Prop 12, Trade and MAHA Top Pork Producer Conversations in DC

Although this wasn’t Lori Stevermer’s first Legislative Action Conference (LAC) in Washington, D.C., she says it was certainly a memorable one. Pork producers from 21 states gathered to call on Congress to deliver an urgent legislative fix to California’s Proposition 12 in Farm Bill 2.0, to open up trade access and to discuss the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report.

“I always leave our legislative action conferences energized,” says Stevermer, National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) immediate past president and a Minnesota pig farmer. “It’s great to see all the producers fly in from all the states. They’re eager and excited to go talk to their legislators.”

She says this was one of the largest conferences she remembers with 24 first-timers in attendance. The feedback was positive overall. She credits this to the state of the pork industry with many producers seeing some profitability now.

Farm Bill 2.0 was a key point of emphasis in conversations between producers and legislative staff.

“We had a variety of responses,” Stevermer notes. “The Republicans are generally optimistic that a Farm Bill 2.0 will happen. Chairman Thompson is still very much advocating for it. From our Democratic members of Congress, the response was more varied. Some are cautiously optimistic something could happen yet this fall and some are less optimistic.”

With pork exports down slightly this year, she says retaliatory tariffs were also a big topic of conversation.