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 WASHINGTON, DC—Today, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) questioned U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack in a House Committee on Agriculture hearing focused on reviewing the state of the rural economy. Specifically, Pingree pressed Secretary Vilsack on what steps the USDA is taking to evaluate and act on the Northeast Dairy Taskforce’s recommendations to support organic dairy farms in wake of Danone severing contracts with 89 farms in the region. 

Pingree also questioned Secretary Vilsack on how the USDA’s Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Partnerships program will be structured to ensure the program is available to producers of all sizes, methods, locations, and types of production. 

A full transcript is available below. Click here to watch a full recording of the hearing. 

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree:

Secretary Vilsack, it’s wonderful to have you in front of us and great to hear your answers to all of our questions today. I want to particularly commend you on speaking as favorably as you did around the issues related to GIPSA, the lack of fairness in the tournament system, line speeds—these are just such critically important issues to address both for our farmers and also the health and safety of people who work in our production facilities utility. So, thank you for that. 

But I'll get on to my questions. You know all too well that Danone recently announced that they will be pulling out of the Northeast, terminating the contracts of 89 organic dairy farms in the region, including, unfortunately, 14 farms in Maine. So, in response to this, there's been a stakeholder task force that was convened, and they submitted a list of over 30 recommendations to you last month to both support the farms who are losing their contracts and to ensure the long-term success of the organic dairy sector in our region, which has been so important to our dairy farms. These recommendations encompass everything from building more regional processing capacity to developing new markets, addressing transportation and distribution challenges, a lot of things that could be done. So can you talk to me a little bit about the steps that the USDA is taking to evaluate and act on those recommendations?

Secretary Tom Vilsack:
Well, immediately following Danone’s announcement, we basically put together a meeting of commissioners and secretaries of agriculture and encouraged the development of that report, and certainly pleased to see the comprehensive nature of it, addressing a multitude of issues—issues that not only does the federal government have to be serious about, but also state governments as well, and also the dairy industry. Certainly glad to see that Stonyfield has stepped forward and made a commitment to provide help and assistance, and that Danone has also extended the deadline, if you will. I've seen the report,  I've seen the recommendations, I’ve asked for a meeting of our team so that we can go through those recommendations and find out what we can essentially do in terms of providing help and assistance. I think we'll be able to help on some of the recommendations, I think other recommendations are probably more appropriately done at the state and local level and the industry level, but we will be getting a response back to the task force in the very near future with what we think we are able to do. And the good news is I think we have some resources that we can put to bear to provide help and assistance, whereas we're deeply concerned about that. And it's reflective, frankly, of some other challenges that we have in other regions of the country.

CP: 
Well, thank you for that. I'm pleased to hear that you're going to come up with some of those responses soon. And I do agree that some of the money that's been made available to deal with the issues that we're dealing with in the supply chain and with farmers around the country should be helpful to this. 

And I just want to reiterate, since I know you have made both climate change and the issues related to consolidation agriculture top of mind and an important priority for the Department—the importance of protecting organic farms when we're thinking about issues related to climate change is so critically important, we do not want to lose that capacity. So, keeping them operating is a high, high priority for our New England delegation. I also want to ask you about climate support agriculture. I really appreciated your comments and testimony about ensuring that the USDA's climate smart agriculture and forestry partnerships will be available to producers of all size, all methods, all locations, and all types of production which we care deeply about. So even though I know you're working out some of the details, can you help us understand how we will structure the program to ensure this commitment is met?

TV: 
The goal here obviously is to and hopefully soon to announce the framework and the process, the application process. And the hope is that we're able to make some decisions on applications in mid-2022. And again, I think we are structuring this in a way that small sized operators, different types of operations, different production methods will be respected, different geographic challenges will also be addressed. And so it's going to be a concerted effort here to try to respond to all of agriculture's need to participate in this effort and to take full advantage of the resources that are available. And we're going to make sure that underserved producers and underserved communities are also not forgotten in this process. That's the commitment and I can guarantee you that we will make sure that we live up to that commitment.

CP:
Great. Well, I really do appreciate the commitment. I know from dealing with so many programs, it's one of the biggest issues we hear from our region to make sure that as we implement these programs, they meet the needs of our farmers. And I am out of time, but I greatly appreciate your time here and I'll submit a couple of other questions for the record. Thank you.

Background:

In August 2021, Danone, a multinational food company and owner of Horizon Organic, notified 89 dairy farmers in Maine, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire that their contracts would be terminated in August 2022.

Pingree and 12 members of Congress representing New England wrote to Secretary Vilsack in September 2021, urging the USDA to increase support for dairy farmers in the region who are grappling with an uncertain future due to the cancellation of their contracts by Danone. 

The following month, Pingree and fellow northeast lawmakers Representatives Peter Welch (D-V.T), Jared Golden (D-Maine), and Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) sent a letter to chief executives of Danone regarding the company’s decision to terminate its contracts with organic dairy farms across the Northeast, including 14 farms in Maine. The group urged Danone and its subsidiary, Horizon Organic, to reconsider their decision to pull out of the region, and to instead prioritize the well-being of farms and surrounding communities. Subsequently, Danone announced that they would be extending the contracts for an additional six months and providing additional financial support to affected farms. 

In December, a stakeholder taskforce submitted a list of over 30 recommendations to the USDA on how to respond to the situation, including both immediate assistance for affected producers and long-term efforts to stabilize the sector. The recommendations focused on institutional markets for organic dairy, regional processing, distribution logistics, farm business viability, marketing and market development, and other federal response recommendations.

As a longtime organic farmer, Pingree has repeatedly advocated for the USDA to close loopholes that disadvantage Maine organic farmers and undermine the organic label. In addition to serving on the House Committee on Agriculture, Pingree is also Vice Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies.

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