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Hello, everyone.

I'm Chris Kane, and welcome to Arkansas Week.

The state's world famous trout fisheries are facing a crisis.

We'll tell you what's causing it and the restrictions that are now in place.

As we share the latest with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission later in the program.

But first, farmers are facing their toughest year in decades.

Low crop prices, high interest rates and rising costs are putting pressure on operations across the state.

Congressman Rick Crawford, Republican of Arkansas first district, has introduced legislation to provide some relief to the ag community.

And the congressman joins us right now to discuss that relief.

Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time.

Before we get to your bill, we have to, of course, talk about the government shutdown now, the second longest on record.

What is the latest on the discussions to get a funding bill passed and reopen the federal government?

Well, sadly, as of Thursday, there was an opportunity to fund the government employees.

And, the Democrats declined on that.

And I'm not sure what the, what the game here is, but we've heard Chuck Schumer, and his position, it seems to be let's let's keep this thing shut down.

Actually, unfortunately, heard one of my Democrat colleagues in the House used the term describing this as leverage, to to get some of the policy, initiatives they wanted passed.

And that's not what is there is for a CR is to fund the government.

Period.

This was as clean as it gets.

We voted on one like this in March.

We voted on somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 of these during the Biden administration.

But for some reason they don't like this clean.

Cr and they want to put policy riders on it.

And, that's just not the way to do business.

Federal workers missing their first paycheck already now at risk of missing that full month of pay.

As you look at some of the colleagues across the aisle and the negotiations going back and forth for families at home right now here in the state of Arkansas.

Is there any indication how much longer this shutdown could last?

Gosh, I wish I had a, you know, a better sense of when they're going to stop this because it's very, very simple.

What we're going to end up doing, we're going to reach that, that, the prescribed expiration date on the underlying C.R.

and have to go back and do it again, and we'll end up with a CR that probably pushes us into January if they're willing to vote for us.

Dr.. Then, I mean, we just don't know what the hang up is when we give them a clean bill and they say no to it continually.

Not a single Democrat.

Well, there was one Democrat from Maine that voted for it in the House.

But, you know, generally speaking, this these things are fairly routine.

They're they happen more often than they should.

But but this is fairly routine process.

Then over on the Democrat side, they're just saying, you know, no, we've got to have essentially seven I believe maybe eight Democrats to say yes because of the 60 vote threshold.

And so far we've not reached that level.

And, if they can fix this anytime they want to, I mean, we've done our part in the house.

We give them a clean, cr and I just wish they would go ahead and act on that.

We can get about our business.

I know you're traveling right now back in the state of Arkansas, though.

While everything is being talked about in the Senate up in Washington.

Let's talk about your bill that I referenced just a moment ago.

I know this is important to you.

It's called the Bridge.

The Gap for Rural Communities Act, designed to provide immediate relief for farmers.

Can you share with us how it works and what prompted you to want to introduce this?

Well, we got a lot done in the, in the, Working Families Tax Cut Act earlier in the year that did a lot on on the farm policy.

But unfortunately, the underlying farm policy is designed so that it doesn't pay in the crop year, it pays in the marketing year, which won't start until we farmers wouldn't see a payment for almost 1214 months.

So we need that help now.

And that really needs to come before the end of the year.

We're going to see some some really tough, decisions that have to be made.

So the idea being that you could get an advance payment on a 50% advance on your, payment under PLC or against price lost coverage or aggregate coverage, either of those programs that you may have opted into, you could receive an advance payment up to 50%, as well as having the the the payment limitations, limited, reduced.

So this would provide some measure of support for whatever relief effort is in the offing right now.

We've heard President Trump talking about directing some, tariff revenue to, provide some level of relief for farmers, which we support, but we don't know what that number is yet.

So we're doing this to be prepared.

In case that number is not, by itself enough, this would augment that.

But again, this is an option.

Farmers don't have to opt into this.

If they don't, there's no penalty to them.

If they do, then obviously, you know, they would they could advance 50% that the lenders are sensitive to this as well.

They're they're, keenly aware of the need for these, these, 20, 25 loans to cash out.

And so that's what this is about, is trying to improve these outcomes.

So we've got farmers in business next year.

I know you've been in constant contact with your constituents traveling as I mentioned right now, you're at a veterans event earlier today.

What are you hearing from your constituents throughout this crisis in the ag community?

