The Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 Administrator made a farm visit recently, in a effort to encourage open communication between the agency and farmers. The Michigan Farm Bureau shares the video of that visit.
Kurt Thiede’s hope is to make the agency less of a faceless bureaucracy. He states, “These visits are incredibly important for myself, as a regional administrator, as EPA, and I think just making sure that we have open lines of communication to learn about the challenges that are occurring on farms, that farmers are facing, and also better informing our decisions with the EPA and federal government level, but more so than anything, it’s about relationship building.”
“It is all about relationships,” according to Stephanie Schater, the District 5 Director. “Having EPA come out to a farm and sit and visit with some farmers speaks volumes.”
Thiede adds that the agency is trying to be more transparent in their regulations and creating a EPA with more certainty.