Opinion: Help Michigan farmers grow with fewer environmental regulations

While the government and media focus on COVID–19, Michigan farmers are hoping policy priorities emerge from the pandemic that will accelerate economic recovery. To protect the American food, fiber and fuel supply, agriculture depends on critical infrastructure and access to reliable energy supplies to maintain or increase production as necessary.

Policymakers on both side of the aisle and businesses across sectors should be able to find common ground in strengthening infrastructure. Yet, environmental regulation (and overregulation) is a topic of heated debate as the Trump administration works to reduce red tape to stimulate valuable infrastructure development.

Michigan farmers know this all too well. Both the ability to build and finance infrastructure such as livestock barns, grain silos, processing facilities and harvest systems, and complete federal reviews for timber harvest and other contracts, continues to be hindered by overly complex regulations.

That’s just one reason the president called for modernizing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law left largely unchanged for 50 years. Unfortunately, NEPA has become a regulatory burden for many industries, including agriculture.

As American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall has stated, “Current NEPA regulations have become an obstacle instead of an instrument for responsible management.”

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is aimed at reforming the law and providing relief to farmers. Specifically, the CEQ wants to reduce completion times for the environmental impact statements’ review process, which today average four and a half years.

These protracted environmental reviews, at an average of 586 pages in length, cause unnecessary delays to critical infrastructure improvements and pose risks to necessary long-term investments.

Farmers and forest professionals across Michigan see NEPA delays impact their work, from holding up federally guaranteed financing for projects to modernize farm infrastructure for better economic and environmental performance, to timber contract reviews that require new analyses of already approved forest roads, species and cultural reviews.

These delays cost farmers and forest professionals time and money, and also hold up Michigan’s ability to respond quickly to changing demands in food, fiber and fuel markets.

While NEPA provides safeguards to the environment when used properly, the law desperately needs reform and modernization. Michigan should back the Trump administration’s efforts to reform NEPA and urge the president to maintain momentum toward fixing this broken law.

Years of delayed projects cost farmers and forest professionals money by increasing costs, slowing operations and holding back needed infrastructure improvements to keep growing.

Farming is uniquely vulnerable to harmful policy proposals like outdated environmental regulations. As lawmakers strategize about a plan to restart the national economy, Michigan’s farmers will be keenly aware of the policy consequences.

Carl Bednarski is president of the Michigan Farm Bureau and a Tuscola County farmer.