Hi List,
Here is the first report of the Congressional Briefing by members of the Soil Carbon Standards Committee.
If any members of the list are members of the groups that Gary has outreached to, please weigh in with them in addition to your Congressional Committees representatives and contacts you may have with USDA, EPA, NOAA and DOE.
Thanks for efforts
Cheers,
Erich
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gary DeLong <garyd@novecta.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 8:55 AM
Subject: Update on Standard
All,
I am sending a quick note to update everyone on the progress so far on the pubic comment period for our standard. I have also attached a brief summary of the congressional briefing we did on May 11 and 12. It included the appointments and the people seen.
Outreach information:
The groups that have been contacted so far are:
(Note: although the following groups have been contacted not all have responded)
World Wildlife fund
Nature Conservatory
Duck Unlimited
Key Stone Group
Voluntary Carbon Standard
Ag and Climate Initiative
TFI
NACD
Through news wires we heard from:
Australia
Italy
Germany
UK
Canada
Note: If any of our commodity groups or representative have comments and would like to make them in person please let me know. We would be happy to be on a conference call or set up a meeting to go over the standard with those groups.
Various members of the committee have made several contacts that I may be unaware of to date. If you have please let me know so I can add the names to the list or let me know so I may contact them for comment. We would like to have more comments and remember that the committee can make comments into the standard also. The comment period is not just for external groups or individuals.
Reminder-The comment period will end June 26th.
Thanks again for all your work on this standard.
Gary DeLong
Managing Director
Novecta, LLC
5505 NW 88th St., #100
Johnston IA 50131
Novecta - Charting a New Direction in Agriculture
515-334-7305 office
515-225-0781 fax
515-240-9586 cell
Congressional Briefing report:
May 11th and 12th 2009
The committee had a successful trip to Washington DC. I want to thank Dale Enerson, Patrick Splichal, and Doug Johnson for their time. Their trip was paid for (along with Novecta’s) out their own pockets so we own them a lot of gratitude.
On May 11th, Dale set up a meeting at 2:00 PM ET with the National Farmers Union:
We met with Roger Johnson, President and Sarah Gallo, Government Relations Representative and received an update on the proposed Waxman-Markey legislation.
Sara Brodnax from the Clark Group set up a meeting with Sally Collins at 3:00 PM ET.
We met with Sally Collins and Carl Lucero from the office of Ecosystem Service and Marketing and discussed the standard and ask for opinion on how we could interact. Sally recently introduced me to David Antonioli CEO of the VCS and Davis and I have a meeting in DC planned for the afternoon of June 18th.
Mike Parrish form Monsanto allowed us to meet from 4:00 – 6:00 at the Monsanto office to put the final touches to the presentation for the Congressional briefing. He gave us background and coached us on the presentation. We want to give a big thanks to Mike and his staff for all the time and contacts to set up the briefings. It would not have happen without their efforts.
Mike, Dale, Doug and Patrick went to supper and I attended a gathering with USDA people who knew Beth for a memorial.
Dana Stahl set up a meeting with USDA for 9:00 AM ET.
Patrick, Dale and myself went to meet the USDA while Doug went to the congressional briefing meeting location to set up and get ready for our 10 AM meeting.
For the USDA meeting we met with Jim Riva USDA ARC, Dave Shipman USDA AMS, William Hohenstein Director of Global Change Program for the USDA, Charles Martin Deputy Associate Administrator USDA AMS and Dana Stahl.
We briefed them on the content of the standard and took questions that they had. We had to cut the meeting short due to House Congressional Briefing.
The Senate Congressional Briefing had around 25 in attendance with both the majority and minority leaders aids present. The presentation lasted around 35 minutes and we took questions for another 30-40 minutes.
The House Congressional Briefing was the same numbers and questions. At the House we had press from Point Carbon, Kim Moore, who has covered this standard from last August. IMI Global had Jay Truitt attend from Policy Solutions LLC to ask questions from the audience and provide support.
Overall I sent out 12 presentation and a copy of the standard to press that was unable to attend the briefings and Dale reported that he did at least one press interview.
It was a successful trip for the committee and we had a lot of support and help from many members of the committee.
