>Cotton Farming

>A series of seminars focused on employers compliance with the new Alabama immigration reform legislation are scheduled for the next few weeks. Some of these are sponsored by ALFA and some by the Alabama Employers for Immigration Reform (ALEIR).  The first will be in Mobile on July 25 and the rest are in August. ALFA will have a session at the commodity conference in Huntsville on Aug 6 in addition to those listed below.

• Mobile, July 25 at the Semmes Community Center
• Birmingham, Aug. 3 at Rosewood Hall, Soho
• Montgomery, Aug. 17 at the Gordon Persons Building Auditorium
• Huntsville, Aug. 31, to be announced

More information on the can found on ALFA’s site at:


http://www.alfafarmers.org/headlines/headline.phtml?id=6025


The flyer and registration form can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3qh73cl


Feel free to call us if you have any questions.


Dusty

>Last week the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill that will require all employers to use the federal E-Verify program with all new hires. The program will phase in over the next several years with the largest employers complying with the requirements by January 1, 2012 and the smallest (those with 25 or more employees) complying by July 1, 2013. There are provisions for seasonal employers to be exempted but only if they employ over the threshold for less than 90 days in a 12 consecutive month period.
 
What does this mean for ginners? The 25 employee threshold is fairly high compared to many other states and many gins don’t have this many employees in the middle of gin season. If you cross that 25 employee threshold but don’t expect to have those employees for 90 days, make sure you keep track of hire and fire dates to make sure you don’t cross that 90 day in a 12 month period. Otherwise it looks like gins as well as all other employers in the state will be using E-Verify in the future.
 
The E-Verify program compliance will phase in over the next 2 yrs with the largest employers, those over 500 employees, beginning October 2021. Those employers with between 100 and 500 employees must comply by January 1, 2013. And those small employers with 25 or more employees must comply by July 1, 2013.
 
More information will follow as we learn more about how the program will be run and implemented. Please call our office if you have any questions.
 
Dusty

>On two voice votes, the House Appropriations Committee passed amendments that would both punish the cotton program and cotton farmers AND violate the US-Brazil framework inviting retaliation against the US. Representatives Flake (R-AZ) and DeLauro (D-CT) offered amendments that together will pull more than $147Million from the cotton program direct payments and transfer it to the WIC program.

As the House and Senate begin work on a new farm bill, the measures, if finally passed, will damage both the farm bill and the agreement reached between Brazil and the US following a lengthy WTO process that ultimately found parts of the US Cotton Program and Export Credit program in violation of the WTO treaties. The US made several changes to the cotton program and agreed to make additional changes as the next farm bill was developed to bring the ag program back into compliance. In the mean time, the US agreed to fund an institute to the tune of just under $150Million. The Flake amendment would take the money to pay for the institute from the cotton program direct payments. Thus punishing cotton producers when MOST (80%) of the amount of the settlement was due to the Export Credit Guarantee program. The DeLauro amendment re-directs that money to the WIC program away from the Brazil institute which puts us in direct violation of the framework.

We had been aware of the possibility of Rep. Flake tabling an amendment to cut the payment to the Brazil institute and the cotton industry made comment to the members of the committee telling them that the while the Brazil agreement was called the “Cotton Case” it was the export credit program that drew the ire of the WTO establishing the amount of the violation. Cotton was very small part of the sanction. Nonetheless, our program has drawn the most fire over the case. A statement from the National Cotton Council is found on their website. We will be in contact with our members as the process moves and we do our best to restore the funding and stave off the retaliatory activity from Brazil that is sure to follow if the payments to the institute are not restored.

>The annual Ginners School in Stoneville, MS is coming up in less than a month. The school held each year at each of the three USDA Ginning Laboratories sponsored by the National Cotton Ginners Association and the USDA, will be June 14-16. All three levels will be taught once again plus a day and a half of continuing education.  It isn’t too late to register if you’d like to attend. To register and more information go to http://www.cotton.org/ncga/ginschool/index.cfm.

>Senator Kay Hagen is working with other colleagues in the Congress to re-introduce a bill that would help protect the fragile US textile industry. The bill would help ensure that US textile manufacturers are on a level playing field with their overseas competitors.

The full article can be found here. ARTICLE.

Dusty