Ex-USDA official blasts 'mind-boggling' Biden regulations on farming, menthol: 'Doesn't seem very American'

A former USDA official is speaking out about Biden administration regulations he believes are harming the farming industry and also warned about a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes he says has already been tried and failed that will deal a significant blow to tobacco farmers.

Ray Starling, who served as chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, told Fox News Digital that the lives of farmers have become more difficult since Biden took office for a variety of reasons, including water policy, issues with the guest worker visa program, and burdensome regulations particularly related to the FDA that he says are putting the agriculture industry as a whole in peril. 

"I couldn't start the conversation without starting with water and water policy," Starling said. "When you think about all the different states around the country, water presents different challenges and different opportunities for different parts of the country, but at the end of the day, anybody involved in agriculture needs it, needs access to it, needs to be able to manage it and probably the biggest thing we've seen in the water space is that this administration seems very determined to maximize the EPA's jurisdiction over land that has some kind of water on it."

Starling explained that EPA regulations regarding water, which farmers and ranchers have labeled an "attack on farmers," have not subsided as a threat simply because the Supreme Court issued a ruling last year narrowing the federal government's authority to regulate bodies of water and effectively upended a Biden administration policy that recently went into effect.

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Ray Starling and President Biden (Getty Images)

"Ironically, they've only chosen to change their approach at a minimal amount," Starling said. 

"The holding is the EPA can only regulate you if there is a continuous surface water connection to a relatively permanent body of water and so EPA took very serious that question of continuous surface water connection," Starling explained. "But now they're trying to read expansively, the second part of that limitation, which is there has to be a relatively permanent body of water to which it is connected, and they are obviously trying to maximize use of the phrase' relatively permanent,' and so EPA is a great example of something we have to keep our eye on."

Starling continued, "The United States continues to grow, particularly in states like North Carolina, we're seeing a lot of land use pressure from needs and desires in the community besides farming, and so, if you're going to continue to limit the amount of land that I have to farm, that's obviously going to make me less productive in some ways, and so I think water is a big one."

Another issue, Starling said , is the Biden administration making it more difficult for farmers to access labor through the guest worker visa program, also known as the H-2A program.

"I recognize people have different views about this program, but American agriculture is absolutely dependent on our guest worker visa program," Starling said. 

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A young farmer sprays his garden of fresh lettuce, cabbage and parsley against pests. (iStock)

"This involves workers that come from foreign countries, primarily from Mexico, primarily from southern Mexico," Starling said. "They come in with a work visa. They are cleared by the Department of Homeland Security to do that. There is a contract for work waiting for them here. What's interesting about this program is farmers that use it have to advertise those jobs to Americans first. They have to agree that they will pay Americans as much as they will the foreign worker. They have to offer the American worker the same benefits that they have to offer, that they are offering the foreign worker. So, we're not supplanting American jobs in this process. Frankly, we are supporting them. And … it just feels like this current administration wants to make that program harder and harder and harder to use. It's already incredibly expensive."

Starling said the Biden administration has continued to make accessing foreign labor more expensive for farms by requiring them to pay for travel, housing for union representatives, pesticide safety and other regulations and has already had "eight different rule-makings" for farmers on the issue.

"It is mind-boggling that this is an American regulation in any sector, but particularly in agriculture, where it's pretty darn important to our country," Starling said. "It just seems that this administration is bound and determined to make the raising of that food harder and harder and less and less economical."

Starling acknowledged that the red tape involving foreign workers is even more perplexing given the backdrop of a record number of illegal immigrants being allowed to cross the southern border, for which the Biden administration has faced intense scrutiny for not doing more to prevent.

"It is mind-boggling that we are raising the cost for farmers to access legal labor that comes and goes, that is vetted through a security process that protects American workers and ensures that they are not displaced in the marketplace of employment, and yet this other problem has been unresolved down at the border," Starling said.  

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President Biden (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"In fact, I'm in meetings with farmers now who look around and say, you know, we've had this influx of 5 to 6 million people during the course of this administration and I have yet to see a single one show up on my farm in response to any of my advertisements to work. And so, I don't think there's a way to reconcile those two policies. I don't think there's a way to make that make sense."

Starling also pointed to regulations at the Food and Drug Administration, particularly regarding menthol, as something that has made life harder for farmers during the Biden years.

