Because of the popularity of these programs the reality is they are dramatically oversubscribed. New era is four times oversubscribed which i believe shows how important this program is to electric cooperatives across the country and how important it is to see this long overdue investment. Its great to see this and highlight the excitement of the rural coops across the country. Mr. Secretary for new era, can you share an update on how we might see application start to move forward in the process . We are in the process of completing the evaluation of approximately 70 projects of the number that was submitted. As you indicated it was a very Popular Program and oversubscribed. In an effort to determine which of these programs are feasible from a technical standpoint and from a financial standpoint. Once those evaluations are done, those projects will be ranked. And then well basically compare those rankings to the resources available. And begin a more detailed conversation to assert whether or not the project is worthy of commitment. I think your goal is try to get award sometime later this year. In the meantime, we are aggressively promoting the reprogram over 5,000 grants already awarded. We are going to see awards on a quarterly basis and youll see base awards here sometime in spring. I appreciate that update. Its clear usda staff and officials have expend add hue amount of effort and time to get these programs up and running and Program Applicants have spent time and capital to write and submit applications. Could you say tell us about the remoping and amending the programs at this stage where the usda has reviewed applications. Secretary vilsack we are not in the circumstance where you reopen unless there are Additional Resources that become available. I would be happy to take a look at what additional projects could be funded. We have a limited resource and working within those constraints. Miss caraveo i would like to reiterate my colleagues of the programs at the usda. I had county commissioners here from my district. No sign of slowing down, snap applications in one of the largest counties in my district are up 26 . They are not down. So i think it is very important to remember the implications of snap and when we talk about, first of all, who gets snap, it is 96 snap participants are u. S. Citizens. Only 4 are not citizens. 3 of those are lawful permanent residents. And most importantly for me as a pediatrician, 42 of snap recipients are children. Children. Like the ones i find in clinic every day where 2 3 of the kids that i saw did not have enough to eat and were it not for snap would not have anything to eat. Can you quickly expand more on the impact of snap on families and the children that we always purport to care about in this congress . Secretary vilsack there is research to indicate the snap program is one of the most if not the most effective Antipoverty Program we have. There is research that shows when you provide snap benefits families purchase more new tr eugs treurbs food and have Better Outcomes for their children. Ms. Caraveo i thank you for the work you do. And thank you for answering the questions. I yield back. Thank you very much. I recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, mr. Rouser, for five minutes. Mr. Rouser thank you, mr. Chairman. A note about large farms versus small farms. Its the larger farms that can survive the onslaught of the government. Federal, state, and local. The smaller one goes out of business and the bigger ones get bigger because its the only way to survive. Mr. Secretary, chicken plants across the country have been operating at higher speeds for more than 25 years through the fsi waivers. Under president clinton a study allowed 20 poultry plants to operation up to 175 birds a minute. Plants invested millions of technology, grew their Partner Farms and maintained worker safety and inspection standards all the way. These pilot routes led to the new poultry inspection system. Today 47 plants operate under this system. Farms all across North Carolina have built operations to support increased capacity. Plants have designed staffing and Facility Needs around these speeds. Osha tkat why from 1994 to 2019 osha data from 1994 to 2019 shows illness and injury down 91 . Evidence that faster line speeds dont compromise worker safety. A 2020 proposed rule incentivizes more plants to adopt these improved processes and new technologies while increasing speeds, but was repealed by this administration. Instead, your agency informed companies with line speed waivers that to keep them they were required to, quote, opt in to a study on worker safety being conducted outside of the agency. Now, i want to point out to the committee that this was the soul source contract and not a competitive bid. And no member of the study team is from a Land Grant Institution which knowledge of the chicken industry, but instead are associates of the university of california system. A member of that study team testified in front of osha against a Company Participating in the study and is vocally critique add number of other plants. Considering the work of other team members and the information requested before each plant visit, that far exceeds the scope of the study. There is a clear bias against the industry and leaves any objective observer to the conclusion this is a gotcha operation. Mr. Secretary, real quickly, can you submit and are you willing to submit in writing how much is being spent for the study, the source of that funding, and how the 10 members were selected . And why are they all associated with a university of california. Mr. Vilsack be happy to respond to questions. I think its fair to say that there is litigation thats essentially driving a lot of this effort. Issues raised concerning worker safety as a result of this. Line speed. This is a process of trying to make sure we get the right data. The significant data to be able to support whether line speeds are a result of additional worker