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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

+ + + + +

GRAIN INSPECTION ADVISORY COMMITTEE

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY, 

DECEMBER 15, 2021

The meeting came to order at 11:05 a.m. EST 

via Videoconference, Matthew Kerrigan, Chair, 

Presiding.

COMMITTEE ATTENDEES:

DAVID AYERS, Champaign Danville Grain Inspection,

Inc.

CHAD CHAMBERS, Caledonia Farmers Elevator

JANICE COOPER, Wheat Marketing Center

CURTIS ENGEL, The Scoular Company 

NICHOLAS FRIANT, Cargill, Inc.

MATTHEW KERRIGAN, EGT, LLC

RYAN KUHL, Northern Plains Grain Inspection

Service

ROBERT SINNER, SB&B Foods, Inc.

JIMMY WILLIAMS, Missouri Department of

Agriculture
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USDA STAFF:

MELISSA BAILEY, AMS Associate Administrator

LEE CAPPER, Chief Innovation Officer

JESSE GASTELLE, Transportation Services Division

ANTHONY GOODEMAN, Field Management Division

ED JHEE, Technology and Science Division

KENDRA KLINE, Agricultural Marketing

ARTHUR NEAL, FGIS Deputy Administrator

TIMOTHY NORDEN, Scientific Integrity Officer

BYRON REILLY, Internal Affairs Division

DENISE RUGGLES, Executive Program Analyst

RYAN SEAPY, Electronics Engineer

ADAM SPARGER, Transportation Services Division

KARLA WHALEN, Quality Assurance and Compliance 

Division
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C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Call to Order and Welcome

Matthew Kerrigan, GIAC Chair Person ........... 4

Greetings

Melissa Bailey ................................ 6

FGIS Program Updates

Arthur Neal, FGIS Deputy Administrator ....... 17

Denise Ruggles, Executive Program Analyst .... 28

Karla Whalen, Director, Quality

Assurance and Compliance Division ............ 38

Anthony Goodeman, Director, Field

Management Division .......................... 47

Byron Reilly, Director, Internal

Affairs Division ............................. 64

Ed Jhee, Director, Technology and

Science Division ............................. 74

Presentation: AMD Ag Transportation Analysis and

Data Visualization Platform, AMS Transportation

and Marketing Program ........................ 98

Discuss Industry Issues:

FGIS Proposed Technology Review

Process ..................................... 139

Average Inspection Flexibilities ............ 169

Public Comments ............................. 190

Wrap-Up Discussions on Industry Issues ...... 191

Adjourn ..................................... 196
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

11:05 a.m.

MR. KERRIGAN: Good morning, everybody. 

I see a lot of bright and shining faces moving 

around the screen here. I'm seeing a few smiles 

on this. That means that mic check must've worked 

out fine.

It's about five after the hour. I want 

to welcome everybody and kick this meeting off.

I know we've had a few technical issues here.

If we run into anymore, we will probably 

break. But hopefully, those have been resolved 

for everybody. I see everybody coming back to 

their seats here as well.

Just to remind everybody, if you aren't 

speaking or intending to speak, please mute your 

mic with respect to others as we get through this. 

And with that, I'd like to call the meeting to 

order. Kendra or Arthur, would you like to take 

over here for some introductions?

MR. NEAL: Yeah, good morning, 
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everybody. It's good to see you. We've got on 

our agenda today to have greetings brought to us 

from the Administrator's Office.

I know we've got Bruce Summers listed 

to bring greetings to us from AMS. And we've got 

a new and bright smiling face and personality to 

bring greetings and introductions to us today. 

I'd like to introduce a new member of the AMS 

Administrator's Office, Dr. Melissa Bailey. Dr. 

Bailey serves as one of the associate 

administrators for AMS.

As AMS has two associate administrators 

that help facilitate the work of the Agency along 

with Bruce, Melissa is a new associate 

administrator. And she's no stranger to AMS as 

she served in multiple leadership roles across 

numerous AMS programs, such as livestock and 

poultry where she served as the associate deputy 

administrator, specialty crop program where she 

served as associate deputy administrator, and the 

national organic program where she served as 
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director over the standards development. And she 

also served in the transportation and marketing 

program.

So as you see, she brings a lot of 

experience and knowledge to her role. And we 

really are appreciative to have her assigned to 

the Federal Grain Inspection Service. She is the 

associate administrator that will be working most 

closely with us to help us facilitate the work of 

FGIS. And so without further ado, I'd like to 

welcome Melissa to the Grain Inspection Advisory 

Committee and turn the floor over to her to bring 

greetings on behalf of AMS.

MS. BAILEY: Great. Thank you so 

much, Arthur, for all of your kind words and great 

to meet the committee today. As Arthur said, I've 

been in federal service for about 11 and a half 

years. All of them have been with AMS in a variety 

of programs. In fact, when I first started at 

USDA, Arthur and I both worked together at the 

organic program.
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So I feel a little bit like life 

continues to come full circle. I have worked with 

other federal advisory committees, both in the 

organic space and also at the fruit and vegetable 

industry. So just always great to meet another 

federal advisory committee and spend some time with 

you today.

To that point, I just wanted to say 

first and foremost thank you so much for your 

service on the committee and just generally in 

support of U.S. agriculture. Through these 

committees, you really truly provide the on the 

ground perspective and industry pulse that we 

really need in the halls of USDA to provide 

recommendations and guidance on how we can best 

serve the grain sector through our different 

programs and policies. We understand certainly 

that you take time away from your businesses to 

engage in this important work, and truly from the 

Secretary on down, greatly appreciate the time and 

the commitment that you make as members to your 
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participation in the committee.

