By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER

Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Both the Ohio Farmers Union (OFU) and the National Farmers Union (NFU) have had longstanding concerns about trade. Backsliding on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) also worries the Farmers Union, which says it is the only ag organization dedicated exclusively to family farms.

“It’s not that we oppose trade, but we thought that our trade agreements with other countries had served the nation poorly,” said OFU President Joe Logan. “We’re now a net importer of beef. We have lost our supremacy of meat exports, and we are struggling to maintain our relative market share with soybeans. The trends are bad regarding agriculture, and agriculture is the bright spot in trade.”

When President Donald Trump was elected, the NFU informed the administration it was willing to work with him on areas of commonality, especially trade, Logan said. NFU officials were enthusiastic when the administration embarked on a proposal to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But, “we have some anxiety to the hard-line approach that the Trump administration has taken with trade,” Logan said. “The use of tariffs, and the threat of escalating tariffs, is a poor template for reaching the sort of agreements that we need in a world where our markets are clearly global.”

OFU shares with the Trump administration a concern that U.S. trade policies have not served the nation well, he explained. But it shares concerns with the rest of the agricultural community that the approach of the administration may make this situation worse before it gets better.

Farmers Union would prefer a targeted approach using some precise surgical tools to address the imbalance of trade, Logan said. It is in favor of Market Access Charge (MAC), a program developed by John Hansen of the CPA Advisory Board. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) will soon introduce that proposal, and other Congressional leaders have a keen interest in that proposal, too.

“What farmers want is a coherent trade strategy that restores trade balance across all economic sectors, without throwing farmers under the bus,” he said.

Concerning the RFS, NFU President Roger Johnson recently sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decrying the agency’s granting of waivers of the volume requirements under the RFS. More of these so-called “hardship waivers” are allowing profitable oil and gas corporations to blend less biofuel into their products at refineries.

The RFS was passed by Congress to spur growth in the American-grown biofuel industry and, to date, it has reaped significant economic and environmental benefits for rural America, Johnson stated. EPA’s trend of undermining this on behalf of the oil industry is disturbing, and flies in the face of the administration’s numerous promises to farmers and rural communities to support the RFS, he wrote.

NFU said its criticism stems from recent reports that the EPA – which sets RFS volume obligations and ensures compliance with the law – has allowed major oil refiners to skirt it. Reuters reported that EPA granted 25 exemptions to oil refineries in 2017, about 3-4 times the amount that previous administrations granted on a yearly basis.