In what may be a harbinger of Tuesday's* scheduled Minnesota House floor debate over the House "Omnibuzz" Environment and Natural Resources Budget bill,Minnesota House Republicans attempted to strike pollinator protections from the Omnibus Agriculture budget bill--and demanded roll call votes on their chemical-friendly amendments.
Given the renewed interest in environmental issues on the part of Minnesota voters, Bluestem applauds them on these moves---even before the bills go to conference committees--and think the rhetoric needs to be shared with Minnesotans. (For more information, check out our post from a week ago A curious sidenote about environment, climate change & the Minnesota Values Agenda).
Now back to the Omnibus Ag and Food Budget bill. First, language in the bill to assure that plants labelled "pollinator friendly" are indeed pollinator-friendly is targeted by Lake Shore Republican John Poston, who argues that the language would burden the nursery industry by not letting those it in label plants treated with systemic pesticides (like neo-nics) as pollinator friendly.
Shakopee Democrat Brad Tabke, whose undergraduate degree is in horticulture from Iowa State, argues against the amendment, since the language Poston tries to strike is a truth-in-advertising measure designed to give consumers confidence that pollinator-friendly plants are indeed pollinator-friendly.
Here's the floor debate on the amendment:
Here's a screengrab for the roll call for that one--which Poston insisted that the House record.
Next, Crookston Republican Deb Kiel, a farmer and a homemaker, attempted to strike enhanced penalties for applicators whose pesticides drift into public lands. As was pointed out during the floor debate, the language doesn't single out production ag applicators, urban applicators or right-of-way applicators by whom the chemicals are applied. The problem is the drift.
The Republicans claim that determining drift is simply a matter of eyeballing the damage and writing a bill to the offender; as language author Rick Hansen, DFL-S.St.Paul (who continues to operate his family' farm near Harmony with a brother ) explains, the Department of Agriculture that the MDA needs to prove through lab analysis.
Here's the highlight of the debate, some sparring between Mazeppa New Republican and pollinator hater Steve Drazkowski and Hansen. We expect more of this on Wednesday:
Here's a screengrab of the roll call for those readers who want to learn if their state representatives vote to favor pesticides over public lands:
Neu voted "yes," as the video clip above indicates.
We've got more Republican attacks against the bee lovers from Friday's transportation bill, when various brands of House GOP members raised the sacred issue of banning ditch-mowing restrictions intended to aid pollinator-friendly habitat in state-owned right-of-ways on state trunk highways.
And there's always Tuesday.*
Correction: An earlier version of this post had the Omnibuzz bill being heard on Wednesday; this was incorrect. The bill will be heard of Tuesday's House Floor Session - part 2. Our apology for the error.
Photo: A tractor spraying celery, via "Drift Happens" at Marcia Farm Country Kitchen. We used a picture from California so as to not point our little fingers at anyone in Minnesota.
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