Presidential Hopeful Warren Tackles Right-to-Repair
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Agribusiness Groups Respond to Additional Warren Ag Proposals |
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Agribusiness groups suggest other areas of Warren’s ag policy proposals are detached from reality and say what’s needed is a focus on growing exports, not adding regulations. The Massachusetts Democrat has criticized “immense market power” created by mergers and expansion, targeting seed giants, big chicken companies and meat processors. The Democrat also has vowed to install “trustbusters to review — and reverse — anti-competitive mergers.” “We disagree with the premise and the policies outlined,” said Jim Monroe, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, a trade group. “The U.S. pork production system is the envy of the world. It is also highly export dependent. What U.S. pork producers and the other American farm families need are expanded export opportunities, not more regulations.” Warren has also been critical of the government’s commodity checkoff programs, funded by farmers, that are used to promote products such as soybeans, milk, beef and pork. She backs a bill, reintroduced last week by a bipartisan group of senators, to reform the commodity programs and wants farmer checkoff payments to be voluntary. She said the system is now “rigged against family farmers.”
“If Senator Warren’s goal is to help cattle farmers and ranchers, her policy proposals seriously miss the mark,” said Colin Woodall, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a trade group. “The ideas she outlines are nothing more than recycled policies promoted by some of the leading opponents of animal agriculture.” Source: CNBC
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) rolled out an extensive agriculture platform during a recent campaign stop in Iowa.
It included a call for a national right-to-repair law, something that device makers have been lobbying against for years.
“Consolidation is choking family farms, but there’s a whole lot of other ways in which big business has rigged the rules in their favor and against family farmers,” Warren said. “I will fight to change those rules.”
Warren explicitly addressed farm equipment like tractors and said it is “ridiculous” that farmers need to go to an authorized repair agent for repairs rather than having access to diagnostic tools and equipment manuals.
“Farmers should be able to repair their own equipment or choose between multiple repair shops,” she said in a blog post. “That’s why I strongly support a national right-to-repair law that empowers farmers to repair their equipment without going to an authorized agent.”
Warren suggested that the proposal could also lead to lower prices for equipment as time goes on by stimulating competition. “This will not only allow individuals to fix their own equipment,” she writes, “but it will also create competition among dealers and independent repair shops, bringing down prices overall.”Source: The Verge