Spearmint Oil Produced in the Far West; Salable Quantities and Allotment Percentages for the 2025-2026 Marketing Year

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 985</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-SC-24-0069]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Spearmint Oil Produced in the Far West; Salable Quantities and Allotment Percentages for the 2025-2026 Marketing Year</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 Far West Spearmint Oil Administrative Committee (Committee) to establish salable quantities and allotment percentages for Class 1 (Scotch) and Class 3 (Native) spearmint oil produced in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon and parts of Nevada and Utah (Far West) for the 2025-2026 marketing year. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by October 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <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 submitted to the Docket Clerk electronically by Email: <E T="03">MarketingOrderComment@usda.gov</E> or via the internet at: <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 and 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> Joshua R. Wilde, Marketing Specialist, or Barry Broadbent, Chief, Northwest Region Branch, Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA; Telephone: (503) 326-2724, or Email: <E T="03">Joshua.R.Wilde@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, 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. 985, as amended (7 CFR part 985), regulating the handling of spearmint oil produced in the Far West. Part 985 (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 comprises spearmint oil producers operating within the area of production, and a public member. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is issuing this proposed rule in conformance with Executive Order 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 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 that this 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. This rule is not intended to have retroactive effect. Under the Order now in effect, salable quantities and allotment percentages have been established for both classes of spearmint oil produced in the Far West. This proposed rule increases the quantity of Native Spearmint oil produced in the Far West that handlers may purchase from, or handle on behalf of, producers during the 2025-2026 marketing year, which began on June 1, 2025. The Act provides that administrative proceedings must be exhausted before parties may file suit in court. Under section 608c(15)(A) of the Act, any handler subject to an order may file with the 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 not later than 20 days after the date of the entry of the ruling. Pursuant to the requirements in § 985.50 of the Order, the Committee meets each year to consider supply and demand of spearmint oil and to adopt a marketing policy for the ensuing marketing year. In determining such marketing policy, the Committee considers several factors, including, but not limited to, the current and projected supply of oil, estimated future demand, production costs, and producer prices for both Class 1 (Scotch) and Class 3 (Native) spearmint oil. Input from spearmint oil handlers and producers are considered as well. Pursuant to the provisions in § 985.51, when the Committee's marketing policy considerations indicate a need to establish or to maintain stable market conditions through volume regulation, the Committee subsequently recommends to AMS the establishment of a salable quantity and allotment percentage for such class or classes of oil for the upcoming marketing year. Recommendations for volume control are intended to ensure market requirements for Far West spearmint oil are satisfied and orderly marketing conditions are maintained. Salable quantity represents the total quantity of each class of oil (Class 1, commonly referred to as “Scotch”, or Class 3, commonly referred to as “Native”) which handlers may purchase from, or handle on behalf of, producers during a given marketing year. The allotment percentage for each class of spearmint oil is the salable quantity for that class of oil divided by the total of all producers' allotment base for the same class of oil. A producer's allotment base is their calculated share of the spearmint oil market based on a statistical representation of their past spearmint production and sales. To account for changes in production and demand over time, the Committee periodically reviews and adjusts each producer's allotment base in accordance with a formula prescribed by the Committee and approved by AMS. Each producer's annual allotment of the salable quantity is calculated by multiplying their respective allotment base for each class of spearmint oil by the allotment percentage for that class of spearmint oil. The total allotment base is revised each year on June 1 to account for producer allotment base being lost as a result of the “bona fide effort” production provision of § 985.53(e) and additional base made available pursuant to the provisions of § 985.153. Salable quantities and allotment percentages are established at levels intended to maintain orderly marketing conditions while also ensuring that markets are adequately supplied. Further, Committee recommendations for volume control are made in advance of the upcoming marketing year in which the regulations are to be effective, thereby allowing producers ample time to adjust their production decisions accordingly. The Committee met on October 9, 2024, to consider its marketing policy for the 2025-2026 marketing year. At that meeting, the Committee determined that, based on the current market and supply conditions, volume regulation for both classes of oil would be necessary. The Committee unanimously recommended, with a vote of eight in favor and none opposed, a salable quantity and allotment percentage for Scotch spearmint oil of 808,656 pounds and 35 percent, respectively. In addition, the Committee also unanimously recommended a salable quantity and allotment percentage for Native spearmint oil of 1,028,670 pounds and 39 percent, respectively. This proposed action would establish the amount of Scotch and Native spearmint oil that handlers may purchase from, or handle on behalf of, producers during the 2025-2026 marketing year, which began on June 1, 2025. Salable quantities and allotment percentages have been in effect each season since the Order's inception in 1980. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scotch Spearmint Oil</HD> The Committee recommended a Scotch spearmint oil salable quantity of 808,656 pounds and an allotment percentage of 35 percent for the 2025-2026 marketing year. The proposed salable quantity of 808,6 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 46k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━