injury or not. If they are not, then obviously line speeds will continue. If they are, then there is going to betohave to be adjustment. We dont have all of the data we need. And thats the reason why we have entered into an agreement with the producers. This is not a situation where they were they had the choice. They had the choice. These plants chose to participate in this study. Mr. Rouser they chose to participate in the study in good faith. And its turned into something that they didnt anticipate. Arent you concerned about a bias study here . Secretary vilsack dont prejudge the study. It hasnt been concluded yet. Mr. Rouser the old adage personnel is policy certainly applies here. I have to move on quickly to another matter. Usda is currently developing the next set of dietary guidelines. This is specific to alcohol. Federal law requires that scientific and medical knowledge support any changes to the dietary guidelines on the consumption of alcohol. How is the Technical Committee process ensuring that this mandate is followed . Have you been following that . Secretary vilsack its my understanding this is outside of the datier guideline conversation. Mr. Rouser alcohol has always been included in dietary guidelines. This takes it outside of the scope of dietary guidelines. Secretary vilsack in an toefrt make sure there is a deeper review and dive on this issue, i suspect, for future datary guidelines. Mr. Rouser i mention this, there is a lot of growers around the country that produce a product that is used for adult beverages that have a great interest in this. Id like to follow up with some written questions as well. I yield back, mr. Chairman. Mr. Thompson chair thompson recognize the congress wo pg from illinois congresswoman from illinois. For five minutes thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you, secretary, for johning us here today and engaging us on a host of really important issues. I want to take a moment to say again thank you so much for joining me last summer at the Farm Progress show in decatur. I appreciated you joining me there for that. Last fall as a response to what i heard from farmers in my district in central and southern illinois, i led a letter with congresswoman pingree and congressman costa and the democrats on committee outlining our shared priority to protect the Inflation Reduction ActClimate Smart conservation funds. Miss budzinski these funds have provided a historic invest nour farms and already served many Rural Farmers in my home state of illinois. I was also very excited to see that 100 of the obligated i. R. A. Dollars made it into the hands of farmers in illinois, and to my colleagues i would encourage you to explore the new Inflation Reduction ActData Visualization tool that the usda put out yesterday to see the difference that the i. R. A. Has made in your home states. I also want to take a moment to celebrate the release of the 2022 ag census yesterday. Champaign county in the 13th congressional district, my district, was a top 10 producer of both corn and soybeans in the united states. One of the central themes, my question, central theme of my first term is creating opportunity. I had bills to improve land access to increase Research Funding at usda. And to expand markets for farmers. All of which i hope will be a part of the farm bill base textk to how the Inflation Reduction Act funding bottom line is i think farmers understand what they need to do this. But they need help and assistance. Thats why act Inflation Reduction Act. We saw a large scale landscape activity where we saw over 1 billion of requests for limited 400 million. The farmers are responding by saying, give us more. Help us do more of this. We are anxious. And we saw the same reaction to the Climate SmartAgricultural Partnership initiative where we can create commodities that are utilizing conservation programs. And the result that have provides an Market Opportunity for them. Ms. Budzinski i had another question on equip. In 2022, most three out of every four equip applications across the country were denied. Only about half of the approved ones got funded. So i consistently hear from farmers in my district that they wantr even exceeding expected outlays of i. R. A. Money to bridge this gap . Secretary vilsack its exceeding the resources that are available. I think there are two issues. One is making sure you have tecl assistance to help are there. Recently a third issue has cropped up which is trying to figure out wayses in which we can speed up the process. Nrcs has stream hrao eupbd the process. They looked at ways they can have preapproval so resource can get into the field more quickly than in the past. I think its a combination of thoel all three to meet the need. If you take resources away from the i. R. A. Thats going to impact and affect our ability to do more work. Ms. Budzinski i yield back, mr. Chair thompson the gentlelady yields back. Recognize the gentleman from mississippi, mr. Kelly, for five minutes. Mr. Kelly thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, i first want to say i concur with almost everything mr. Rouser said about the poultry. In 2022u. S. D. A. Informed poultry countries with line speed waivers to continue to reap the benefits of operating at higher speeds, bringing more chicken to the market during historic inflation, and record high food prices, they had to opt in to this study. A study being conducted by researchers whose bodies of work evidence significant bias against the chicken industry. When reading from usdas food and Safety Inspection service constituent update, july 29, 2022, said establishments with a current line speed waiver must agree to participate in a study and provide worker safety tkwrat to receive a modified waiver. That update directly contradicts the narrative plants were allowed to opt into this study. Usda demands theyar teus pate to keep their higher line speeds a decision would be hard for plants to make since they place orders much