Farmers Call for Swift Action on Emissions Reporting Bill

Mar 08, 2018

Unless Congress acts quickly on a Senate bill to exempt most farms and ranches from unnecessary reporting of routine air emissions from animals and their manure, nearly 200,000 farms and ranches across the country could face the threat of activist lawsuits, the American Farm Bureau Federation is warning.

The Fair Agricultural Reporting Method (FARM) Act (S. 2421) would clarify that normal emissions from farm animals and their manure are not reportable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which requires facilities to report releases of hazardous substances that exceed certain threshold quantities within a 24-hour period.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations supported a rule exempting most farms from the need to report low-level emissions, but activist groups successfully blocked the rule last year at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court has stayed its April 2017 decision multiple times, with the latest stay slated to expire on May 1.

As the FARM Act makes clear, “Congress did not intend for emergency air emission reporting to apply to day-to-day practices on agricultural operations, recognizing that low-level, continuous emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide from livestock are a part of everyday life,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall noted in a recent letter to the bill’s cosponsors.

If the court ruling goes into effect, hundreds of thousands of farmers and ranchers will not only have to contend with an overly burdensome, unintended regulatory obligation, they will face the threat of both activist lawsuits and the sharing of their sensitive private information.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.