Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Associate Farm Director Carson Horn had the opportunity to speak with Bayer’s Senior Director of Government Relations Jim McVaney during the AgVocacy Forum, preceding the 2017 Commodity Classic, about what the agricultural industry can expect from the new administration. You can hear the conversation that Horn had with McVaney by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.
McVaney believes the team being assembled by President Donald Trump shows a lot of promise for cooperation between the industry and the federal government - something he considers a change of pace from the last several years.
“We’ve got a new administration in town with some opportunities to improve the regulatory and government environment for agriculture,” McVaney said. “We’ve been very busy trying to both figure out what the opportunities are, how to affect them and also know who’s going where within the new administration.”
Regarding the multitude of regulations that burden the ag sector, particularly from the Environmental Protection Agency, McVaney says, Oklahoma’s former attorney general, now EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, is already easing the political friction that has hindered positive progression within the agency.
“Immediately, we’re already seeing a change in EPA’s actions back towards traditional implementation of regulation,” he said. “That’s definitely a positive. We expect things will be… call it back to normal.”
As a Georgian, McVaney also expressed his excitement to see the Peach State’s former governor Sonny Purdue appointed by Trump as the Secretary of Agriculture nominee and anxiously awaits his confirmation. But also, he says he’s very encouraged by Ray Starling’s appointment as an ag policy advisor to the President describing him as a North Carolina “farm boy that knows the industry quite well.”
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