I also do want to acknowledge the record 

year that the grain industry has experienced and 

the partnership that FGIS with Arthur's leadership 

that he has really cultivated with the sector in 

ensuring that America's grain industry remains 

both strong and competitive. And truly just thank 

you for your efforts every day for what you do. 

I know you have a lot of work to do on the 

committee.

But I did want to touch on kind of three 

brief items before you get underway with your 

committee work today. First, I'll touch a bit 

about the supply chain work that we're doing at 

USDA. And some of you may have either been 

involved in some of the stakeholder meetings we've 

had or some of the comments we've been taking. 

Second, is just to touch on some of the pandemic 

and grant-related work that AMS has been immersed 

in, and then third, just to touch on our operations.

So much to my surprise earlier this 
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year, after the President announced an executive 

order on America's supply chains asking six 

different departments across the government to 

engage in industry sector analyses, kind of doing 

a top to bottom assessment of their supply chains. 

Food and agriculture was on the list. And we were 

asked that AMS take the lead on that effort for 

USDA. So we have been at work kind of leading that 

cross-departmental initiative, convening an 

interagency interdisciplinary team that's been 

comprised of about 40 subject matter experts, 

including folks that represent the grain industry 

to craft a USDA strategy for the one-year supply 

chain report that we will be publishing next year 

on food and agriculture.

So just talk a little bit about that 

process, the team did solicit and analyze over 900 

public comments through a request for information 

process as well as engaged with interagency 

partners. So this could range from Department of 

Labor, certainly labor issues we're all 
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experiencing, you all are experiencing, Department 

of Transportation which I know is a huge issue in 

your industry as well. So just engaging with those 

interagency partners as we develop a supply chain 

assessment and tapping into those resources.

And what we've done is really 

identified the top food and agriculture 

vulnerabilities and then prepared dozens of 

corresponding policy recommendations, including 

investments that could be made that USDA and 

federal partners could implement to build 

resiliency in the food system. So the goal is --

or I think the requirement is. I don't think it's 

a goal. I think it has to get done, that we publish 

this report in February of 2022. All of the 

agencies will be doing that in concert.

We have appreciated the high level of 

engagement from stakeholders, including the grain 

industry and the comment process and the meetings 

that have really helped shape our perspective and 

solutions for the effort. One thing I did want 
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to touch on as really as a result of that work and 

related efforts by Secretary Vilsack as co-chair 

of the Administration's short-term supply chain 

construction task force, we have been really 

focused recently on identifying how to use up to 

500 million dollars in Commodity Credit 

Corporation or CCC funds that would provide relief 

from ad market disruptions. And this could be 

things like increased transportation challenges.

So somebody used the word the other day, 

container Armageddon, that I know we're all aware 

of and you all are experiencing on the ground, the 

availability and cost of certain materials related 

to the marketing and distribution of certain 

commodities, potentially including grain. And so 

sort of from that supply chain report, we've been 

shaping the CCC investment. And as part of initial 

conversations we've had on that topic, we've 

reached out to a cross-section of commodities, 

including the grain industry and the Ag 

Transportation Coalition if any of you are engaged 
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in that, to help identify how we can use the CCC 

resource to meet the needs that is both consistent 

with sort of what would be most helpful for the 

industry and most impactful as well as consistent 

with the authority of the CCC and sort of 

overarching export and trade policy which is quite 

a balance as I'm sure you can imagine.

So as that particular program unfolds, 

we can certainly inform the committee and just the 

industry in general of our efforts and outcomes. 

Just to touch really briefly because it's been 

a huge lift for the Agency this year in terms of 

kind of the second thing I wanted to cover on 

pandemic assistance and grants, our AMS team has 

been busier than ever before. Arthur used to lead 

that team and kind of remembers a handful of years 

ago they were always busy.

But wow, this year has been a banner 

year. We have been deploying new resources under 

the Consolidated Appropriations Act to respond to 

the COVID-19 pandemic for both existing grants as 
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kind of plus-ups that were provided in the CAA 

legislation and to create new programs. So just 

to give you a sense of what was involved there 

between the beginning of 2021 and today, so far, 

we've awarded over 320 million dollars across our 

nine existing grant programs which is an 

unprecedented level of awards for AMS to support 

a variety of agricultural activities. This is to 

support a range of projects, including things like 

expanded capacity in the meat and processing 

sector, local and regional marketing, expanding 

aggregation and distribution for a local grain 

project in Arizona, a new dairy business innovation 

center just to touch on a few.

We also have design and implement --

and are really in the thick of it -- implementing 

some new grant relief programs totaling about 1.9 

million -- million? Let me rephrase that, 1.9 

billion in funding to aid farmers, food processors, 

and other ag stakeholders impacted by COVID. So 

we have two main programs that are the focus there, 
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the pandemic safety and response grants.

That first round that we've done is 

really targeted speciality crops in certain 

processing sectors who haven't received a 

significant amount of aid through other pandemic 

assistance programs previously. And then we had 

sort of a second program that we're unrolling right 

now for food and farm worker relief. That's a 700 

million dollar program where state governments 

could apply, Tribal governments, and non-profits 

to take funds and then redistribute relief payments 

to food and farm workers on the ground who were 

affected by the pandemic.

So we're right in the thick of those 

programs right now in deployment. That was, 

again, a heavy lift for the team. That'll carry 

us into 2022 and beyond in terms of our 

implementation and monitoring of those federal 

funds.