in advance and risk take ago significant amount of supply off line if they went back down to slower speeds. The companies that have continued with their waivers have since been subject to researchers and their plants who are going far beyond their intended purpose to determine what threat if any increased line speeds pose to safety. Mr. Secretary, can you explain why your department lauded this waiver participation as voluntary when it clearly is not. Secretary vilsack there is litigation, congressman. And essentially in an effort to try to avoid a complete shutdown by a court order of line speed increases, we basically created the opportunity for folks to continue to convince the court that this was a good faith effort to make a determination whether there were unsafe practices involved. If we had done what you are suggesting, essentially what would have happened is judges would have shut us down. And this happened in our porkline speed issue. Judges will enjoy the use of line speed and everybody would have had to slow their lines down. You tell me, would you have preferred everybody slowing their lines down . Or would you have preferred praoet creating an option for people to continue at the line speeds that they had invested in . Mr. Kelly i would prefer to have a researcher that is not intended to do the opposite of what they are intended to do. Secretary vilsack dont assume the outcome of this study until it occurs. Mr. Kelly when an inspector comes in they find what they are looking for, if they are looking for certain things. I can say from experience that an i. G. Inspection could be good or bad depending on the intent. Next question, mr. Secretary, i have heard from mr. Producers about constant challenges with the h2a program regarding regulations and rules issued by the department of labor, one issued a year ago requiring employers to pay varying wage rights to h2a workers based on their daily job function. This has put the potential to double wage rates for employers, not to mention at a huge Regulatory Burden to try to track the work of every employee throughout the day through each task they do. Did the department of labor consult with usda on this rule . Secretary vilsack we have an ongoing conversation about rules relay lating relating to farm labor. The reason this rule is structured the way it is because there was a general wage rate being applied to a variety of jobs, some of which were required significant qualification. And were much more complex. I think the effort by the Labor Department was to try to respond to the value of that service. Mr. Kelly they went overboard here. Small farms are at a high disadvantage here. I guess we are trying to put them out of business. You are out there and you are picking up potatoes, loading a truck, they need you to drive a pick up truck to the store to pick up a part. All of a sudden you get classified at the rate of a truck driver at 40 an hour instead of 20. You see how driving a pickup truck is not driving a big truck. They still classify you as a truck driver. You have to be paid that wage for the remainder of the day. The remainder of the time you work there. You do see where this could be very confusing and hard on small operations. Secretary vilsack thats one of the reasons why it would have been helpful if you passed the farm worker modernization act. Mr. Kelly we didnt make this rule. Secretary vilsack in a sense you made by not creating the opportunity for a structured stable, security predictable system. Mr. Kelly i would just say as the secretary of agriculture it seems to me that anyone with even a laymans understanding of farming would have flagged how problematic and how burdensome this rule is to our small operators. They literally cannot compete because we are overburdened with regulations when you have to traffic every task every work does. Well have more people tracking their task than doing the work. With that i yield back. Chair thompson pleased to recognize the gentlelady from maine, congresswoman pingree, for five minutes. Ms. Pingree thank you very much, mr. Chair. Thank you so much, mr. Secretary, for being here today. I really appreciate all the things you have been talking to us about all going to talk about the importance of getting a farm bill done, we have to remember that we need the funding for your agency as well. And the 18 cut that was proposed is ludicrous. Im counting on my good friend, mr. Bishop, to fix it lets hope we get it to the floor. We have been talking about Climate Change and disaster resilience. What i see now as the extreme weather we are all facing and our farmers are facing. You were very kind to come and visit us in maine last month after we horrendous storm. In december that caught our forestry and farming folks off guard and really impacted our state with the flooding and the high winds. One of the farmers we showed you pictures of was chuck, a dairy farmer. He lost two bu the on bat weathr we had. We had frost that destroyed our fruit crops in the spring. Wet weather in the summer. Left hay couldnt be harvested. This has been a continued impact our farmers. I just want to talk a little bit about the tools you are trying to provide to help farmers to be more resilient. We want to make there is Disaster Relief aid. We appreciate your request for more of that because its getting more expensive. So much of what youre doing is try to prevent the disasters that we are facing in terms of how farmers deal with drought and flooding. Can you talk a little bit about what the work you are doing is to help farmers have more resilient fields and deal with some of this adverse weather . Secretary vilsack i would say there are three or four steps. We continue to focus some of our Research Efforts on figuring out exactly what works and what doesnt work in the field. Basically create a more resilient farming operation. Certainly would encourage continued investment in our research initiatives. Secondly, the Climate Smart agriculture commodit