And how much did that shape some of the specifics in this bill to try and provide them some of the relief they need?

Well, we started hearing about this.

If you go back about four years, when we started to see the the interest rates increase, you went year over year with, with, essentially doubling interest rates for the first 2 or 3 years, of the previous administration.

And then you couple that with inflation and declining crop, commodity prices.

And it was this is a recipe that we saw coming as, as late as, as long ago as four years ago.

So we've been working on this.

We convened a meeting of ag lenders last year to talk about ideas that we could come up with that would provide some measure of relief to try to be prepared for this.

Not everybody, you know, had the same idea about what should be done and when it should be done.

But the idea being that, you know, we've had that we've seen this coming for quite a while, and it got worse this year.

And so when you think about the interest rates, I mean, heck, it wasn't that long ago you were farming.

You know, the cost of money was roughly 2%, 2.5%, maybe for a a crop loan.

And it goes to 4.5% the next year.

It goes to 9% the following year.

And then you combine the inflation on top of that and we see, rising cost of production.

It was just a, a bad recipe for, you know, for outcomes.

And so we're trying to do everything we can certainly want to support the president.

Whatever relief efforts that he has proposed.

There may be some some other legislative measures.

I know that, Senator Bozeman, who chairs the AG, committee on the Senate side, as well as our our side, GT Thompson, his chairs on the House side, they're working fast and feverishly to try to come up with some legislation as well.

This is one more tool in the tool shed that might provide some additional relief.

This proposal would let farmers, as you mentioned, access a 50% partial payment before the end of the year and still waiting till next fall.

With the government shutdown currently happening right now, how quickly could that kind of support reach those producers?

If your bill passes?

Well, that's the big question is, you know, how fast can we get back in session knowing that we have these year end issues to sort of clean up and get across the finish line number one, number two, getting those workers back.

And I know that the president said, we're going to we're going to reopen FSA offices.

It's a critical time as we're in the throes of harvest time.

We don't need to be without our FSA, support resources.

And so all of those things have to come together to make this happen.

So I'm advocating for a quick reopening of the government.

Let's move some legislation.

I hope this is part of the mix and it can provide some measure of relief.

Some farmers have said that this program could be similar to some other advanced payments during economic downturns.

How much did that help shape your proposal compared to those efforts in the past?

Yeah, we're not reinventing the wheel.

I mean, look, we've we've we've seen precedent, set before for similar moves.

We've got different policy.

But at the same principle of being able to access that in advance.

And that's that's one of the issues with PLC in particular, where you're looking at the payments that are always in arrears, and we need that help right now, as much of a, a boost that we, we've got in the Working Families Tax Cut Act as it applied to adjusting the reference prices to price lost coverage.

It still didn't address the underlying issue of payment in arrears.

And that's the cash flow problem that we're having right now.

And we need to do something to provide better cash flow.

In a recent op ed, you mentioned working closely with the U.S.

Department of Agriculture and the administration to provide this support.

How influential have they been and making sure that this federal funding could be available?

Well, I've been very impressed with, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

She is a peer ag through and through.

She gets it.

She understands these issues.

She's very influential with the president.

And so I have every confidence that she's going to be able to leverage every resource, that USDA can bring to the table to provide relief to farmers in Arkansas and across the rest of the country.

And the legislation also temporarily lifts payment limits for key farm programs.

Why was it so important to remove those caps, and what kind of impact could that have?

Well, because we see the cash crunch that farmers are under right now and we don't need to put any more extraneous, pressure on them by putting those payment limitations.

I mean, I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody about the underlying policy that versus payment limitations.

We're all we ought to be doing is recognizing that investment in U.S.

agriculture is integral to our own national security.

And so when you put those payment limitations on there, what you're effectively doing in most cases is actually transferring costs over to smaller producers who don't have the resources to cash flow like economies of scale do.

It's actually punitive to the smaller farmers and I, and I'll use crop insurance as a prime example.

I mean, when you reduce the actuary based on those people that are in the risk pool, you increase cost to those individuals that are remaining.

So what we ought to be doing is focusing on a per acre assessment, not looking at individuals, not looking at their total economic income, because maybe their wife or their husband works in town and maybe they're a neurosurgeon, or maybe they're a teacher, or maybe they're a fireman or any number of things that they might do that has nothing to do with the farming enterprise itself.