"In addition to more regulations on our fruit and vegetable production and fresh produce, tobacco is still an important crop in many places throughout the United States, principally here in North Carolina, it’s important, a $2.4 billion contributor to the US economy in terms of indirect economic impact of just tobacco production, meaning the farm part, not even thinking about all the manufacturing that goes into those products afterward," Starling, who serves as general counsel of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News Digital. "And yet we've got a rule proposed by FDA that says we're going to take menthol cigarettes off the market. We're not going to allow American consumers to have that product."

Starling said the "interesting part" about the proposed menthol ban is that it’s a "policy that's been tried and failed already."

"In California, for example, they banned all flavorings and what that's led to is 40% of the market for cigarettes in that state are now black market. They are unregulated. They are untaxed at the state or the federal level and, ironically, there's a large percentage of them that's actually coming here from Russia … we're literally empowering the Russians with this kind of regulation. So, the menthol ban just seems counterintuitive to us. In addition to its economic impact, we feel like it will lead to more black market activity."

Starling also pointed to the government’s focus on limiting nicotine as adverse to the tobacco industry as well as a federal mandate ensuring that farmers grow a certain amount of GMOs.

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Iowa farmer Ernie "George" Goebel pulls a corn planter behind his John Deere tractor on the farm where he was raised.

"The federal government has mandated that a farmer that grows other crops grow a GMO variety of that crop," Starling said. "I'm a believer in GMOs. I don't think there's any real risk to the population of mass consumption of GMOs. We've seen that in corn and soybeans over the years. But with that said, we've never seen the federal government say, I'm going to take the choice of that selection away. You have to grow this particular GMO product.' That's new."

"That doesn't seem very American to me and at the end of the day, you know, I hope there's some political consequences here, because I feel like that some of the very people this administration says they're trying to help and some of the very problems that they say they're trying to solve, they're actually making those problems more acute and more painful, particularly with regard to the cost of food and access to copious amounts of what has traditionally been the most abundant food supply in the world."

Starling told Fox News Digital that these regulations, along with others, are not just minor inconveniences for farmers but are slowly chipping away at their ability to stay in business.

"That is not an exaggeration because if you think about the pure agricultural economics of the environment we're in, of course, farmers have been subjected to the same inflationary increases in cost that everyone else has over the last couple of years," Starling said. "Their commodity prices have actually been pretty strong, we absolutely anticipate in 2024 that is not going to be the case."

"So, while they generally had gotten higher prices at the market, while absorbing higher prices for their inputs and their labor cost, for example, we are now seeing those prices at the market soften, and so, that delta is getting smaller or potentially going away or even going away. So, on one hand, yes, just the pure economics of making it harder means we will see people choose to exit the business."

Starling told Fox News Digital that "we're in a period of generational transfer in agriculture."

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"We're in a period where a lot of our farmers that, you know, became really the backbone of the most efficient food production system in the world, they are aging out, and so, those farms are changing hands, and if we're going to make it harder for this next generation to farm and to make the use of that capital make sense, land in particular, we can't continue to pile on regulation after regulation," Starling said.

Starling, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Farmers versus Foodies," warned that "unintended consequences" of farming regulations will have more farmers "leaving the industry" in the next five to 10 years if nothing is done. 

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"I'm not going to tell you that I can predict all of the trade-offs," Starling said. "I think there are others and that we will rue the day that we've made it harder, harder to farm, particularly with … no real reason to do so."

In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards touted the efforts of the Biden administration to provide financial relief to farmers. 

"The previous administration’s disastrous trade war hurt farmers, leading to an increase in farm bankruptcies and debt, and forcing President Biden’s predecessor to spend tens of billions of dollars to mitigate the fallout," Edwards wrote. "Fortunately, Bidenomics and President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda are delivering for rural communities and farmers nationwide. U.S. agriculture exports have seen the three highest years on record in 2021-2023, while 2024 is projected to be the fourth highest year on record."

Edwards continued, "Beyond providing over $56 billion in specific direct federal assistance programs to support American farmers who feed our country and the world, the President has taken unprecedented executive action to level the playing field so small and mid-sized farmers can get a fair price for their products, while making billions of dollars in transformative investments through the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act to create new markets and new income opportunities for family farmers. This includes helping 36,000 farmers who were in distressed financial situations after the pandemic stay on their land, and helping those and others shore up their operations to keep farming viable for the next generation."

"President Biden will continue to ensure that American farmers have the tools and resources they need to be successful, which means better options — and prices — for farmers, ranchers, and ultimately, the consumer. And, it means creating a structure so farms of all sizes can survive and remain an integral part of rural economies."