And then the final thing I wanted to 

cover on with you all today is just in terms of 
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operations. I know Arthur has talked to folks 

about this quite a bit. But as you know, a 

significant operational focus continues to be us 

rolling out the federal employee vaccine 

requirement.

So probably the most important message 

I want to leave you with is this really has and 

continues to be a process for us that we will 

continue implementing into 2022. We still have 

employees conveying their vaccination status to 

us as it changes. We have medical and religious 

accommodations that we need to continue to work 

through.

The disciplinary timeline you may have 

read about in the news continues really to evolve 

as we receive guidance from the Department and from 

the White House. As one can imagine, this is a 

new process for all of us. I know Arthur monitors 

this situation every day and keeps a pulse on our 

workforce and our service to you all. And we 

really truly are committed to continuing the lines 
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of communication with you certainly into the new 

year and beyond.

So again, just great to be with the 

committee for a few minutes this morning. I don't 

want to take too much more of your time because 

I know you have a lot of work to do, but just 

appreciate the opportunity to say hello. And any 

questions, I'm happy to take and answer. So thanks 

so much, Arthur and everyone, for having me today.

MR. NEAL: Thank you, Melissa. Any 

questions for Melissa based on what she shared?

MR. KERRIGAN: Quiet crowd this 

morning.

MR. NEAL: Well, Melissa, we 

appreciate you taking the time. We know that you 

all are running. But thanks for taking the time 

to bring greetings, share these updates.

These are very important. You can 

choose to stay on with us or move on to the next 

task I know you got on your list. But we appreciate 

you. Thank you so much.
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MS. BAILEY: Sure. Thanks so much and 

I hope you guys have a great meeting. Appreciate 

it.

MR. NEAL: All right. Take care.

MS. BAILEY: Take care.

MR. NEAL: Well, good morning again. 

It's been a while since we've gathered together. 

But it's really good to be with you today.

We had all intentions to be together 

in person since our last meeting. But we had to 

change the venue back to virtual. We're hoping 

that the next meeting will be a hybrid virtual and 

in-person.

So that's going to be our goal for our 

spring/summer meeting depending on when we 

finalize the date before our next spring inspection 

advisory committee meeting. But it's really hard 

to believe that we're here in December and we're 

looking at soon entering into 2022. This year has 

presented a lot of unforeseen challenges for us.

And we're still working through a 
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number of them as Melissa has already alluded to, 

from inspection volume searches to staffing 

obstacles to unprecedented weather events. We've 

been able to work collaboratively to ensure that 

grain inspection and weighing continues for this 

industry. And I want to take a moment to say thank 

you to everybody that collaborated with us during 

these challenging times and made sure that we had 

effective communication and support on behalf of 

the benefit of the service.

I remember when I transitioned to FGIS 

in 2019. Collaboration was kind of the motto of 

the day that we wanted to promote and achieve. 

And I believe that together, we've been able to 

continue marching in that path.

And so I just want to say thank you on 

behalf of AMS, the FGIS leadership team, and all 

of our staff, to everyone that has collaborated 

with us to make sure that service through these 

challenging times has gone uninterrupted. My 

remarks personally will be brief. I'll reserve 
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most of our time for updates from Denise to talk 

about budget and a division director to talk about 

various updates to the work that we're doing inside 

of FGIS.

But I'll focus a few of my updates 

regarding U.S. grain standards, active 

reauthorization, reporting requirements. 

Melissa has already kind of provided a vaccine 

update. I'll kind of speak lightly on that and 

then just kind of talking about where we may need 

to move our focus and attention in the future.

First, talking about the 

reauthorization reporting requirements, based on 

the reauthorization that passed, we have a 

requirement to do more frequent reporting, 

quarterly reporting describing data and tests for 

inspections in intrinsic quality factors. We plan 

on having our quarterly reporting launch in 

January. It may be more towards the end of 

January.

But that quarterly reporting will start 
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here. It'll also include more information 

regarding exceptions and waivers. So we're 

modifying how we're capturing some of that 

information now so that we can begin reporting it 

in January.

We also have a requirement in the U.S. 

Grain Standards Act to conduct a comprehensive and 

nationwide review of the official agency 

geographic areas. That review has to be done. 

And we also believe that part of that review 

included the work that was captured in our proposal 

regarding the exceptions to geographic boundaries.

But that review has started. We plan 

on making sure that's complete by June of 2022. 

So we're looking pretty good on making that target 

date. Those are the main updates from U.S. Grain 

Standards Act kind of reporting requirements that 

we have that I wanted to give folks an update on.

As it pertains to the vaccination 

update, Melissa shared we're monitoring that 

closely. We are having employees still submit 
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their vaccination status. The numbers evolve 

every day.

The implementation in terms 

disciplinary action date as you all probably have 

noted got pushed back to January. And so we are 

still in this process. We are still moving very 

carefully and cautiously to ensure that service 

is uninterrupted.

We've also begun looking at and working 

with our contracting office here to establish a 

statement of work. We're trying to figure out if 

we do encounter any challenges as a result of the 

vaccination mandate, the federal employees, that 

we look at contracting out some of our technician 

work. And so we're working feverishly to try to 

get a contract mechanism in place so that we can 

utilize it in case of an emergency.

I think a big topic that has been placed 

on my mind as it relates to some of these challenges 

that we've been faced with concerning staffing and 

now with the vaccine mandate is how do we plan on 
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doing work in the future. Let's say something like 

this continues and we're faced as an industry with 

these challenges. I think we need to start having 

conversations about what in the grain inspection 

and weighing work that we facilities, what of that 

work can be automated.

How can we being to look at automating 

more of what we do? And I know the FGIS in the 

past has talked about automating some of its work. 

