The Campaign Academy, designed by the Arlington, VA.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's Grassroots Unit, designed to help individuals seeking public office this fall along with anyone else involved in their campaigns.

The course helps individuals sharpen their political skills and prepare them for the rigors of the campaign trail, whether it be school board, town council, county commission or state office.

SDREA, along with the South Dakota retailers Associaiton, will be coordinating the South Dakota workshops which are scheduled for March 16 in Rapid City and March 18 in Sioux Falls.

The school is open to candidates of any political party and will feature campaign veterans and professionals focusing on the core areas of fund-raising, campaign strategy, message development and communication skills. Participants will receive a binder of the various presentations and additional training supplements on the topics covered during the course. Attendees will also learn about campaign rules and regulations

The registration dealine is March 3. There is a $25 fee to attend the all-day program; additional people from a campain may attend for $15 per person. This covers the cost of materials, continental breafast and lunch.

CONTRACT your local ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE for a registration form or call SDREA at 1-800-201-8823.

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The first Department of Justice (DOJ)/U.S. Department of Agriculture workshop on competition in griculture is just a week away on Friday, March 12, in Ankeny, Iowa. NCFC has been working over the past weeks to prepare for an all-out effort to defend the Capper-Volstead Act and the ability of farmers to form cooperatives.

Part of this effort has been briefing our allies on Capitol Hill about the workshops and our concerns. A briefing in the House of Representatives was held last week, and a Senate briefing is scheduled for Monday. NCFC has also been reaching out to targeted news media to tell the story of co-ops, and this effort will continue up to and through the first workshop. In addition, to empower our members to become part of this process, we have developed an online toolkit of materials that can be found on the NCFC web site at http://www.ncfc.org/farmer-co-ops-providing-for-america-online-toolkit.html. The toolkit contains all sorts of materials, such as sample letters to Congress and the Administration; a draft op-ed; talking points; and the comments that NCFC submitted to DOJ on the workshops.

NCFC staff will be attending the workshop next week, and the full agenda for the event can be found on DOJ’s web site at http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/agenda.htm.

In addition, DOJ has begun the process of posting the 16,000 comments that they received on the workshops to their web site. Comments can be accessed by going to http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/initial_comments_alpha.htm. Finally, if you are planning to attend the workshop, please remember to register for the event on the Des Moines Area Community College web site at https://go.dmacc.edu/ffa/agworkshop/Pages/welcome.aspx.

NCFC and a large group of other agricultural organizations sent a letter this week to Representatives Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) expressing support for the congressional resolutions of disapproval that both filed separately to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. A similar resolution was also introduced in the Senate by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).

The letter states in part “The EPA rule itself claims to establish only a weak, indirect link between greenhouse gases and public health and welfare, going so far as to admit there are uncertainties over the net, direct health impacts of the greenhouse gases it is attempting to regulate. Further, EPA Administrator [Lisa] Jackson recently acknowledged that unilateral action by the United States would have no material impact on global warming.

Even if both the House and Senate passed resolutions, they would require the president’s signature to take effect. If President Obama vetoed the measure, it is very unlikely that there would be enough votes in either the House or Senate for an override.

Proposed Jobs Package Contains Pension Relief, Renewable Fuel Incentives, Disaster Relief A jobs bill introduced this week by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would extend numerous renewable fuel tax incentives, provide disaster relief incentives, and provide temporary funding relief for sponsors of defined benefit pension plans. The pension funding relief included in the bill, (the “American Workers, State and Business Relief Act,” H.R. 4213) would allow plan sponsors to choose from one of two methods to extend the period of time in which to recover from the significant plan losses suffered due to the steep market decline in 2008. With regard to renewable fuels, the bill would extend the following provisions through 2010:

* One dollar per gallon tax credit for biodiesel.

* One dollar per gallon tax credit for diesel fuel created from biomass.

* Ten cents per gallon small agri-biodiesel producer credit.

* Five cents per gallon credit for low sulfur diesel fuel.

* Credit for electricity produced at open-loop biomass facilities placed in service before October 22, 2004.

The bill would also extend the following tax-related provisions through 2010:

* Deduction for up to 75 percent of costs related to compliance with EPA Highway Diesel Fuel Sulfur Control requirement.

* Research and development credit.

* Enhanced charitable deduction for food inventory.

* Five-year recovery period for certain farming equipment.

* Bonus depreciation for qualified disaster property.

