SEC Climate Rules Face Bipartisan Heat Over Farming Emissions

The SEC faces pressure from Congress to curtail its plans for big companies to disclose their suppliers’ greenhouse gas emissions amid mounting bipartisan concern that the reporting burden would ultimately fall on small and independent farmers.

Dozens of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to give large companies clearer legal liability protections to estimate emissions from small farmers in their supply chains-–or to exclude agriculture from the planned disclosure requirement altogether. Farm groups, as well as Tyson Foods Inc., Walmart Inc. and other companies that rely on independent farmers and ranchers for their products, ...