Raisins Produced From Grapes Grown in California; Secretary's Decision and Referendum Order on Proposed Amendments to Marketing Order No. 989

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 989</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. AMS-SC-23-0039]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Raisins Produced From Grapes Grown in California; Secretary's Decision and Referendum Order on Proposed Amendments to Marketing Order No. 989</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule and referendum order. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This decision proposes amendments to Marketing Order No. 989 (Order), which regulates the handling of raisins produced from grapes grown in California and provides producers with the opportunity to vote in a referendum to determine if they favor the proposed changes. The Raisin Administrative Committee, which locally administers the Order, recommended amendments that would reduce Committee size, eliminate the designated cooperative bargaining association member seat, lower quorum requirements, remove producer district representation, remove the requirement for separate member and alternate nominations for independent and small cooperative producers, remove factors for establishing marketing policy, add language to clarify the quality of reconditioned raisins, add authority to accept voluntary contributions, and add language regarding ownership of intellectual property. In addition, the Agricultural Marketing Service proposed to make any such changes to the Order as may be necessary to conform to any amendment that may result from the hearing. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The referendum will be conducted from January 12, 2026, through January 30, 2026. The representative period for the purpose of the referendum is August 1, 2024, through July 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Market Development Division, Specialty Crops Program, AMS, USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, STOP 0237, Washington, DC 20250-0237. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Christy Pankey, Marketing Specialist, or Matthew Pavone, Chief, Rulemaking Services Branch, 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">Christy.Pankey@usda.gov</E> or <E T="03">Matthew.Pavone@usda.gov.</E> Small businesses may request information on this proceeding 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> Prior documents in this proceeding: Notice of Hearing published in the January 12, 2024, issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 2178) and a Recommended Decision and Opportunity to File Written Exceptions published in the September 13, 2024, issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 74851). This action is governed by the provisions of sections 556 and 557 of title 5 of the United States Code and, therefore, is excluded from the requirements of Executive Orders 12866 and 13563. Notice of this rulemaking action was provided to Tribal governments through the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Office of Tribal Relations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Statement</HD> This decision is issued pursuant to the provisions of the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as amended (7 U.S.C. 601-674), hereinafter referred to as the “Act,” and the applicable rules of practice and procedure governing the formulation and amendment of marketing agreements and orders (7 CFR part 900). The proposed amendments in this decision are based on the record of a public hearing on February 13 and 14, 2024, at the office of the Raisin Administrative Committee, 2445 Capitol Street, Suite 200, Fresno, California 93721. Notice of this hearing was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 12, 2024 (89 FR 2178). The notice of hearing contained four proposals submitted to the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) by the Raisin Administrative Committee (Committee). AMS also proposed to make conforming changes as may be necessary to conform to any amendments, and to correct minor inconsistencies and typographical errors. The Recommended Decision notes that the Committee has struggled to fill vacancies and secure member attendance at meetings, largely because the California raisin industry has significantly declined and that volume regulation authority was removed from the Order in 2018. In response to these challenges, the Committee proposed several changes: Under Proposal No. 1, the Committee membership size would be reduced from 47 to 21 members and alternates. Specifically, Proposal No. 1 would decrease producer member seats (from 35 to 12) and handler member seats (from 10 to 8), eliminate the designated cooperative bargaining association member seat, remove producer district representation, and would add a designated seat for an unaffiliated independent producer member. The quorum requirements would also be reduced from 25 to 14 members. Additionally, the Committee recommended eliminating separate nomination procedures for small cooperative and independent producers (Proposal No. 2); removing two factors no longer relevant to the development of their annual marketing policy and clarifying language regarding the quality of reconditioned raisins (Proposal No. 3); and adding authority to accept voluntary contributions as well as to develop and use intellectual property (Proposal No. 4). Witnesses testified on the record that the proposed amendments would help reduce Committee vacancies, improve attendance, generate cost savings, enhance administrative efficiency, ensure fair representation, and align Committee membership with the overall size of the California raisin industry. As outlined in the Recommended Decision, the Committee believes that reducing its size from 47 to 21 members and alternates would make it easier to manage and fill Committee positions, thus improving attendance and lessening the likelihood of prolonged vacancies. This amendment, along with the other amendments under Proposal No. 1, would ensure that the size and composition of the Committee aligns with the size and structure of the industry, and that different stakeholders within the industry have a fair and equitable level of representation on the Committee. Further, with lower quorum requirements, the Committee can make decisions more easily, reduce meeting delays and the number of rescheduled meetings caused by low attendance, improve administrative efficiency and generate a cost savings for the Committee. Eliminating separate nomination procedures for small cooperative and independent producers under Proposal No. 2, would also enhance administrative efficiency by reducing administrative burden and streamlining the nomination process. Removing factors for establishing marketing policy under Proposal No. 3 would improve administrative efficiency by removing unnecessary and outdated considerations and allow the Committee to focus on more relevant matters. Further, the amendment to clarify the quality of reconditioned raisins under Proposal No. 3 would dispel negative impressions stemming from misconceptions and clarify the quality of reconditioned fruit, streamlining sales and contribute to improving administrative efficiencies. Lastly, the addition of voluntary contribution authority and intellectual property language under Proposal No. 4 would generate a costs savings because voluntary contributions and revenue from intellectual property can provide additional funding, aside from assessments, that the Committee may use for other activities approved under the Order, such as research and promotion. After thorough consideration of the hearing record, USDA has determined that the proposed amendments would tend to effectuate the declared policy of the Act. Additionally, USDA proposed to make any such changes as may be necessary to the Order to conform to any amendment that may be adopted, or to correct minor inconsistencies and typographical errors. Accordingly, USDA recommended the following change in the Recommended Decision: revise § 989.129 to replace the word “ballot” with “vote.” This conforming change aligns with the Committee's proposal to remove separate nomination procedures, reverting the regulatory text to its original form prior to the 2018 amendment. Witnesses at the hearing testified in support of the removal of separate nominations for small cooperative and independent producers, as separate nomination procedures had been shown to discourage participation and would not be needed with a smaller Committee. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Comments and Exceptions</HD> Upon the basis of evidence introduced at the hearing and the record thereof, the Administrator of AMS on September 16, 2024, filed with the Hearing Clerk, USDA, a Recommended Decision and Opportunity to File Written Exceptions thereto by October 15, 2024. USDA received three comments opposing the removal of the designated cooperative bargaining association seat from the Committee membership. Accordingly, three exceptions were filed. All three comments proposed establishing a Committee size of 22 members, instead of the 21-member structure as proposed by the Committee, and retaining the designated cooperative bargaining association seat. The relevant issues raised by commenters suggest that under the structure proposed by the Committee, Sun-Maid Growers (Sun-Maid), a cooperative marketing association, would control 50 percent of the Committee's representation, giving it dominance in decision-making, and that the removal of the cooperative bargaining association seat would disenfranchise workers a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 51k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━