AFBF used comments from Farm Bureau members to submit suggestions for regulatory reform to the Agriculture Department as part of the agency’s efforts to implement the president’s regulatory reform agenda. Paul Schlegel, AFBF’s director of environment and energy policy, explained in a recent Newsline that overregulation by federal agencies is burdensome to all of agriculture.  

“It’s hard to look at it nationally and say there’s X amount of dollars, but it’s significant,” Schlegel said. “It runs from environment to natural resources to labor to endangered species, there’s a whole range of things. And, it is widespread and it takes place everywhere.”