{"id":35918,"date":"2024-03-08T10:25:12","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T16:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=35918"},"modified":"2024-03-08T10:25:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T16:25:12","slug":"detasseling-measure-clears-second-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=35918","title":{"rendered":"Detasseling measure clears second round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers amended and advanced a bill March 7 meant to clarify how seed corn companies solicit bids for contract labor for roguing \u2014 eliminating undesired corn plants \u2014 and detasseling in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Steve Erdman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The federal H-2A temporary agricultural program allows employers who anticipate a lack of available domestic workers to bring foreign workers to the U.S. to perform temporary or seasonal agricultural work including detasseling and roguing.<\/p>\n

LB844, sponsored by Bayard Sen. Steve Erdman, would amend the state Farm Labor Contractors Act to require seed corn producers who contract for detasseling and roguing services to solicit bids from local contractors before employing H-2A workers.<\/p>\n

As amended during general file debate, producers who contract for detasseling and roguing labor must report the number of acres of hybrid seed corn produced, in addition to other information, to the state Department of Agriculture. The department would be required to publish an annual report of that information, beginning Sept. 30, 2025.<\/p>\n

Sumner Sen. Teresa Ibach offered an amendment on select file, adopted 29-0, which would require that the information contained in the report be aggregated. She said the change would protect seed corn producers\u2019 proprietary information and ensure that identifying company data not become public record.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout this language, important private information of seed companies will be provided to competitors \u2014 including competitors from other states \u2014 that will then use this information in order to pursue customers,\u201d Ibach said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Mike Jacobson of North Platte offered an amendment to remove a provision that would make violations of the bill\u2019s provisions by a seed corn producer a Class IV misdemeanor. He said producers in most cases contract with detasseling companies and should not be held liable if such a company violates the law.<\/p>\n

Erdman said it was \u201cdisappointing\u201d that stakeholders who had concerns about LB844 did not testify against it at the public hearing or contact lawmakers until after the first round of debate. Even so, he said he considered both amendments to be \u201cfriendly\u201d and not harmful to the bill\u2019s primary goal of protecting Nebraska youth who want to participate in detasseling.<\/p>\n

Following adoption of the Jacobson amendment on a 30-0 vote, senators advanced LB844 to final reading by voice vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers amended and advanced a bill March 7 meant to clarify how seed corn companies solicit bids for contract labor for roguing \u2014 eliminating undesired corn plants \u2014 and detasseling in Nebraska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-35918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-sen-steve-erdman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35920,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35918\/revisions\/35920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}