Sugar Producer

26 Sugar Producer JANUARY 2021 FROM THE ASGA Luther Markwart | EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Changing of the Guard With lots of new faces in Washington, the ASGA will be busy in 2021. As we begin A new yeAr it will be filled with severAl chAnges, chAllenges And opportunities driven both by covid And by politics. you will hAve the opportunity to get the lAtest view on key industry issues by pArticipAting in our virtuAl AnnuAl meeting, feb. 2-3. pleAse visit www.AmericAnsugArbeet.org to register. pArticipAtion is free due to the generosity of our sponsors. however, you must register to pArticipAte—And you won't wAnt to miss it. The highest priority in the new year is getting Americans vaccinated. The governors of each state will decide vaccine distribution standards based on state allocations and the advice of federal officials. Agriculture and food manufacturing workers are deemed essential and should fall relatively high on the priority list to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. With 26 million to 50 million hungry people in the U.S. as a result of the crisis, we must make sure we can continue grow, process and manufacture food items and distribute them quickly. You can't give food away if you can't make it. We need to make sure there is resiliency within our agricultural supply chains. Our production regions have been hit hard with COVID, so it is incumbent upon us to protect our people as best we can. Last year we began a dialog with the Biden transition team to identify those items that are key to our industry and highlight any important decisions to us in the near term for the new administration. All 4,000 political appointees across the government will change; 1,200 will have to be confirmed by the Senate. There are many new people to meet and educate on our industry and policies—and we will have to do that remotely. We are up to that challenge and can do so quite effectively. The Senate is awaiting the Jan. 5 runoff in Georgia for both Senate seats. Both incumbents are Republican. With the Senate at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats, the Republicans must win one of the two Georgia seats to hold control of the Senate. If Democrats win both seats, they will control the chamber because the vice president is President of the Senate. All committee chairs would then switch from Republican to Democrat. There will be at least seven new senators in the chamber next Congress. This will require new relationship- building and education. In some cases, new senators previously served in the House and are already familiar with our industry. A handful of House races remain outstanding at the time of this writing in early December. The loss of at least 13 seats previously held by Democrats leaves speaker Nancy Pelosi with a razor-thin margin with which to govern. Such a thin margin could lend itself to moderate policy proposals as Believe it or not, 2021 is in fact going to be an exciting year of recovery for our nation and our industry.

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