Welcome to Jamie’s Almanac

Issue No. 1 — Why I’m Starting This, and What’s Actually at Stake This Harvest

I’ve kept a farm journal since I was a teenager. Rainfall totals, planting dates, what broke down and when, what the market did the week we sold. It’s not fancy, just a way to remember what actually happened instead of what I think happened six months later.

This is that journal, opened up.

I’m calling it an almanac on purpose. An almanac doesn’t tell you what to think — it tells you what’s coming, what the conditions are, and lets you plan accordingly.

That’s what I want this to be: a plainspoken look at the policy decisions actually moving through Washington that affect whether your farm, your family, or your parish makes it through the season in good shape.

Every issue is not simple, and I don’t or won’t have the answer to all problems. But I’ve spent my life reading conditions — weather, markets, regulations, soil — and deciding what to do about them to protect my way of life and those who depend on me. That’s the same instinct I want to bring to representing Louisiana in the Senate.

So let’s start with two things sitting on my desk right now that don’t get nearly enough plain talk: the FDA and the farm bill.

Why the FDA’s Funding Is a Farm Issue, Not Just a Food Issue

Most people don’t think about the FDA until something goes wrong.

This summer, something went wrong. Tens of thousands of people got sick after a Cyclospora outbreak tied to lettuce. And that’s after an outbreak affected some strawberries.

When reporters dug in, they found the farm at the center of it hadn’t been inspected in seven years.

Seven years.

Here’s why that matters to us, not just to consumers: when a foreign supplier skates by without inspection and something goes wrong, it doesn’t just hurt the people who got sick. It hurts farmers like my buddies in the Farm Bureau who play by the rules and have their crops inspected over and over again.

I’m not interested in scoring easy points off a food safety scandal.

I’m interested in the boring, unglamorous truth underneath it: the FDA doesn’t have the staff or the funding to do its job. Foreign inspections have dropped nearly 30% in the last couple years. That’s not a conspiracy — it’s a budget problem, and budget problems get fixed by people willing to actually vote for the funding instead of just talking about food safety when it’s in the news.

A senator can make sure the agency responsible for it has the people and the money to do the job. That’s not glamorous work, but it’s the kind of work that actually prevents the next outbreak instead of just reacting to it.

The Farm Bill Isn’t Abstract — It’s a Deadline

Here’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough outside of farm country: the current farm bill protections are running on an extension of a bill that’s eight years old. That extension lapses September 30 of this year.

For too long, Congress has provided patchwork support for farmers instead of real relief that addresses the issues facing farmers across the country and right here in Louisiana.

Farm country needs a farm bill that actually passes — with real conservation funding, credit access, disaster assistance that reflects what unweaned livestock losses and weather disasters actually cost, and support for the small and mid-size operations that don’t have a lobbyist in Washington.

I’ll be blunt: This is a problem both parties can own, but it fits. We need action to avoid disaster at the end of this month. And going forward, they will need a farmer to help pass a farm bill. I intend to be that farmer.

The People Who Actually Run the Programs Are Leaving

Over the past year, more than 28,000 USDA employees have left the department, most of them taking voluntary separation offers as part of the DOGE cuts. Now the agency is relocating more than half of its Washington-area staff to regional offices.

Some of the hardest-hit offices handle foreign agricultural trade, international food aid, and the research and grant programs that actually get money and technical help to farmers on the ground. Staff at some of these offices have gotten so worried about losing institutional knowledge that they’ve started writing down, step by step, how to run their own grant programs before they’re gone — because nobody else will know how once they leave.

I don’t say this as a partisan point. I say it as someone who’s served on a national USDA board and called USDA’s Farm Service Agency office more times than I can count — for a disaster designation, a loan question, a program deadline. Those calls only work if there’s an experienced person on the other end who knows the program and can get you an answer. You can pass the best farm bill in the world, but if the agency behind it is hollowed out and disorganized, it doesn’t matter — the help won’t show up when you need it.

This is exactly the kind of thing a senator has real power over: oversight hearings, appropriations riders, and straightforward questions to USDA leadership about whether these relocations are actually serving farmers, or just serving a headline about shrinking government. I intend to ask those questions.

Why This Newsletter, Why Now

I’m not going to fill this space with press releases dressed up as folksy metaphors. If I don’t have anything real to say in a given week, I won’t send anything.

But when something is moving in Washington that affects whether your operation makes it through the year, I want you to hear it from someone who’s still got dirt under his fingernails, not just a press shop.

Harvest is underway across a lot of the parishes right now, and I appreciate you making the time anyway. Be safe out there.

Opportunity in unity, for one Louisiana

— Jamie

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