Irish Potatoes Grown in Certain Designated Counties in Idaho, and Malheur County, Oregon; Increased Assessment Rate

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 945</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0042]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Irish Potatoes Grown in Certain Designated Counties in Idaho, and Malheur County, Oregon; Increased Assessment Rate</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule implements a recommendation from the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Potato Committee (Committee) to increase the assessment rate established for the 2024-2025 fiscal period and subsequent fiscal periods from $0.002 to $0.003 per hundredweight of potatoes handled under the marketing order. The assessment rate will remain in effect indefinitely unless modified, suspended, or terminated. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective October 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Virginia Tjemsland, Marketing Specialist, or Barry M. Broadbent, Chief, Northwest Region Branch, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA; telephone: (503) 326-2724, or email: <E T="03">Virginia.L.Tjemsland@usda.gov</E> or <E T="03">Barry.Broadbent@usda.gov.</E> Small businesses may request information on complying with this regulation by contacting Antoinette Carter, Market 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">Antoinette.Carter@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This action, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553, amends regulations issued to carry out a marketing order as defined in 7 CFR 900.2(j). This final rule is issued under Marketing Agreement No. 98 and Marketing Order No. 945, both as amended (7 CFR part 945), regulating the handling of potatoes grown in certain counties in Idaho, and Malheur County, Oregon. Part 945 (referred to as the “Order”) is effective pursuant to 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 comprises producers and handlers of potatoes operating within the area of production. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is issuing this final rule in conformance with Executive Orders 12866, as amended by Executive Order 13563. 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. This action falls within a category of regulatory actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) exempted from Executive Order 12866 review. This final 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 that this final 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 final rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988, “Civil Justice Reform.” Under the Order now in effect, Idaho-Eastern Oregon potato handlers are subject to assessments. Funds to administer the Order are derived from such assessments. It is intended that the assessment rate will be applicable to all assessable Idaho-Eastern Oregon potatoes for the 2024-2025 fiscal period, 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 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 not later than 20 days after the date of the entry of the ruling. This final rule increases the assessment rate for Idaho-Eastern Oregon potatoes handled under the Order from $0.002 per hundredweight, the rate that was established for the 2017-2018 fiscal period and subsequent fiscal periods (82 FR 28550), to $0.003 per hundredweight for the 2024-2025 fiscal period and subsequent fiscal periods. Sections 945.41 and 945.42 of the Order authorize the Committee, with AMS approval, 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 2017-2018 fiscal period and subsequent fiscal periods, the Committee recommended, and AMS approved, an assessment rate of $0.002 per hundredweight of Idaho-Eastern Oregon potatoes within the production area (82 FR 28550). That rate continues in effect from fiscal period to fiscal period until modified, suspended, or terminated by AMS upon recommendation and information submitted by the Committee or other information available to AMS. The Committee met on June 5, 2024, and unanimously recommended 2024-2025 fiscal period expenditures of $99,522 and an assessment rate of $0.003 per hundredweight of Idaho Eastern-Oregon potatoes handled for the 2024-2025 and subsequent fiscal periods. In comparison, the budgeted expenditures for fiscal period 2023-2024 were $99,703. The assessment rate of $0.003 per hundredweight is $0.001 higher than the rate currently in effect. The Committee recommended increasing the assessment rate to better align assessment revenue with budgeted expenses and to replenish reserves which were depleted between August 2017 and June 2024. The Committee estimates shipments for the 2024-2025 season to be approximately 34,000,000 hundredweight, an increase from the 28,167,500 hundredweight handled for the 2023-2024 fiscal period. The major expenditures recommended by the Committee for the 2024-2025 fiscal period include $75,489 in administrative expenses; $10,013 for operational expenses; $4,670 for insurance/banking expenses; $4,000 for annual audit/compliance expenses; $2,950 for committee travel expenses and $2,400 for IT support. For comparison, budgeted expenses for these items during the 2023-2024 fiscal period were $74,960, $10,013, $4,880, $4,500, $2,950, and $2,400, respectively. The estimated 34,000,000 hundredweight of Idaho-Eastern Oregon potatoes from the 2024-2025 crop is expected to generate $102,000 in assessment revenue at the new assessment rate (34,000,000 hundredweight of potatoes multiplied by $0.003 assessment rate). The assessment rate increase should be appropriate to ensure the Committee has sufficient revenue to fully fund its recommended 2024-2025 fiscal period budgeted expenditures and begin replenishing the Committee's reserve funds. The reserve shall be established at an amount not to exceed approximately one fiscal period's budgeted expenses. The Committee derived the recommended assessment rate by considering anticipated fiscal period expenses, expected shipments of potatoes, and the amount of funds available in the financial reserve. Income derived from handler assessments ($102,000) should be adequate to cover budgeted expenses ($99,522). Funds available in the financial reserve (currently about $80,000) will be kept within the maximum permitted by the Order (approximately one fiscal period's budgeted expenses as authorized in § 945.44). The assessment rate will 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 will be in effect for an indefinite period, the Committee will continue to meet prior to or during each fiscal period to recommend a budget of expenses and consider recommendations for modification of the assessment rate. The dates and times of Committee meetings are available from the Committee or AMS. Committee meetings are open to the public and interested persons may express their views at these meetings. AMS will evaluate Committee recommendations and other available information to determine whether modification of the assessment rate is needed. Further rulemaking would be undertaken as necessary. The Committee's 2024-2025 fiscal period budget, and those for subsequent fiscal periods, will be reviewed and, as appropriate, approved by AMS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis</HD> Pursuant to requirements set forth in the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601-612), AMS has considered the economic impact of this final rule on small entities. Accordingly, AMS has prepared this fina ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━