can share with our listeners.

Collin Peterson (26:48):

If I didn’t mention this, I’d get in trouble with Levi, but we’re hoping with this new administration, we can get some changes in some of these water rules and make it easier for us to manage water.

Speaker 1 (27:01):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I’m glad you mentioned that, and Prinsco, Ellingsons, others in our industry have been really involved in working with the political side, and with politicians, and with lobbyists to help our industry and help farmers in general with some of these issues, because some of them are pretty ridiculous that, and we just need to get some traction. And so appreciate them.

Collin Peterson (27:30):

Yeah, so I think we’ve got a almost much more sympathetic administration shaping up here, so that might be very positive. And we’re going to do a weekend, the Midwest Council, we represent a lot of farm country that has a lot of tiling.

Speaker 1 (27:44):

Yep, for sure.

Collin Peterson (27:46):

So we’ll be right in the middle of it.

Speaker 1 (27:48):

Yep, yep. For sure. Well, thanks so much for your time.

Collin Peterson (27:51):

Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (27:52):

And we’ll talk again. Appreciate it.

Collin Peterson (27:54):

Yep, Thank you for what you’re doing, and we’ll stay in touch.

Speaker 1 (27:56):

All right. Bye-bye.

Collin Peterson (27:57):

See you.

Podcast Episode 115

How Will the 2024 Election Results Impact Ag?

Episode 115 | 29 min

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Podcast Episode 115

How Will the 2024 Election Results Impact Ag?

Episode 115 | 29 min

With Guest:

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Transcript

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