Washington, DC – Congressman Frank Lucas (OK-03), the longest-serving Republican on the House Committee and Financial Services and former Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and U.S. Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) reintroduced legislation to protect family farmers and ranchers from burdensome greenhouse gas emissions reporting rules proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission .
The Protect Farmers from the SEC Act would exempt family farmers and ranchers from being included in the indirect GHG reporting requirements, ensuring they would not be required to track and disclose granular on-farm data regarding individual operations and day-today activities in order to stay compliant with the companies that purchase their products.
“America’s family farmers and ranchers face many challenges in the marketplace as they work to produce more commodities while using fewer resources. The SEC’s efforts to use financial regulation to implement a climate agenda would hinder the ability of American farmers and ranchers to compete in global markets and creating onerous compliance requirements for operations with few or no employees,” said Congressman Frank Lucas. “Nevertheless, federal securities laws already require publicly traded companies to disclose material risks to investors, the SEC’s illadvised climate disclosure rule undermines the materiality standard for environmental policy purposes. I am proud to introduce legislation with Ranking Member Boozman and Senator Braun to ensure the SEC doesn’t take action that leads to burdensome reporting requirements for family farmers and ranchers when their products become a part of a supply chain for a publicly traded company.”
“All it takes is a basic understanding of how agriculture works to see how misguided this proposal is— particularly when it comes to the so-called ‘value chain’ rules. The SEC can claim compliance will fall to the publicly traded corporations , but the reality is it will be up to America’s family farmers and ranchers who will have to keep up with an unprecedented amount of unnecessary paperwork. Our farmers and ranchers are struggling with record high input costs, supply chain bottlenecks, labor shortages, drought and other natural disasters. Yet, the administration, with its never-ending focus on climate change, wants to bury them with reams of paperwork as well,” Ranking Member Boozman said.
Lucas introduced the Protect Farmers from the SEC Act in the 117th Congress, alongside Ranking Member Boozman who introduced the Senate companion.