Klobuchar, Thune Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Connect Farmers with Most Effective Conservation Practices

The Agriculture Innovation Act would improve USDA data collection and research of conservation practices, informing farmers’ understanding of which practices help reduce risk and increase profitability.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) reintroduced their bipartisan legislation to strengthen agricultural data collection and research to connect farmers with the most effective conservation practices.

The Agriculture Innovation Act would improve the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s data collection procedures for assessing how various conservation and production practices increase crop yield, improve soil health, and bolster productivity. The USDA currently manages and stores valuable producer data, but the data can be better utilized to inform farmers and producers’ understanding of which conservation practices help reduce risk and increase profitability. 

“As the economic backbone of rural communities across our state, farmers and producers need the most up-to-date resources possible to inform their operations,” said Klobuchar. “This bipartisan legislation will provide farmers with better access to comprehensive USDA data, ensuring they are able to use the most effective conservation practices for boosting productivity and improving crop yield.”

“South Dakota farmers and ranchers are familiar with the many challenges that accompany their way of life,” said Thune. “Among them is measuring the economic value that conservation practices have on production, especially as the agriculture community tries to reduce risk and increase productivity amid global food security concerns. That’s why Congress must help producers and trusted researchers – like land-grant universities – better utilize USDA’s data to more effectively identify the conservation practices that would best improve productivity on farm and ranch operations.”

The Agriculture Innovation Act would:

• Direct the Secretary of Agriculture to identify, collect, link, and analyze data relating to the impacts of conservation and other production practices on enhancing crop yields, soil health, and otherwise reducing risk and improving farm and ranch profitability.
• Allow the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a secure, confidential cloud-based conservation and farm productivity data center to store operational, transactional, and administrative program databases and records that support business, statistical, and other analysis.
• Empower USDA to use research, analysis, and evaluation products derived from enhanced data to provide technical assistance to farmers and improve farm program implementation. 
• Since the bill was introduced in the last Congress, additional protections for proprietary producer data have been included. The bill now calls for the USDA to create added review processes to ensure sensitive data isn’t included in research publications and not accidentally disclosed from the Secure Ag Data Center. It also requires that any published research only includes aggregated and anonymized data.

The legislation has been endorsed by AGree Coalition; American Farmland Trust; American Fly Fishing Trade Association; American Soybean Association; BPC Action; Ceres Businesses for Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture; Danone North America; Environmental Defense Action Fund; Illinois Corn Growers Association; National Corn Growers Association; National Deer Association; National Wildlife Federation; Pheasants Forever; Quail Forever; Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership; The Nature Conservancy; and the World Wildlife Fund US.

###