The Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, Republican Rep. Glenn "GT" Thompson (PA-15), will host a Farm Bill listening session in Albany, Oregon, on Friday, June 2nd at 10:30 AM. It will be held in The Forum at the Linn-Benton Community College. Land Surveyors play an important role in Agriculture, and we need to speak up during this important Listening Session.
Mr. Thompson will be joined by Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-05) and Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas (OR-06), along with bipartisan Members of the House Committee on Agriculture. The event will bring together farmers, ranchers, producers, agribusiness owners, and more to solicit public feedback—an integral part of the Farm Bill reauthorization process. All members of the Committee have been invited to participate as well as the Oregon Congressional delegation.
Land Surveyors able to attend the Listening Session can register to provide input during the meeting here (you will be limited to two minutes, but the link also has an email address to which you can send written comments even if you don’t attend in person). Signing up is not a guarantee you will be called to offer comments during the meeting. However, if you can attend and are willing to offer comments on behalf of PLSO, here are some brief “talking points”:
- Thank you for coming to Oregon. Agriculture is important to our state and updated land surveying data is vital to our farming communities;
- Obtaining current survey data is crucial to farming because it can be used to create efficiencies (and also provides vital data for fire mitigation, erosion control, water storage, and flood mapping);
- While most of the U.S. has already been mapped to 3DEP standards, large portions of rural Oregon have yet to be mapped;
- When mapping is done, the data is available to the Federal government, state and local governments, and the private sector, including farmers and ranchers, so there is high return on the Federal investment in updated survey mapping; and
- Professional Land Surveyors across the country visited Washington, DC, in March asking members of Congress to sponsor and support the Broadband Asset Surety Enhancement Mapping Act, or the BASE Mapping Act. I am asking you all to READ the BASE Mapping Act information sent to your office and to make it one of your priorities for inclusion in the 2023 Farm Bill.
If you can’t attend, please consider using the link to email comments to the committee.
Click here to see the DRAFT language for the BASE Mapping Act.
If you plan to attend, will you please let our lobbyist, Darrell Fuller, know? You can email him at fuller_darrell@Yahoo.com. And, if you have any questions, he will be happy to help. You can also reach him by phone at 971-388-1786.