But we're talking about a different type of 

automation I think at this point that we need to 

think about throughout the entire system. And I'd 

like for the Grain Inspection Advisory Committee 

to help us think through how we can look at the 

various functions and roles carried out in this 

grain inspection and weighing work that we perform.

How can we begin looking at automating 

some of this work such that if we experience 

tightening of staff across the country or 

emergencies that we have some options to leverage 

technology? I think that's something that we 
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really got to think about and have some 

conversations around. I want to pause for a 

second. I see Nick's going a question.

MR. FRIANT: Just real quick, Arthur. 

Given the info and data that you have at this 

point, do you have a sense for how many FGIS staff 

have been vaccinated percentage-wise, or --

MR. NEAL: The latest numbers that I 

have, we're looking pretty good. I can't divulge 

the actual numbers because my data is old data. 

And so I don't want to put old data out there.

But we're looking -- we're moving in 

the right direction, Nick. I'll say that much. 

I think one of the things that has been a learning 

exercise, as we learn more concerning vaccination 

status, is we're able to reach out to folks and 

encourage them to move in the way that we'd like 

them to.

Whether or not they do so, it's their 

personal choice. But that outreach is what's 

really important, to be able to know who is and 
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who is not. And so that whole verification process 

is still ongoing about who is and who is not.

So that's the slow information that's 

coming to us. You don't know the actual people 

yet. And so as we're learning more of that 

information, we're able to do more direct outreach 

and the numbers continue to improve.

MR. FRIANT: Thanks.

MR. NEAL: Yes, sir. So based on what 

we were sharing a little bit earlier, the 

conversation about technology and how we can 

leverage it in our grain inspection and weighing 

activities is going to be important for us moving 

forward. It's not something I think we can resolve 

in a short-term manner. But from a long-term 

perspective, it's definitely a conversation that 

I'd like for us to engage with industry.

So I won't delay any further. If you 

all have any questions for me, this would be a good 

time to ask. But I'll be chiming in probably 

throughout the updates from the division directors 
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and more. Janice, were you about to ask a 

question? Yes, ma'am.

MS. COOPER: Could you just let us know 

what our status is as far as committee attendance? 

And if we don't have all ten people, what is that 

limit as far as recommendations and actions?

MR. NEAL: Yes, ma'am.

MS. COOPER: Thank you.

MR. NEAL: Kendra, do we have a roll 

call? I think from what --

MS. KLINE: Yeah, I can count for eight 

members. There's some phone numbers that I'm 

unsure of who they are.

MR. NEAL: So let's do this real quick. 

Let's pause for a second and let's do a roll call 

to make sure we've got quorum. We may be short 

one. And I'll explain how things flow from there.

MS. KLINE: Do you just want me to read 

off names?

MR. NEAL: And folks, verify if they're 

present.
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MS. KLINE: Okay. David Ayers?

MR. AYERS: Present.

MS. KLINE: Chad Chambers?

MR. CHAMBERS: Present.

MS. KLINE: Janice Cooper?

MS. COOPER: Present.

MS. KLINE: Curtis Engel?

MR. ENGEL: Here.

MS. KLINE: Nick Friant?

MR. FRIANT: Present.

MS. KLINE: Matt's here. Sorry, you 

don't have to say anything. Ryan --

MR. KUHL: Here.

MS. KLINE: -- Kuhl? Robert Sinner?

(No audible response.)

MS. KLINE: All right. Tom Tunnell?

(No audible response.)

MS. KLINE: And then Jimmy Williams, 

I see you, Jimmy. So yeah, so we have eight members 

on today so far.

MR. NEAL: So quorum typically would 
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be ten as the Grain Inspection Advisory Committee 

is slated to have 15 members. Five members rolled 

off at our last meeting. We are waiting for the 

Department to -- or the Secretary to appoint the 

next five.

We were hoping that we'd have them 

appointed by this meeting. So I'm almost certain 

they'll be appointed before the next meeting. But 

we're without them today which tightens our 

membership.

Because we are under ten today, we're 

able to continue having discussions on the items 

that are on the agenda. We just cannot take votes 

on any of the items. But votes are not slated until 

tomorrow.

And I think that -- I think we should 

have quorum tomorrow. A couple of members, we know 

one that said that they had a challenge to come 

up and would not make today. But we expect to have 

quorum tomorrow.

If we do not have quorum tomorrow, we 
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still can have conversations about all of the 

topics on the agenda. We just will not be able 

to take action on them. Great question, Janice. 

Thank you. Any other questions?

(No audible response.)

MR. NEAL: What I'll do now is I'll turn 

over time to Denise. And Denise will provide an 

update on FGIS budget.

MS. RUGGLES: Okay. I hope everyone 

can hear me. I'm going to share my presentation. 

Can you see my presentation?

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MS. RUGGLES: Thank you. So today, 

I'm going to go over our financial overview, how 

the program looks in the four different accounts 

we have and also provide an update on where we are 

on our fee analysis. So the overview, we're going 

to talk about the financial postings that are on 

the public website, the user fees, revenue, 

obligation by account, and the -- like I said, the 

fee reviews and Federal Registers.
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On the public website, we've posted the 

fiscal year 2021 revenue obligations, the earnings 

and loss, and operating reserves for the four user 

fee accounts. We have two under the U.S. Grain 

Standards Act and two under the Agricultural 

Marketing Act, the fiscal year 2021 inspection and 

weighing data that we provide for the tonnage 

billing and the other service fees that we provide 

for export hourly and inspection fees as well as 

the non-export hourly and inspections fees that 

are performed by the domestic office, the scale 

testing program, export registration, and the 

technology and science division. Also new, I do 

not have a slide in here, is a request was made 

to provide inspection and weighing program 

obligations by office for a given fiscal year.

