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Lucas introduces bill against SEC

Former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and 80 of his colleagues last week introduced the Protect Farmers from the SEC Act.

The bill would would prohibit the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring an issuer of securities to disclose greenhouse gas emissions from upstream and downstream activities in the issuer’s value chain arising from farms and ranches.

The SEC has proposed “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors” that would require registrants, publicly traded companies registered with the SEC, to include certain climate-related disclosures in their statements and periodic reports, including measured impacts for their entire supply chain.



“While federal securities laws already require publicly traded companies to disclose material risks to investors, the SEC’s ill-advised climate disclosure rule undermines the materiality standard for environmental policy purposes.” Lucas said.

“The proposed climate rule is so unwieldy and convoluted that publicly traded companies will be forced to require small, independent, family farms to report on-farm data regarding individual operations and day-to-day activities. In this capacity, the SEC would be granted unprecedented jurisdiction over family farms and ranches, hindering the ability of American farmers and ranchers to compete in global markets and creating onerous compliance requirements for operations with few or no employees,” Lucas said.



The act would:

▪ Prohibit the SEC from requiring an issuer of securities to disclose greenhouse gas emissions from upstream and downstream activities in the issuer’s value chain arising from a farm.

▪ Define the production, manufacturing, or harvesting of an agricultural product through the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, outline upstream and downstream activities, and define greenhouse gases.

▪ Remove the SEC’s exemptive authority in relation to this act.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers and the National Cotton Council have endorsed the bill.


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