"I look forward to sitting down ... in conference and working to make the needed adjustments to the legislation so that we can get a farm bill passed and signed into law that protects our farmers, ranchers and consumers."

House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin C. Peterson released the following statement, calling on EPA to address the larger issue of exempting oil refiners from their obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard.

 The partisan approach of the Majority has produced a bill that simply doesn’t do enough for the people it’s supposed to serve.

"What the Senate has put together reflects great work by Chairman Roberts and Ranking Member Stabenow to set partisan goals aside and focus on a bill that addresses the issues we’ve heard about throughout this farm bill process."

"We don’t have to let this process be held hostage by the demands of the extremes of our parties. We can and should take the time to get the farm bill right."

"H.R. 2 is not a work product that I’m proud of because it’s not one I or my Democratic colleagues had a proper role in producing. More than that though, I’m opposed to H.R. 2 today because it’s simply not good enough for American farmers, consumers or rural advocates."

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-MN) sent a letter to President Trump today expressing concern that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is inappropriately issuing waivers to fuel refiners in order to undermine the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program.

Ranking Member Collin Peterson addressed the threats facing American farmers following the Administration’s actions on trade, and the need for certainty given a potentially significant drop in demand as a result of retaliatory tariffs from major export partners like China.

“Mr. Chairman, this is a flawed bill that is the result of a bad and nontransparent process. I oppose it and urge my colleagues on the Committee to oppose it as well. More than nine months ago, we began discussions on a bipartisan farm bill. I saw this process as a way to work collaboratively and produce a work product where so many in this town have fallen victim to politics. We wanted to get to a bipartisan bill. In our discussions, we were able to find common ground on quite a few areas but, as anyone who has been through this before knows—and I’ve been through a few farm bills—nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.

It makes no sense to put the farmers and rural communities who rely on the farm bill’s safety net programs at risk in pursuit of partisan ideology on SNAP. Between record low farm incomes, and the escalating threat of a trade war and other market disruptions, farmers have enough to worry about. Breaking up the long-standing, bipartisan, urban-rural farm bill alliance is a dangerous and unproductive step that will only sow division and jeopardize both this and future farm bills.