That is also on the website. It is 

under the tab for the financials on the public 

website for inspection and weighing program data. 

And it's titled, Inspection and Weighing Program 

Obligation Details by Office for FY '21. This 
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provides the expense categories of salaries and 

benefits, travel, shipping, et cetera, by the 

different groups within FGIS such as the Office 

of the Deputy Administrator, Field Management 

Division, and each of the field offices. It 

performs services under our grain inspection 

weighing program.

Here's a historical graph of the 

inspection and weighing account. For the end of 

'21, we brought in about 34.9 million dollars in 

revenue. Our expenses were at 37.8. We did 

utilize some CARES Act funding of 2.471 million 

dollars to offset some obligations in this program.

We also had metric tons that we brought 

in at 136 million 574. And the -- I outlined the 

highest obligation we've had and the historical 

data. However, if you look at this year's 

obligations and add in the money we used with the 

CARES Act funding, we would have exceeded that high 

year back in 2017 for obligations. Also, the 

operating reserve is at 7 million dollars at the 
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end of '21. And the four and a half month target 

based on '21 obligations is 14.2 million dollars.

The supervisor of OA's account, we had 

about 1.4 million dollars in obligations. And we 

brought in 1.7 million dollars in revenue. And 

the operating reserve for that program is about 

2 million dollars. The tonnage was 232.7 million 

metric tons. And the operating reserve goal for 

that account is 700,000 based on six months of the 

1.4 million of operating costs for the prior year.

The rice inspection account, we had 

about 3 million dollars in revenue. And we had 

about 5.3 million dollars in obligations. This 

was a year that we were reducing costs to bring 

down the operating -- reducing revenue, bringing 

in to -- to bring down the operating reserve. The 

operating reserve at the end of '21 was 5.2 million 

dollars. And the goal for that account which is 

six months of operating costs for the prior year 

is about 2.7 million.

On the commodity account program, this 
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program, we utilize CARES Act funding. That's why 

you see our obligations at a negative amount. To 

bring this account whole meaning we brought the 

operating reserve out of the negative status and 

brought it to a positive status due to the fact 

that we could not make fee adjustments during the 

pandemic in the last two years for this account.

The revenue we brought in was 2.3 and 

the actual obligations without the CARES Act 

funding adjustment for this program was 2.6 million 

dollars which is what I brought in. You can see 

we have a little bit of a credit of the expenses. 

And the six months goal for this account is about 

1.3. We have 1.8 in there right now, and no fee 

adjustments have been made.

On the fee reviews, the grain 

inspection and weighing account, we did do a fee 

increase of five percent for -- it was effective 

January 1 of 2021. We are preparing the fee 

notification for the fees that will be effective 

January 1 of 2022. The grain supervision fees, 
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a rule did get published in September of this year 

which did reduce the supervision tonnage fee to 

the 0.004 per ton.

FGIS is preparing the fee notification 

for those fees also to be effective January 1 of 

2022. Those fee analysis are done annually per 

the regulations. And the steps are in there in 

the section of 800.71(a) and (b).

This year, we are also looking at 

performing the periodic review which is under 

Section 800.71(c). That's what we often refer to 

as right sizing the fees. Since the inspection 

of weighing grain account has the five percent 

limitation on increases and decreases, this 

section offers us the opportunity to correctly 

assign costs of performing services.

The rice inspection fees, there was a 

publication notice put out. It was a group effort 

with AMS as a whole for all the programs that do 

agriculture marketing work. It was published in 

April. Our fees took effect for FY 2022 on October 
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1st, '21. We are also preparing the fee 

notification that will go out in March-April for 

the '23 fees that will be effective October 1, 2022.

The commodity inspection fees, FGIS

continues to review that commodity account. As 

you saw, we did apply some CARES Act funding to 

bring that account solvent at the end of '21. And 

we're implementing cost saving measures where 

possible.

We're also drafting a plan to adjust 

those commodity fees to cover costs. That will 

be a regulatory process with proposed rulemaking. 

And I also wanted to bring up the fact that we 

are reviewing and assessing the percentage on AMA 

cooperators for the program oversight on those --

to ensure those fees are appropriately assessed. 

I know that was at lot of information. But are 

there any questions?

MR. AYERS: Denise, I have a question. 

David Ayers.

MS. RUGGLES: Uh-huh?
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MR. AYERS: Will these fees -- user 

fees from the official agency be published before 

January 1st?

MS. RUGGLES: We're in clearance. So 

I'm hopeful. I'm not sure, though. I'm hopeful, 

though.

MR. AYERS: Okay. Thank you.

MS. RUGGLES: Is there any other 

questions?

MR. FRIANT: Hey, Denise. Nick Friant 

here. Any -- and if you said it and I missed that, 

I apologize. Any insights into what is going to 

happen with the inspection --

MR. NEAL: I must have cut out.

MR. FRIANT: -- piece?

MR. NEAL: Did I cut out?

MS. RUGGLES: I can hear you.

MR. NEAL: Okay. So I was sharing that 

so Dave asked a question and I hear Nick with a 

question. Dave asked would they be published 

before January 1. We put the notice in clearance, 
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but we've been answering questions.

So we're hoping to get it published 

before January 1. But because we've had 

questions, this is a new administration. So 

making sure people understand how and why the 

dynamic with the fees are what they are, we're 

hoping to still get it published to the Federal 

Register before January 1. I cannot promise that.