* Five-year carry-back period for losses relating to federal disasters.

* Temporary depreciation allowance for Gulf Opportunity Zone property.

Finally, the bill would provide $1.98 billion in assistance for crop, cottonseed, aquaculture, poultry, grazing, and specialty crop losses in 2009. The timing for passage of the bill is uncertain.

Separately, the House passed a modified version of a $15.5 billion jobs package passed by the Senate last week. Both versions of the bill would provide a payroll tax holiday for wages paid to certain individuals through 2010. The House bill would increase the estimated tax payments for corporations with assets of $1 billion or more, among other changes. The bill now heads to the Senate for another floor vote, but the timing of the vote remains unclear.

Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chairman and ranking member respectively of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, thanking them for holding a hearing this week on chemical security programs.

The groups also expressed support for S. 2996, the “Continuing Chemical Facilities Antiterrorism Security Act of 2010.” The bill would extend the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program through 2015 without making dramatic and costly interruptions to ongoing implementation efforts by business and government.

This week, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing entitled “Improving Children’s Health: Strengthening Federal Child Nutrition Programs.” With the Child Nutrition Act reauthorized for one year last fall, Congress will need to take up a longer term bill this year, and this hearing is part of the initial stages of the process.

NCFC submitted a statement to the Committee (which can be found at http://www.ncfc.org/images/docs/CommentsandLetters/nutrition_statement_to_house_ed_and_labor_3-2- 10.doc), emphasizing our support for a nutrition policy based on sound science and the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines.

In NCFC’s news release following the hearing, NCFC President & CEO Chuck Conner said, “The goal of increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables under the Child Nutrition Act—supported by many in Congress, the Administration and the agricultural sector—is one that every American should support. At the same time, however, the program must not pit one form of fruits and vegetables against the other. The science is clear on this issue—there is no nutritional difference between fresh, canned, dried or frozen fruits and vegetables, and thus no special preference should be given to any specific form in federal food assistance programs.”

NCFC has been working with our partners in the crop protection community as well as other agricultural groups to confront threatening policy that will detrimentally impact agriculture’s ability to utilize crop protection products: restrictive EPA drift labeling for all pesticide labels.

NCFC has submitted comments on the Agency’s drift proposal and will provide suggestions for more reasonable alternatives.

We are urging our members to join several other agricultural groups by signing an online petition outlining nine key areas to change in the regulation:

1. Not impose unnecessary buffers that would reduce cropland available for American agriculture

2. Develop a bystander exposure scenario for the risk assessment in the pesticide registration process

3. Develop risk-based tolerances for non-target property

4. Maintain the FIFRA risk-based standard of "no unreasonable adverse effects"

5. Acknowledge that some small level of pesticide drift is unavoidable (in some cases) and does not pose an "unreasonable adverse effect"

6. Acknowledge that the mere detection of a pesticide off-target does not pose an unreasonable adverse effect and is not a violation of FIFRA that requires an enforcement action

7. Remove the new hazard-based standard of "harm" from the Drift Pesticide Registration Notice

8. Remove the vague, unenforceable, and unmanageable concepts of "could cause" or "may cause" adverse effects or "harm" from the Drift PRN

9. Not apply an additional unnecessary factor of 10 in the occupational exposure scenario

To sign the online petition, go to http://www.gopetition.com/online/33776.html.

April 26-27, 2010—NCFC Spring Executive Council Meeting—Washington Court Hotel, Washington, D.C.

May 6-7, 2010—LTA Executive Committee Meeting—Homewood Suites, Jackson, Wyo.

June 15-17, 2010—NCFC Washington Conference, Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C

September 27-28, 2010—NCFC Fall Executive Council Meeting—Washington Court Hotel, Washington, D.C.

September 30-October 1, 2010—LTA Subcommittee Chair-Vice Chair Meeting—Hyatt Regency, Newport, R.I.

November 3-5, 2010—Government Affairs Committee Meeting—Washington, D.C.

February 9-11, 2011—NCFC 82nd Annual Meeting—Marriott Rivercenter, San Antonio, Texas

March 18, 2010 - ABC Conference - Crossroads Hotel & HEC - Huron SD 57350

April 8, 2010 - SDAC Board Meeting/Budget Committee Meeting - Crossroads - Huron

September 14 & 15, 2010 - Joint Convention SD Cooperative Managers Association and South Dakota Association of Cooperatives - Chamberlain, SD