Sen Pat Roberts, potentially Agriculture Committee chairman if Republicans win control of the Senate, rarely mentions his record on agriculture – defender of crop insurance and author of the 1996 Freedom to Farm law – on the campaign trail. Instead, he “is banking on antipathy toward President Barack Obama…as the winning message,” said the Associated Press. Roberts launched a bus tour of western Kansas, a rural and strongly conservative area, over the weekend. He told AP he is not avoiding his farm record with voters; “there are other things that are on their minds.”
Roberts supported large cuts in food stamp spending during the drafting of the 2014 farm law and voted against the bill in the end.
On Roberts’ campaign site, the entry for agriculture says, “Thousands of Kansas farmers and ranchers know that they have no greater champion than Pat Roberts. Kansans trust Roberts’ leadership to protect producers, consumers and the taxpayer from the Obama administration’s liberal agenda and harmful red tape and regulations. From Roberts’ post as a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he has proven he is the tested leader to fight Harry Reid and his do-nothing Senate. In 2012, Roberts passed a Farm Bill that cut billions in federal spending and consolidated duplicative and unnecessary federal government programs. At the same time, Roberts’ bill provided producers with the certainty they need through a strong safety net.”
Voters on the Hawaiian island of Maui will decide in a referendum on Nov 4 whether to ban cultivation of genetically engineered crops until studies show they are safe, says the Associated Press. The outcome could have an impact on the U.S. heartland – big seed companies have experiment farms in Hawaii to speed up tests of new varieties in the year-round mild weather. Monsanto has a farm on Maui and Molokai. The campaign on Maui is filled with predictions of job losses if the referendum is passed and fears of pesticides used in connection with development of GE crops.
The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the nomination of Republican Thad Cochran for a seventh term in the Senate over the objections of Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel. The Supreme Court agreed with a lower court ruling that McDaniel waited too long to contest the outcome of a June run-off election with Cochran, the Republican leader on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.
House Agriculture Committee member Ann Kuster, a first-term Democrat, is challenged in her New Hampshire district by Marilinda Garcia, who “has drawn supporters like House Speaker John A. Boehner and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to appear at fund-raisers and campaign stops with her,” says the New York Times in a story about House races in the Granite State.