Pistachios Grown in California, Arizona and New Mexico; Decreased Assessment Rate

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 983</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0021]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pistachios Grown in California, Arizona and New Mexico; Decreased Assessment Rate</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would implement a recommendation from the Administrative Committee for Pistachios (Committee) to decrease the assessment rate established for the 2024-2025 and subsequent production years from $0.0007 to $0.0003 per pound of assessable pistachios handled under the marketing order. The proposed assessment rate would remain in effect indefinitely unless modified, suspended, or terminated. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by November 29, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit written comments concerning this proposed rule. Comments can be sent to the Docket Clerk, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237. Comments can also be sent to the Docket Clerk electronically by Email: <E T="03">MarketingOrderComment@usda.gov</E> or internet: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Comments should reference the document number and the date and page number of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Comments submitted in response to this proposed rule will be included in the record, will be made available to the public and can be viewed at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Please be advised that the identity of the individuals or entities submitting the comments will be made public on the internet at the address provided above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Peter Sommers, Marketing Specialist, or Abigail Maharaj, Chief, West Region Branch, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA; Telephone: (559) 487-5901; or Email: <E T="03">PeterR.Sommers@usda.gov</E> or <E T="03">Abigail.Maharaj@usda.gov</E> . Small businesses may request information on complying with this regulation by contacting Richard Lower, Marketing Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237; Telephone: (202) 720-8085, or Email: <E T="03">Richard.Lower@usda.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This action, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553, proposes to amend regulations issued to carry out a marketing order as defined in 7 CFR 900.2(j). This proposed rule is issued under Marketing Order No. 983, as amended (7 CFR part 983), regulating the handling of pistachios grown in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Part 983 (referred to as the “Order”) is effective under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as amended (7 U.S.C. 601-674), hereinafter referred to as the “Act.” The Committee locally administers the Order and is comprised of producers and handlers of pistachios operating within the area of production, and a public member. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is issuing this proposed rule in conformance with Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14094. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety effects, distributive impacts and equity). Executive Order 13563 emphasizes the importance of quantifying both costs and benefits, reducing costs, harmonizing rules, and promoting flexibility. Executive Order 14094 reaffirms, supplements, and updates Executive Order 12866 and further directs agencies to solicit and consider input from a wide range of affected and interested parties through a variety of means. This proposed action falls within a category of regulatory actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) exempted from Executive Order 12866 review. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 13175—Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments, which requires Federal agencies to consider whether their rulemaking actions would have Tribal implications. AMS has determined this proposed rule is unlikely to have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian Tribes, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes. This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988—Civil Justice Reform. Under the Order now in effect, pistachio handlers are subject to assessments. Funds to administer the Order are derived from such assessments. It is intended that the assessment rate would be applicable to all assessable pistachios for the 2024-2025 production year, and continue until amended, suspended, or terminated. The Act provides that administrative proceedings must be exhausted before parties may file suit in court. Under section 8c(15)(A) of the Act (7 U.S.C. 608(c)(15)(A)), any handler subject to an order may file with U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) a petition stating that the order, any provision of the order, or any obligation imposed in connection with the order is not in accordance with law and request a modification of the order or to be exempted therefrom. Such handler is afforded the opportunity for a hearing on the petition. After the hearing, USDA would rule on the petition. The Act provides that the district court of the United States in any district in which the handler is an inhabitant, or has his or her principal place of business, has jurisdiction to review USDA's ruling on the petition, provided an action is filed no later than 20 days after the date of the entry of the ruling. This proposed rule would decrease the assessment rate for pistachios handled under the Order from $0.0007 per pound, the rate that was established for the 2021-2022 and subsequent production years, to $0.0003 per pound for the 2024-2025 and subsequent production years. Sections 983.70 and 983.71 of the Order authorize the Committee, with the approval of AMS, to formulate an annual budget of expenses and collect assessments from handlers to administer the program. The members of the Committee are familiar with the Committee's needs and with the costs of goods and services in their local area and are able to formulate an appropriate budget and assessment rate. The assessment rate is formulated and discussed in a public meeting, and all directly affected persons have an opportunity to participate and provide input. For the 2021-2022 and subsequent production years, the Committee recommended, and AMS approved, an assessment rate of $0.0007 per pound of assessable pistachios within the production area (87 FR 22105). That rate continues in effect from production year to production year unless modified, suspended, or terminated by AMS upon recommendation and information submitted by the Committee or other information available to AMS. This rule would decrease the assessment rate from $0.0007 to $0.0003 per pound of assessable pistachios for the 2024-2025 and subsequent production years. The Committee held a public meeting on April 9, 2024, and unanimously recommended an assessment rate of $0.0003 per pound of assessable pistachios for the 2024-2025 and subsequent production years. The Committee also met on July 10, 2024, and unanimously recommended 2024-2025 production year expenditures of $956,700. In comparison, last period's budgeted expenses were $1,145,161. The proposed assessment rate of $0.0003 is $0.0004 less than the rate currently in effect. The Committee recommended decreasing the assessment rate to help ensure the Committee's compliance with §  983.74, which stipulates that assessments will be reduced to bring reserve funds to an amount that is less than or equal to two production years' budgeted expenses. The major expenditures recommended by the Committee for the 2024-2025 production year include $512,900 for salaries and related expenses, $125,000 for research, $100,000 for a contingency fund, $73,500 for administrative expenses, and $10,000 for compliance expenses. By comparison, budgeted expenses for these items during the 2023-24 production year were $631,900, $125,000, $200,000, $76,450 and $10,000, respectively. The Committee derived the recommended assessment rate by considering anticipated expenses, anticipated production of assessable pistachios, and the amount of funds available in the authorized reserve. The expected 1 billion pounds of pistachios for the 2024-2025 production year would generate $300,000 in assessment revenue at the proposed assessment rate (1,000,000,000 pounds multiplied by $0.0003 assessment rate). Income derived from handler assessments, along with the California Pistachio Research Board (CPRB) management income of approximately $220,200 and funds from the Committee's authorized reserve of approximately $436,500, should be adequate to cover budgeted expenses of $956,700. Funds available in the reserve (currently about $844,000) would be kept within the maximum level of approximately two production years' budgeted expenses as authorized by the Order. The proposed assessment rate would continue in effect indefinitely unless modified, suspended, or terminated by AMS upon recommendation and information submitted by the Committee or other available information. Although this assessment rate would be in effect for an indefinite period, the Committee will continue to meet prior to or during each production year to recommend a budget of expenses and con ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━