Nick asked a question about, do we know 

what's going to happen with grain inspection and 

weighing fees. Most likely, Nick, and I can't say 

with certainty because the notice isn't out there. 

But most likely, it'll be the five percent 

increase based on the regulations because our 

reserve is well below the four and a half mark 

target date -- target.

So that's what one should anticipate 

based on the numbers that we've shared. Kind of 

related, the goal for '22 is to begin the process 

to do a full review of the grain inspection and 

weighing fees so that we can begin rightly 
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adjusting them and begin recovering costs 

adequately versus continuing to dig into the 

reserves. So that's the goal for '22.

Will the fees be adjusted in '22? I 

can't guarantee that. But the process to begin 

adjusting will occur in '22. Any other questions?

MR. SINNER: Arthur, I have a question. 

This is interesting, and we also have in front 

of us at least on the table that Japan might be 

going to official inspection requirements because 

of phytosanitary requirements in 2023. That will 

only add to your work and add to your obligations, 

right? I mean --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. SINNER: -- you've thought about 

that? That'll be significant.

MR. NEAL: It'll be significant. But 

I mean, from the standpoint of phytos and APHIS, 

we're already doing them now. We would need more 

staff to cover some of the locations that are 

currently not doing phytos.
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The answer may be yes or depending on 

the approach that it's worked out to facilitate 

those phytosanitary inspections because we've not 

been in full dialog around it. There could be 

other options. So we're not quite sure yet. But 

it's something that we will have to take into 

consideration once that dialogue begins should 

Japan fully implement that policy or that 

requirement.

MR. SINNER: Okay, thanks.

MR. NEAL: No, thanks for asking. Any 

other questions?

(No audible response.)

MR. NEAL: Okay.

MS. RUGGLES: Okay.

MR. NEAL: Thank you, Denise.

MS. RUGGLES: Thank you.

MR. NEAL: Next updates we have will 

come from Ms. Karla Whalen who is the director for 

our quality assurance and compliance division. 

So Denise, you'll probably have to stop sharing.
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MS. RUGGLES: Yeah, I'm trying to get 

it back up on my screen so I can stop sharing. 

There. Okay, thank you.

MR. NEAL: And Karla, we'll turn it 

over to you.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you. Good morning 

to everyone. As Arthur mentioned, I'm Karla 

Whalen. I started working with FGIS over the 

summer. While my time here has been on the shorter 

side, it certainly feels much longer due to the 

warm welcome and the workload. But it's all good.

So I and the QACD staff look forward 

to working with you over time. And I have six areas 

to quickly update you on. As you can see on the 

screen, I'm going to start with export 

registration.

In October, we sent out a notice to 

trade to remind exporters that they had to register 

for the calendar year 2022. We set a deadline for 

this action of today, 12-15. The QACD staff has 

also reached out individually to known exporters.
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As of yesterday, our numbers are 70 

registrants for 2022, including about 10 new 

entities. This compares to 2021 of 104. In 2020, 

we had approximately 99.

In addition to the extra push to market 

this requirement, we have been working to update 

the website information and application 

instruction. I also want to state that the 

application -- the actual application in our 

system, there will be a new software release 

tomorrow night. That's going to assist with 

greater efficiency for the staff and greater 

explanation and hopefully process for customers 

as well.

In early 2022, we'll reassess where we

are on the outreach need for this because we do 

need registrants for the regulation but also for 

international obligations such as the China Decree 

177. After that, we will turn our attention to 

how we can improve enforcement in this area. Byron 

can talk more on the China Decree if there are 
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questions on that.

For the Agency fee review, as of October 

1st of this year, Arthur had provided information 

about the fee schedule changes including policy 

and process changes. In relations to my division, 

this team reviews, analyzes, and approves OA fee 

schedules. And the policy change we made was to 

break out the FGIS fees from the Agency fees.

This change was made to make that whole 

process more simple, functional, and sustainable. 

And as Denise spoke about changes coming up, 

because we've made that policy change, we will not 

need new schedules at that time. The updated fee 

schedules are due to QACD liaisons today. It's 

a big day for us, 12-15-21.

As of last week, we had 11 of 49 

submitted. The staff will be working on those over 

the next month too. And the effective date for 

the new fee schedules with that change will be 

February 15th of 2022. But the staff is already 

working on some.
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The next topic for us is the AMA 

cooperative agreements update. In August, we 

issued a notice that FGIS was in the process to 

update assorted cooperative agreements. This 

process has involved a number of efforts.

In relation to FGIS moving to AMS 

umbrella, we needed to move the FGIS programs' 

process into the AMS agency's template and 

clearance process. We are also working to ensure 

cooperators still have current licenses and 

capabilities to do what the previous agreements 

and documentation stated. From this process, we 

found about 17 are ready to go over 40.

So the staff continues to work with that 

situation. And we have been a little bit slowed 

because of how to appropriately handle the federal 

vaccine mandate situation which all of us know 

continues to evolve. So once that process is 

clear, we will reach back out to official agencies.

The fourth area I am going to cover is 

the U.S. GSA designation area, exceptions, final 
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rule. Arthur mentioned this is in his opening 

comments. Basically, a quick refresher, on August 

19th, we issued a proposed rule to update the 

regulations in regard to exceptions for geographic 

areas.

This has been an area in flux over the 

past few years. We did receive four industry 

comments. These comments are being analyzed and 

considered. And we are in process to have the 

formal work plan improved. For us to move forward 

with the final FR, the work plan must be approved 

first. So that is where we are currently in 

process.

