House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has given the Agriculture Committee and Ways and Means Committee authority to mark up the cap-and-trade bill crafted by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that recently passed the Energy and Commerce Committee, but six other committees that have some jurisdiction over the bill will not be able to mark up the legislation. Farm Bureau remains strongly opposed to H.R. 2454. Rick Krause, AFBF congressional relations director, met Tuesday with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson’s staff and outlined AFBF’s concerns about the legislation.  “Chairman Peterson is pressing for a number of issues that are very important to Farm Bureau,” Krause said. “He wants to put USDA in the driver’s seat when it comes to an agricultural offset program, while remedying the problems over the definition of biomass and the use of indirect land use calculations for biofuels. Farm Bureau supports Chairman Peterson’s position. At the same time, there remain significant problems with H.R. 2454. We outlined those problems to Chairman Peterson’s staff and intend to work closely with them to fix as many issues as we can.”