So let's not penalize those individuals by saying you can't participate in these programs and set these artificial limits.

That's essential right now, if we're going to provide relief to these farmers who feed and clothe America.

So beyond traditional agriculture, Arkansas House Speaker Bryan Evans, several other state leaders have asked for federal help in the forestry industry lately.

That's a key economic driver for the state, as you know.

Have you been in touch with them about this, and what kind of action could Congress take on that front?

We actually work very closely with our state legislature.

And that's interesting because not a lot of states do.

And we have a really good working relationship with our counterparts at the state level.

And one of the things that we do have at the federal level is we have, someone in the person that Bruce Westerman, who is steeped in these issues, because that's where he made his living for decades.

He's got, education and chairs the Natural Resources Committee.

So we are working together collectively to address those issues.

And I think that issue, is is in very good hands with Congressman Westerman, who has more experience than I can possibly describe on that particular topic.

Now, you've talked about organizing a Farm Aid style concert in Kaeo.

How did this idea come about, and what do you hope it accomplishes for farmers and the small rural communities?

Well, you know, Farm Aid is one of those things that goes back to the 80s and farmers will remember when, and we still do these Farm Aid concerts and, and they're as much as anything about raising awareness because the level of resources that are needed to fund farmers.

You know, we're talking about the billions and and farm aid raises millions.

What we hope to do with harvest for Hope is to raise awareness of the mental health aspects of farmers who are distressed economically and the toll that it takes on them emotionally and otherwise, and what we need to do to drive resources to them.

So can we raise $100,000 to help stand up the, Farm State of Mind initiative that's being led by American Farm Bureau?

Yeah, $100,000 plus will go a long way to providing the kind of help that we hope to be able to provide to farmers who may be experiencing.

It could be substance abuse.

It could be a mental health issue that might lead to suicide.

Whatever crisis intervention that we can provide to help these farmers weather these tough times, that's what this is about.

It's raising awareness and hopefully raising the resources so we can, direct farmers to the help that they may need at a time when they're very distressed and when with something like that, when would you like for it to, to be put on and have an opportunity for everyone to take part?

We're going to do this.

This is great.

We're going to do this in conjunction with an already existing event that is the Pecan Festival in Co, Arkansas on December the 6th and we are so excited about that.

Looking forward to actually working with Arkansas PBS on this as well as other media partners.

But, we are really, really excited about this getting some really good, feedback initially on it.

So we think this thing has the potential to do really create some, awareness, not only in Arkansas, but even at the national level, to be able to provide resources for farmers who need help.

One of my favorite events of the year, every time Congressman Rick Crawford.

Hope to see you down there.

Thank you again for your time.

We will, of course, talk with you in the near future.

Appreciate you, sir.

All right.

Thank thanks.

We'll be right back after this short break.

Stay with us.

Welcome back.

Arkansas's world famous trout fisheries are facing a crisis.

A combination of poor water quality and flood damage at hatcheries has sharply reduced trout production across the state.

Now, in response, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission approved an emergency order temporarily reducing trout limits in several of the state's major tail waters to protect trout populations until hatchery conditions improve.

To help us better understand what's happening and what comes next.

We're joined now by Tommy Laird, chief of the fisheries division at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and Trey Reed, assistant chief of communications.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking some time out.

I know it has been a busy year for the Game and Fish Commission.

Busy month in particular, but I wanted to focus on this first.

And Tommy, if you could help us start out, you've been with Game and Fish here in the Fisheries Division for 35 years.

What has happened and what can you give us in terms of context, to help our viewers understand what's taking place?

Well, basically, it's a water quality issue.

The Norfork National Fish Hatchery, each and every year they produce trout.

They're mitigation hatchery with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service below North Fork Dam.

It's an old water quality event that occurs every year in the dam.

It's called salmon stratification and reservoir.

If we, as you know, historically in the springtime, we've had some high water events.

We've had two in a row.

Norfolk lost fish last year, but they come back this year even stronger and lost more fish.

Just to put it in context a little bit, the lake stratus fires, there's three levels.

So you got the good water on top.

You've got like what's called a thermocline in the middle.

And then you have a dead water.

And the lower part that's low oxygenated.

It's cold, but it's low oxygenated.

We typically pull from the middle level, which is called the thermocline.

