With rising energy costs and a war effort riveting attention in Washington, 2022 is turning out to be an unusually busy year on Capitol Hill – one that holds opportunity for dairy, said Paul Bleiberg, Senior Vice President of Government Relations for the National Milk Producers Federation, in a Dairy Defined podcast released today.

“Election years can sometimes be quiet in a lot of ways. But there’s still a lot of sausage making that goes on,” he said. “We are hopeful that we’ll see some progress on supply chain legislation, in particular the Ocean Shipping Reform Act that our trade team has worked really hard on, to move forward in a variety of different contexts. And then that farm bill process is just going to get more and more significant as the date gets closer.”

Bleiberg also in the podcast discusses the prospects for “climate-smart” agricultural legislation to pass Congress this year and looks at gains for dairy in recent spending legislation.

The full podcast and transcript are below. You can find and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,   Google Podcasts and Amazon Music under the podcast name “Dairy Defined.” Broadcast outlets may use the MP3 file. Please attribute information to NMPF.