In this Feed & Grain Chat, NGFA's President & CEO Mike Seyfert underscores the importance of active stakeholder advocacy within the feed and grain industries to ensure policymakers understand their unique businesses' needs and challenges.
Seyfert's interview with Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain, highlighted key policy areas where National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) members are engaging in advocacy, such as the Farm Bill, conservation efforts, trade promotion, transportation, and regulatory measures — emphasizing the need for stakeholders to utilize the resources provided by organizations like NGFA to influence policies effectively.
Transcription of Feed & Grain Chat with Mike Seyfert, president & CEO, National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA).
Elise Schafer, editor, Feed & Grain: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Feed & Grain Chat. I'm your host Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain. This edition of Feed & Grain Chat is brought to you by WATT Global Media and FeedandGrain.com. FeedandGrain.com is your source for the latest news, product and equipment information for the grain handling and feed manufacturing industries.
Today, I'm joined on Zoom by Mike Seyfert, president & CEO of the National Grain and Feed Association. He's here to discuss the critical need for advocacy on policies that impact feed and grain businesses and how you can get involved.
Mike, why is it important for feed and commercial grain industry stakeholders to become advocates for the industry?
Mike Seyfert, president & CEO, NGFA: Well, one, because members of Congress and administration officials need to hear from those involved in our industry, but more importantly, our members are the folks who are involved in the business each and every day. They understand the impact of proposed policies, on their bottom line, on their employees and on their communities. And then being a voice and reaching out to particularly their members of Congress is incredibly important because they can convey exactly what the impact is, in those congressional districts and states that as decisions are being made.
Schafer: What federal or state policies are you hearing NGFA members advocating for this year?
Seyfert: A couple — one of which is obviously the Farm Bill, which has been delayed to this point. But the Conservation Title Working Lands are very important to our members, maintaining a market oriented foreign policy is important and increasing funding for trade promotion programs. That's something that we've been working with a number of other organizations on the transportation issues, making sure we have an efficient and reliable transportation system. Most importantly this year, The Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which is our lock and dam system, is up for reauthorization and then there's annual funding that that is always focused in those areas.
From a regulatory standpoint, we're very focused on some common sense measures as it relates to labor and workforce issues. And then particularly in the feed area, we've also been working with other organizations to pass the Ifeed Act or the Innovative Feed Act on Capitol Hill. This is legislation that would create a new class of feed ingredients where basically ingredients which interact with the animal's gut, but which have a non nutritive impact that might do something like reduce methane emissions. Currently, those ingredients are regulated as animal drugs, and that's a 10-year approval process. By passing this new legislation, it would allow them to be regulated as feed ingredients instead of animal drugs, greatly reducing that time and it would put both our member companies and US producers on equal footing with the European Union, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia and other places where these ingredients can already be used and the claims can already be made.
Schafer: Mike, what resources are available to help stakeholders understand how these issues impacts their business and what they can do to influence the policies?
Seyfert: Sure, we have a lot of resources on our NGFA website. They can always go on their ngfa.org and we have a policy section where they can pull up many of our issue papers and understand how to how to do it. There's also advocacy tools that can be used for outreach to the members of Congress. And also, we've got a full team of policy staff that work on these issues in the NGFA offices, and they can always reach out to them to get a better more information or a better understanding of the issues at hand.
Schafer: Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining me today!
Seyfert: Happy to join you. Thanks for the opportunity.
Schafer: Absolutely. That’s all for today's Feed & Grain Chat. If you'd like to see more videos like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Sign up for the Industry Watch daily eNewsletter or go to feedandgrain.com and search for videos. Thank you again for joining me and we hope to see you next time!