SEC’s Narrower Emissions Rules Shaped by Powerful Farm Lobby

For all of the American Farm Bureau Federation’s lobbying prowess in Washington, the Securities and Exchange Commission wasn’t a place where it had much experience.

It hadn’t needed it. The SEC, after all, didn’t have much to do with farming. That is, until it proposed rules in 2022 that would have required big public companies to disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of their suppliers—among them, family farmers.

Lacking the agency contacts he had elsewhere, lobbyist Travis Cushman fell back on the argument the Farm Bureau has leaned on in Washington for so long: This was another case of bureaucrats saddling ...