The fifth area, I would like to quickly 

cover are recent audit trends. As a result of the 

pandemic, the QACD staff redesigned the U.S. GSA 

designation audit process to be entirely virtual. 

This has been adjusted as needed as we have learned 

more from this process, and it seems to be working 

rather well.

We anticipate post-pandemic to adjust 
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that audit process into a hybrid fashion. But 

again, time will tell. The full paperwork 

submittal process has been taking additional time 

for staff and agencies but all are working 

cooperatively.

As we are nearing two years under this 

effort, the staff took a look back at audit trends 

that we are seeing from approximately December 2019 

to present. The staff will continue to analyze 

this cumulative summary to see where additional 

education, instruction, and support may be useful. 

Some of the areas where there are issues were 

record keeping, facilities management, and 

personnel records. So we will continue to work 

with agencies on those areas.

The final area I want to briefly mention 

is we do have set the calendar year '22 audit 

schedule. For this upcoming year, we have 14 

entities listed. And the dates are tentatively 

planned, but we may have to shift that slightly 

due to a changing situation and also staffing.
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So that's a quick update from QACD. 

And can take any questions. Or if someone wants 

additional information later, they can contact me 

direct. Thank you.

MR. FRIANT: Hey, Karla, Nick Friant 

with Cargill, two questions. On the exporter 

registration, if companies have questions about 

status or clarifying requirements, is that you or 

someone on your staff that they should reach out 

to?

MS. WHALEN: To make it easy, you can 

reach out to me or FGIS or -- am I on mute, no --

fgisqacd@usda.gov. Any of us will be able to get 

you to the right staff member. We have two staff 

members that are specifically working more devoted 

on that issue.

MR. FRIANT: Okay. Thank you. And 

then on the final rule of designated area 

exceptions, I think what I heard you say was they're 

currently working on the formal work plan which 

allows you to go into the final version draft. 
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Any sort of timeline on when that final version 

may be available?

MS. WHALEN: That is hard to predict. 

I think, Arthur, you had mentioned in your opening 

comments midyear. But I can't guarantee that, 

sir.

MR. NEAL: Well, the objective is to 

have it published by -- at least by summer. The 

thing that we don't control is going to be the 

internal clearance process for the rules. So 

we're going to do -- the staff had done an amazing

job. It's about ready. We've got to go through 

the formal aspects of getting the work plan 

approved. And then we'll submit the final rule 

into the clearance process.

The reason why I'm projecting out till 

summer is because we don't control the clearance 

process as the Department has a lot going on and 

timelines get impacted by the activity within the 

Department. We will be in communication with you 

to give you updates, excuse me, before then. But 
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we're making good progress on it. That's what --

MS. WHALEN: Thank you.

MR. NEAL: -- I can share right now.

MR. AYERS: Karla, David Ayers. I'd 

like to give you kudos, you and your staff, on the 

Agency fee reviews, working with us. You've 

modernized the whole process with the user fees 

being separated out. That's probably a 40-year 

problem that we always had.

On the USDA exceptions final rule, I 

would like to encourage you to make sure that your 

staff is not easily able to change the guidelines, 

add new things in, and take things out. And that's 

what created our whole problem before. It's just 

my input on it. And your audit of the official 

agencies, excellent. It's a much better process 

than what we had before and very appreciative.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you for those 

comments and we'll keep them in consideration.

MR. NEAL: Thank you, Karla, for those 

updates. We'll now move to the management 
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division, and we'll turn the microphone over to 

Mr. Tony Goodeman.

MR. GOODEMAN: Good morning, 

everybody. Can you hear me okay?

MR. NEAL: Got a little of fuzziness 

there.

MR. GOODEMAN: Oh, man. That's not a 

good sign. I've got a little fuzziness in the 

background. All right. We'll keep it rolling 

here.

I do appreciate -- I think Erica had 

the background of, like, the plaza all lit up, like, 

for the holiday lights. So that's nice if we'd 

be out in Kansas City, but wasn't meant to be. 

So thanks for bringing Kansas City to the meeting 

here.

A few things I want to talk about today 

is our record year. In 2021, expanded TCK testing 

for wheat going to China and then Hurricane Ida. 

So first of all, it was kind of ironic -- and very 

challenged sign in early 2020.
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And then the pandemic hit the U.S. 

really hard in March 2020. And that's when we 

really started seeing a big uptick in grain 

inspections volumes. And so that kind of 

coincided with the COVID challenges.

So we were quite busy, exceptionally 

busy in the summer of 2020 and then all the way 

into the fall of 2020 when our fiscal year started 

in October. And that never let up. We were busy 

at every location that could export grain from the 

Gulf to the PNW, the Lakes, containers, everything 

was as busy as you could imagine.

We last set a record for exports in 

fiscal year 2017 when we had a really big crop. 

China was (audio interference) last year. We 

exported 150 million metric tons of grain last 

year. That was 23 percent above the prior year, 

and we beat the fiscal year 2017 record by three 

and a half percent.

Some contributing factors to that were 

some weather issues in South America and then 
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record China purchases. And we'll mention China 

a couple of times just real briefly here. Corn 

and soybeans both set a record for the fiscal year 

for all-time records that we've been keeping track 

of.

Corn surpassed the previous record by 

16 percent. And China was a big driver in this, 

number one destination for corn exports. They 

took 32 percent of all U.S. We set a record. We 

surpassed (audio interference) record by four 

percent, and China was number one buyer of U.S. 

soybeans as well. China bought 59 percent of all 

U.S. soybean exports.

