Montana Farm Bureau Mid-Session Update from Helena

The Montana Legislature is in the middle of their "transmittal break." This is basically halftime for the legislative session, which is a great time for a halftime farm and ranch report from the capital.

What legislation is impacting Montana's farmers and ranchers that the Farm Bureau is keeping a close eye on or actively pursuing? You can click here for all of their "Boots on the Hill" updates. Here's some highlights from their halftime report written by Karli Johnson and Nicole Rolf with the Montana Farm Bureau Federation

Here's some bills that caught my eye from their report:

From Week 7

"The hot bill of the week was HB 418: Ban mRNA vaccines in animals sponsored by Rep. Greg Kmetz (R) HD 36 heard in House Agriculture. MFBF, along with many other agriculture organizations, testified in opposition to the bill based on ensuring that herd health decisions are kept between ranchers and their veterinarians. Currently, there are no mRNA vaccines used in cattle or sheep. There are multiple gene-based vaccines that help fight disease like Rabies, Swine Influenza, West Nile virus, Parvovirus, etc. in dogs, cats, horses and swine."

From Week 8

HB 504: "Expand livestock loss eligibility to include domestic bison sponsored by Rep. Eric Tilleman (R) HD 23 and HB 522: Provide pesticide warning label laws sponsored by Rep. Jerry Schillinger (R) HD 34. HB 504 sponsored by Representative Tilleman, adds domestic bison to the livestock loss reduction and mitigation program. Currently, the Livestock Loss Board reimburses ranchers for cattle, sheep, goats, mules, horse, swine, llamas and livestock guard dogs that are killed by mountain lions, grizzly bears or wolves."

HB 522- "The basis of the bill is to provide continued access to safe and effective agriculture chemicals, such as glyphosate, a critical piece of legislation for Montana’s agriculture economy. This bill works to simply protect the tools that have already undergone significant review and testing from the EPA and codifies that pesticides labels serve as warnings for users. A lack of legislative certainty around the labeling requirements of pesticides has posed a risk to these products and allowed the litigation industry to make a fortune targeting manufacturers of pesticides with scientifically unsound lawsuits...It takes on average 11 years for a chemical product to go through the full EPA certification process that ensures it safe and effective for use; all products must be scientifically proven safe by outside sources; after certification they are closely watched by the EPA and FIRPA; products must be re-registered every 15 years, unless new science is found, then it will be required to sooner; and only one out of every 10,000 discoveries make it out of the certification process."

This is another one that generated some phone calls into our Montana Talks statewide radio show:

"SB 381: Provide for Montana’s future homesteading act sponsored by Daniel Emrich (D) SD 11 had its hearing in Senate Natural Resources based on the idea to allow for state land tracks under 100 acres to be broken up into 5-acre tracks and sold for building sites for “homesteaders.” Approximately 11,000 acres of state land are considered in agriculture use, a crop or hay, and 79,000 plus additional acres are grazing lands would be eligible for sale should this bill pass."

Again, you can click here for all of the Montana Farm Bureau's reports.