Minn. House committee walks through DE4 amendment to House File 2446, no votes taken

Chair Hansen, chair of the Minnesota House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee, called the committee to order and the panel adopted the minutes of April 2 on a voice vote after Representative Smith moved their adoption.

The committee then spent the meeting walking through the DE4 "delete all" amendment to House File 2446, the committee's agriculture finance and policy budget bill. No amendments or final action were taken; the committee set a deadline of 1 p.m. Tuesday, April 8, 2025, for members to submit electronic amendments and for members of the public to sign up or submit written testimony. The committee will take public testimony, additional member questions, mark up the bill and vote at a meeting on Wednesday.

Ken Sabry, nonpartisan House Fiscal (presenting the fiscal spreadsheet updated 04/07/2025 at 08:57 a.m.), read the DE4 changes compared with base funding. He identified a series of program-level adjustments across the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA), AGRI, the Board of Animal Health and other entities. Among the items Sabry described: a protection services operating adjustment matching the governor's request ($1,344,000 in FY26-27 and $1,848,000 in FY28-29); a new appropriation for county agricultural inspectors ($1,500,000 in FY26-27 and the same in FY28-29); $100,000 in FY26-27 for a biosolids and sewage sludge technical evaluation panel; $100,000 in FY26-27 to study Olmsted County's soil health program; $1,700,000 in each biennium for meat inspection; $150,000 in FY26-27 for restricted-use pesticide plan updates; and funding for a Biofertilizer Innovation and Efficiency Program ($1,217,000 in FY26-27 and $2,100,000 in FY28-29). Sabry also noted increases to wolf compensation ($236,000 per biennium) and elk crop damage compensation ($250,000 per biennium) and a $640,000 reduction to soil health equipment grants that matches the governor's proposal.

On promotion, marketing and AGRI items, Sabry said the bill includes a $2,000,000 increase in FY26-27 (and sustained in the tails) for the Farm to School and Early Childhood/Child Care Program; an AgriWorks appropriation ($850,000 in FY26-27 and $732,000 in FY28-29); and an Agri Support program ($1,853,000 in FY26-27 and $1,730,000 in FY28-29). He described a carve-out for livestock protection grants specified for avian influenza and noted some previously authorized AGRI items were extended rather than left to expire.

Sabry summarized executive-branch and agency-level changes in the bill: an operating adjustment for the Board of Animal Health ($714,000 per biennium), AURI operating adjustments, and maintained base funding for DEED's Office of Broadband Development. He also described transfers and one-time moves: a $4,000,000 transfer from the general fund to the agricultural emergency account, transfers to the University of Minnesota for heritage oilseed research ($250,000 annually) and a variety of smaller transfers into pollinator, Minnesota Grown and other accounts. He said the committee met its $17,000,000 target in the spreadsheet.

Meghan Mullenback, House Research, then walked members through the statutory language of the DE4 amendment. She said Article 1 establishes appropriation format; Article 2 holds MDA appropriations and describes subdivisions that fund protection services (pesticide and fertilizer management, lab services, plant protection, dairy and meat inspection, and food and feed safety), promotion and marketing, AGRI carve-outs (county fairs, biofuel incentives, meat/poultry/egg/milk processing, Farm to School, urban agriculture, cooperative development, AgriWorks and Agri Support), agency administration and financial assistance (including milk distribution and local food purchasing grants), and transfers. She identified policy language changes in the policy article: for example, an increase in the maximum farm down payment assistance grant to $20,000 and provisions that exempt some supervised pesticide mixers from licensing (as described in the amendment text).

Mullenback and Sabry repeatedly cautioned that the meeting was a walkthrough only; the committee will take amendments, hear public testimony and vote at the subsequent meeting. Chair Anderson thanked staff and members for bipartisan work on a compromise amendment. "We pretty much spent the weekend working on this on this bill," Anderson said, praising staff effort.

The meeting adjourned with the committee expecting additional member amendments and public testimony at the next meeting.