That's where the federal hatchery gets its water.

And once that water is used up, then you start mixing the good water or the upper water, which is, got a higher, temperature.

And it's not conducive to producing trout.

And Trey help contextualize to just trout fishing in Arkansas.

This is a huge deal for tourism, economic activity in some of these rural areas.

But this is also something that Arkansas created historically, right?

That's a great point, Chris.

I mean, it's important to realize that trout are not native to Arkansas.

I mean, we are obviously pretty far south.

You think of places like Montana out west and even in the Appalachians, but we're pretty far south for trout.

They're not native here.

So when those, big upland reservoirs, Bull Shoals, Beaver, Norfork were built in the mid 20th century to mitigate its Tommy already use that word, mitigate the loss of our warm water fisheries.

These federal hatcheries were built and these fish were stocked in the to to live in those cold water releases from the dam that are smallmouth bass and those warm water species couldn't tolerate but trout can.

And so around that an incredible fishery has arisen.

You know, we had the world record brown trout for 25 years out of the little Red River.

Obviously, Arkansas has become truly world renowned for its trout fisheries.

Very important economically, very important culturally.

And I think that's why you saw our commission act so decisively and quickly when this issue arose.

And, Tommy, go ahead and tell everybody what the commission decided and what kind of impact is that going to have?

Basically, what the commission did was two things.

We expanded the catch and release area on the white River, and we reduced the creel limit from five years to two fish.

What this will do, and it'll allow bigger fish to stay in that reservoir and that tail water for a longer period of time, you know, and if we let people to keep harvesting at the rate that currently we're harvesting it, it would have reduced the fisheries, as Trey said, our existing hatchery, which is a spring River hatchery, also had a flood event in the spring.

We're at about 56 to 57% capacity, and we plan to mitigate that loss, try to get that, hatchery back up and running and to offset some of this loss from the federal hatchery and Trey 120 day emergency order right on October 16th.

That was the initial date that it was it was put in place.

This was something that, you know, seems very restrictive, but at the same time will allow it to continue.

It was the commission trying to strike a balance here 100%.

And that's really the nature of conservation and what we do every day, whether we're talking deer or ducks or butterflies, bats or trout in this instance is balanced long term sustainability with our short term use of these resources.

And honestly, Chris, you know, this is what we're trying to do.

I think what the commission is trying to do in our trout and fisheries program we're trying to do is still have great fishing, or at least good fishing.

You know, as Tommy alluded, you know, we have creel surveys that show how many people you know, what what fishing effort is, how many fish tip people typically catch.

And if we continue to that five fish and lots of the river open to catch and keep pretty soon or with with these lower stocking rates, we're talking about reducing our stocking rates 50, 60, 65% over the next several months.

Those fish would be caught, and even those that go out for catch and release are just targeting big brown trout.

You know, there would be they would not have that quality of experience over the next several months.

And so that's what we're trying to do is strike a balance, reduce those limits, you know, 45 miles of the white River from the dam down to to the North Fork confluence is going to be catch and release under this temporary order.

Temporary is the key word 120 days.

Now, there is a chance that we will have to come back.

If the.

It's a fluid situation, we still don't know the extent of how long it's going to take for the Norfolk Hatchery.

You know, we do have a pretty good idea about our spring River hatchery, but we don't know how long it's going to be before it's back up to full speed or even partial speed.

You know, they have 10% or less of the fish that they would normally have on station right now, this time of year.

What factors Tommy, are they going to be looking for?

What I was also going to say about what Trey said was, this is an ongoing event right now at the Federal Hatchery.

We don't know the extent to the loss.

So this 120 days will give us time to know the full extent the water quality should turn around into November, 1st December, and at that time, they'll know exactly what their total loss is.

So that's part of the process.

420 days to ask a question.

I'm sorry, what what are they going to be looking for as they assess this?

Are they going to be looking in terms of direct water quality as they go through this process?

What are some of the key factors that you all are going to be taking into account when making the next decision?

Well, the key factors on what they're looking for at the federal side is they're looking at, you know, of course, the temperature, and then you've got low oxygen.

The thing that's actually killing the fish is hydrogen sulfide.

And that's from the organic load that came in in the springtime.

And then as it decomposes it, they're in that bottom layer on the reservoir.

And that's what they're looking for, what we're looking for.

And let me say this.

