Key Policy & Trade Concerns for U.S. Agribusiness in 2024 & Beyond - An Interview with Mary Kay Thatcher, Syngenta

By Chrissy Wozniak, North American Ag. Reprinted with permission. (September 3, 2024)

North American Ag, which is devoted to highlighting the people and companies in agriculture who impact the industry and help feed the world, did a podcast this summer with 2024 Women in Agribusiness (WIA) Summit speaker Mary Kay Thatcher, the senior manager of Federal Government and Industry Relations at Syngenta. Thatcher, who has a career that spans over three decades, has expertise and deep-rooted connections that make her a formidable voice in the industry. In the podcast with North American Ag Founder Chrissy Wozniak, Thatcher provides a preview of her panel presentation at the WIA Summit “Key Policy & Trade Concerns for U.S. Agribusiness in 2024 & Beyond”, sharing insights on the pressing policy and trade concerns facing U.S. agribusiness today.

Below are three key Q&As from the interview (edited for length), and highlights of the additional topics that were covered. To listen to the entire podcast, visit North American Ag.

You can meet Thatcher and Wozniak, who also is VP of communications at American Agri-Women & Secretary at Florida Agri-Women, at the WIA Summit this month in Denver, September 24-26. Many thanks to both of them for this informative discussion.

Chrissy Wozniak: Let's start out with your background. How did you get where you are today?

Mary Kay Thatcher: Most people say their life didn't really go the way they planned it, but mine's all been fairly linear. I grew up on a farm in Iowa, near Des Moines. I went to Iowa State. I have an ag business, ag econ double major, with an ag journalism minor. Then I came out to Washington and did agricultural work for then Senator [Roger] Jepsen from Iowa, worked for the Farm Bureau lobbying for a few years, worked in the first Bush administration and now with Syngenta.

My whole career has been agriculture. I still have a small family farm in Iowa, but I don’t get to get much dirt under my nails, but I do get to visit with the fella who helps me out and try to talk about what our planning decisions are. I still really, really enjoy it. And, you know, it's funny, I was just with a senator from Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and we were talking about how what a great little fraternity agriculture is. It's really a small world everywhere, certainly in Washington [D.C]. Everybody knows everybody. I think working with farmers and ranchers, they're just the salt of the earth – I couldn't ask for a better career.

CW: How have recent policy changes impacted U.S. agribusiness and what are the most significant issues right now?

MKT: Probably the most significant thing we have is the Chevron decision coming out of the Supreme Court, and nobody really knows how that's going to work out.

But in general, the Chevron decision and the overturning of it said that instead of the requirement that courts had to bow to whatever regulatory bodies came up with, this will allow them to do some overturning on those. In agriculture we look to numerous regulations at EPA to figure out, okay, what are the ones that might have some interpretation changes? What about USDA? There might be some tax issues. Nobody really knows yet how just vast that could be. In fact, I think all the committee chairs of the of the House sent letters to Secretary Vilsack at the USDA and asked a whole host of questions about what laws they consider ought to be reconsidered, etc.

It's going to be very interesting to see what that package finally ends up looking like. Certainly we think, as does I believe everybody in agriculture, that it's a lot better if we let the Hill write the laws and not have as much interpretation. But the fact is, Congress isn't very used to that. They're not used to spending the time to cross every t and dot every i, and they're going to have to get that way now because the Chevron overturn means they're going to have a lot more input into it. I think that's going to affect a whole lot of things.

I think another really big issue, and I wouldn't say that I think it's been dealt with yet in almost any fashion, is our debt, our deficit. Maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we talked a lot about that, but nobody’s paid much attention to it in the last few years. And people continue to pass all kinds of laws that cost additional money.

They may be great laws, but we're getting more and more in debt. I believe that in the next Congress, we're going to have to pass a debt limit again right after they come back in January and are sworn in. But I believe people are going to start paying more attention.

We think about things like there being lots of tax provisions that must be reauthorized next year – things like the estate tax and 1031 exchanges and the 199 exemption for co-ops, etc. – will all of those cost money? I think it's going to be even more difficult now to figure out how to deal with those than it was when we originally passed them in 2017.

On the spending side, it sure doesn't look like the farm bill is going to get done this year. I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe a lame duck, but if it doesn't, we're also going to come back and have this budget reconciliation package, which will cost money, and we’ll be facing taxes.

I think we're going to be looking at this farm bill, and people are going to say, do we have the same amount of money to fund a farm bill in 2025 as we would if we did it in 2024?

But I think we haven't really dug into the debt and the deficit, and certainly and we won't know this answer until we know who's the next president, who controls the House and the Senate and by how big a margin, etc., what kind of people are they? But I cannot see a way that we don't spend a lot more time kind of pulling our hair out on where do we find the funding to do things, and where do we find the will to cut funding elsewhere?

CW: What about trade? What are the biggest trade concerns that we're facing?

MKT: We have not done a new trade agreement in this country, a free trade agreement, in like 14 years. We all remember fondly the days when the World Trade Organization worked and we were passing things like China PNTR and USMCA and all these host of things, and we just don't seem to get the appetite in Congress to really get that done. I don't anticipate anything in that manner happening before next year. Then I think it's going to be a real push to get anything there. In agriculture, I think that’s one of those places that it’s most important for us to be out there lobbying about it.

Hear more of the discussion between Thatcher and Wozniak here where they cover additional topics like environmental regulations affecting U.S. farmers, labor policy concerns, and technology and innovation in the ag sector. And you can reach Thatcher to ask your own question at mary_k.thatcher@syngenta.com or visit with her at the 2024 WIA Summit later this month.