This year three important agricultural bills were introduced in the Nebraska Legislature that the public needs to know about. These are three good agricultural bills which I have either introduced myself or co-signed along with the bill’s author. Each of these bills affects the agriculture industry in our state in a different way.

The first bill is LB 1396, and was introduced by Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil. The bill would change the requirements for food manufacturers when labeling food products for sale for human consumption when that food product contains insect, worm, or any other bug ingredients. The bill would require the manufacturer to clearly label the food product in at least twelve-point font on the front label whenever the food product contains more than five percent of insect, worm, or bug ingredients. This is a good bill for the simple reason that people need to know what they are putting into their own bodies.

The second bill is LB 1301, and was introduced by Sen. Barry DeKay of Niobrara. This bill is known as the Foreign-owned Real Estate National Security Act. The bill would prohibit nonresident aliens who have engaged in a pattern of behavior adverse to the national security of the United States from acquiring or holding title to agricultural lands in the State of Nebraska. The bill would require the Department of Agriculture to investigate potential violations and report them to the Nebraska State Attorney General.

The third bill that I would like to mention is one of my own. LB 844 is a bill designed to protect Nebraska’s small businesses which hire local laborers for doing the work of roguing and detasseling for the purposes of growing seed corn. Over the years, we have seen all local detasseling companies go out-of-business in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Nebraska is now the last state where teenagers have the opportunity to perform roguing and detasseling work as a summer job.

The problem has been the overuse of H2A migrant workers for doing the work. Federal law already requires seed corn companies to consider first the bids of those Nebraska companies who hire local workers, especially teenagers, but the federal government has lacked the manpower and the resources to enforce the law. Since 2019 nine Nebraska businesses who hire teenagers for doing roguing and detasseling work have already fallen by the wayside.

LB 844 is a bill for transparency. The bill requires the Director of Agriculture to create a directory of Nebraska companies who hire local workers and post the directory to the Department’s website. An amendment that I put on the bill further requires the Director of Agriculture to send the directory each year to every seed corn company operating within the State by way of registered mail. This will ensure that the seed corn companies know who these Nebraska companies are and how to reach them.

At the end of the growing season each seed corn company would then be required to report to the Director of Agriculture which companies they hired and how many acres they contracted with those companies. The Director of Agriculture would then make a report and post it to the Department’s website by the end of September of each year. By disclosing which companies were hired and how many acres they were contracted for, Nebraskans would be able to hold these seed corn companies accountable for contracting with Nebraska companies first before outsourcing these jobs to companies that hire mostly H2A migrant workers.

Although roguing and detasseling work is done mostly in the central and eastern parts of the State, it is important for teaching our youth the meaning of hard work and the value of a dollar. Roguing and detasseling is an important tool for introducing urban teenagers to Nebraska’s agricultural industry. Those who do the work often learn character values that help them succeed later in life. Nebraska needs these jobs, and that is why 136 people from across the state submitted online testimonies in favor of the bill compared to only one lobbyist who opposed it.