And talking to the feds, this is going on at other facilities across the nation is not just isolated to Arkansas.

So all the federal hatch, not all of them, but some of them are having losses, too.

And it's because of these rainfall events.

So what are we looking for?

We're looking to get, fish from anywhere else that we possibly can to get them back on station at the Norfolk Hatchery.

From egg to, stocker sizes for the feds is about a 22 month.

So it takes nearly two years to get that fish up.

So if they have a 100% loss, we've got to find fish at another facility to bring in so we can kind of, like, kickstart them back up and shorten that process to get to a stalker size.

That's our goal when we hear about trout fishing in Arkansas.

And as I alluded to in Trey, I think you mentioned this too.

This is, of course, it's an economic impact as well, as much as it is an environmental impact.

What have you been hearing from?

What's the reaction been so far, from folks around the state in terms of response to this and trying to hear, you know, not only what's going to happen to the fish, but what's going to happen to the the industry itself.

What have you heard so far?

I think right now everybody's just asking questions or want to know what's going on.

How's it going to impact us?

We're getting that a lot.

I think Troy's heard the same thing through our communication department.

People are concerned.

We've not had any, I would say negative pushback on this because everybody understands how important our trout fisheries is and how much money it generates for the state.

And, everything's been positive today except for for losing the fish.

And Trey want to talk about, an article, that was written about in the Democrat-Gazette, situation in the 90s.

Maybe not an apples to apples comparison, but what happened in the early 90s that was referenced in terms of water quality and is is there any similarities here, and what was the reaction to that?

Well, I think what that brings up and points to something that Tommy has already said is that water quality issues on our waters and in these federal hatcheries are an issue every year.

I mean, again, we have to remember that this is a state fishery.

They don't reproduce naturally outside of the wild brown trout population on the little Red River.

And and probably some minor successful reproduction, among browns and maybe some other species on these other tail waters.

But remember, we're in the South, we're in Arkansas.

It's warm.

We face water temperature issues, dissolved oxygen issues every year.

So I think that points out, the article in the Democratic is that this is not necessarily anything new.

Some years, as Tommy said, when we have these, we're seeing more extreme weather events like, you know, 20in of rain in one event, you know, that that decomposing organic matter he talked about.

So in that sense it's a little bit different.

But you know, we have implemented some things like minimum flow on the Bull Shoals tail water to to address some of those issues we saw in the 90s.

But we deal with water quality all the time.

It's just like it's extreme this time.

Yeah.

And finally, just any type of solutions on the horizon, Tommy, that you see to maybe try and mitigate, I mean, as Trey just mentioned, this happens frequently.

It's just the level of it that can change things and alter things.

So what kind of solutions are available out there?

What is the game of fish exploring oil.

We we've got, meetings going on at this time.

Our staff are meeting actually next week to try to come up with ideas to mitigate this.

There's a lot of technology out there that could hopefully help with this.

We plan to have upcoming meetings.

We had one last week with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

We're planning one 1st November.

We're going to bring all the partners in, and we're just going to sit down and discuss how do we get through this on short term, and what can we do in the long term to mitigate some of these issues today about 30s left, you're on radio.

I know you do TV spots as well for the game and fish.

What's your message to, you know, anglers out there and those who enjoy this to be able still to participate and obviously be aware of where they are and these new regulations going to be super important so they don't do anything that's not allowed right now.

Absolutely.

Number one, I would say our enforcement division will enforce these regulations, but right now it's more of an educational mission than an enforcement riding a ticket mission.

We've already printed signs.

We've already posted signs at accesses.

But Chris, to your original question, the main take home message is that this is how conservation works.

We face declines in animal populations, fish populations, and we respond.

And this is enacted in order to still provide good fishing and ultimately keep coming to Arkansas to go fishing.

If you're visiting, if you're from South Arkansas and you want to go up to North Arkansas to fish, go, don't cancel your trip.

There's still great fishing out there.

I'll be out there fishing.

Maybe I'll see you out there.

We look forward to that.

Certainly.

Trey Reed, Tommy Laird, thank you so much for taking the time today to explain this.

Educate us on it so we can all follow the guidelines.

And hopefully these hatcheries get back up into working order.

We'll see you guys next time.

Thank you again.

All right.

That is all that we have for Arkansas Week this week.

Thank you for joining us.

We'll see you next week.