House Ag Committee sends amended omnibus agriculture finance bill to Ways and Means after 7-6 votes

The Minnesota House Committee on Agriculture Finance and Policy on March 12 adopted a series of amendments to House File 17-04 (DE3 as amended) and, following roll-call votes, re‑referred the bill to the House Committee on Ways and Means by a 7-6 margin.

Representative Anderson, sponsor of the bill, moved the measure and described several amendments the committee adopted during the meeting. Key changes recorded in the committee transcript include:

- A1 (technical): Reinserted language giving priority to producers with annual sales under $100,000 for certain specialty crops; Representative Anderson said the change “reinsserts a language that goes back to last year's bill that gives priority to those that have annual sales under 100,000 and produce certain specialty crops.”

- A4 (technical): Clean-up language related to the Forever Green Initiative.

- A5 (AGRI eligible uses): Added an eligible use to the AGRI grant program to support emerging technology that uses agricultural products or waste streams (chiefly "B pulp") to replace plastics as a PFAS alternative. Representative Anderson said the amendment “simply allows the MDA to use money from the AGRI program to incentivize Minnesota production of this PFAS alternative,” and that “there is no spending in this amendment.”

- A2 (biofuel language): Restored the word “advanced” to language tied to an advanced biofuel production incentive program, an amendment Representative Anderson said had been heard previously in committee.

- A3 (telecommunications safety-training hours): The amendment, previously heard, reduced a training requirement in a provision tied to underground telecommunications installation from 40 hours to 10 hours; Representative Smith strongly opposed the change and requested a roll call. Committee roll-call minutes show A3 passed 7-6.

Committee debate touched on multiple budget and policy issues. Representative Anderson and others noted the bill increases agricultural funding relative to base levels (Anderson said the bill “increases Ag funding by 17,000,000 from the base”) and described child-nutrition and local-food provisions. Several members, including Representative Smith and Representative Hansen, raised concerns about recent federal cuts to school and childcare food purchasing funds and the bill's funding priorities. Representative Smith cited department figures she said were removed from federal support and included in a committee spreadsheet: $9,226,348 for school food purchasing and $4,445,518 for childcare food purchasing; she also referenced nearly $5,000,000 for the Minnesota local food purchase assistance program and said Second Harvest Heartland funding was reduced by roughly $1,000,000 each biennium in the bill as presented.

Representative Smith and others criticized aspects of the committee process, saying the bill and some amendments had not been previously vetted in committee and that parts of the bill should have been considered in other committees (for example, a training-hours standard for underground telecommunications, which Smith said belongs in labor or workforce review). Representative Anderson replied that broadband provisions have been under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee for some time and that the committee had authority to consider them.

The committee conducted roll-call votes after a request. The transcript records a 7-6 vote to adopt the A3 amendment to the DE3 amendment and later a 7-6 roll-call adoption of the DE3 amendment as amended; the committee then voted 7-6 to refer House File 17-04, as amended, to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Record of next steps: House File 17-04 as amended was re-referred to the Committee on Ways and Means for further consideration; the committee scheduled its next meeting for the following Monday at 1 p.m.