The chief legal counsel for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says the final rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission won’t require farmers and ranchers to provide the federal government with farm-level supply chain emissions reports.
Mary-Thomas Hart tells Brownfield that Wednesday’s rule was a change from what the SEC had initially proposed. “The SEC actually stripped out supply chain emissions reporting requirements, and I would say that that’s the product of a large effort by NCBA and other national ag trade associations and our members throughout the country to show the potential impact.”
Hart says farmers and ranchers don’t have time to do additional paperwork that they would not have been compensated for and, “It is impractical to ask a farm or ranch to complete a report like that.”
She says, “To finalize a rule today that I think appropriately limits these reporting requirements to those large, publicly traded companies and their direct emissions, I think is a huge win.”
Hart says there was also a federal court case a few years ago ruling it illegal to collect farm location data.