Sorghum was a big mover last year as 

well. China's purchases, they stopped by Sorghum 

for a while. They purchased 80 percent of all 

Sorghum exports -- U.S. Sorghum exports. Wheat 

exports were a bit lower in the previous year.

The top three buyers were the 

Philippines, Mexico, and China. This was the most 

wheat that China had bought since 1994-95 market 
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year with expanding TCK testing. So with 

increased demand for U.S. wheat in China, we do 

have an agreement with the Chinese that we will 

test the wheat exports for a smut spore called 

Tilletia controversa Kuhn.

It is a dwarf blunt. It can result in 

dwarfed wheat plants back in the U.S. It hasn't 

been a major issue here for quite some time. But 

the Chinese are testing for it.

We first set up testing about 20 years 

ago in the Pacific Northwest under a partnership 

with the wheat marketing center in Portland. So 

they would do the testing on GIS' behalf. And 

there was a special type of an audit program set 

up to review that.

There was an interest in getting 

testing set up in the U.S. Gulf, especially Texas 

where they wanted export like winter wheat out of 

Texas and get it tested more timely. And so they 

had a request to set up testing more infrastructure 

in general in FGIS but also more localized testing 
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in Texas. And so we took that up.

And within a couple of months, we set 

up a program where we now offer that TCK testing 

services -- those TCK testing services in our 

League City Field Office. We also have capability 

now at our technology and science division (audio 

interference) expertise. We got the equipment to 

run that test there in case there are any 

controversial issues.

Or we're still waiting on the big 

increase down in Texas for a week. But if you build 

it, they will come. So we're hopeful that '22 

will be a big year for our TCK testing lab in Texas. 

So we'll wait and see there. But we appreciate 

the collaboration Wheat Marketing Center, with 

U.S. wheat, with the exporters and --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. NEAL: We may have lost Tony there.

MR. GOODEMAN: That was a good project. 

And hopefully we'll continue to open the door for 

more. Let me disconnect my VPN here. Hang on a 
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second. Can you all hear me?

MR. NEAL: Yeah, we hear you.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. GOODEMAN: Okay. All right. 

Let's keep it going here. Sorry about that. So 

we have this huge year continuing through the 

summer. And we had a call. We've had tropical 

storms like our partners in the Gulf do every year 

and hurricanes.

And there was a storm forming that was 

looking like could be a threat to the New Orleans 

area, somewhere, Louisiana, Mississippi. I think 

a Thursday afternoon still being a tropical storm 

Ida and had a call in it was going to be 

strengthening and looked like it might be a 

Category 2 when it made landfall the following 

weekend. We're talking about make sure their 

staff was safe and folks could evacuate and this 

thing continued to ramp up and ramp up.

Thankfully, folks for the most part 

were able to get out of the way. But back that 
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Sunday, August 29, the 16th anniversary of 

Hurricane Katrina and almost exactly a year after 

Hurricane Laura hit Lake Charles area as a Category 

4, Hurricane Ida came ashore as Category 4 with 

150 mile and hour sustained winds. It hit -- took 

a path just west of New Orleans.

So whereas Hurricane Katrina went east 

of New Orleans and flooded the city, it was a huge 

impact on the population center of New Orleans, 

this hurricane was much more damaging to the grain 

export infrastructure (audio interference) 

operations, industry operations, places where our 

people live, huge devastating impacts. Power was 

out for weeks. Power lines, trees were over the 

roads. The interstates were closed.

This was in the middle of summer. So 

it's hot and muggy. If anybody wanted to have air 

conditioning, they had to get a generator and fuel 

that generator. When this first happened, we 

spent most of the time assessing personnel needs, 

safety. Our field office took some damage, though 
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not catastrophic by any means. But it was also 

without power. Couldn't be open for a while.

And so after that initial assessment,

we were back up and running with operations on that 

Tuesday. So less than 24 hours after the hurricane 

struck, we're back up and running at the most 

upriver elevator in Port Allen that Tuesday. And 

vessel exams resumed that week.

And staff had to wait in lines for 

multiple hours to get gas in order to make the trip 

down river because a lot of the staff that were 

available were upriver that didn't have as much 

damage. The river was still closes. And so we 

had to navigate those closed roads and use a lot 

of fuel to do it.

So we had staff waiting in lines for 

an hour just to get gas to go to work that day. 

Power is the biggest issue along with people and 

just being able to get around. But the floating 

elevators in the vessel exams, they were ready to 

get back up and running within a couple days.
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The floating elevators, the rigs use 

generator power. So they were ready to go right 

away. And this is also at a time at the end of 

August, early September where we're still seeing 

record demand and the soybean harvest starting to 

come in.

And I think we -- once power wasn't 

immediately restored, once things didn't get back 

to normal after a couple few days, I think everybody 

recognized this was quite -- going to be a lingering 

and impactful situation. So we collaborated with 

APHIS to see what we could do as far as potential 

waivers of the mandatory inspection weighing 

requirements. Given that the floating rigs which 

use generator power might not have inspection and 

wind capability were able to get up and running 

right away, what could we do to utilize those since 

elevators wanted to start loading and get grain 

out?

And we had to collaborate with APHIS 

because if we were to waive the inspection weight 
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requirements, if there's no inspection, there 

might not be a fight from APHIS. So whatever we 

did had to be in lockstep with APHIS. So we issued 

some waiver guidance on September 17th.

That lasted until the end of September, 

then was renewed again for the month of October. 

In total, we did 21 vessels covering about 650,000 

metric tons and about 36 lots of grain. A lot of 

those are smaller lots, some big ones, some small 

ones, but about 36 over 21 vessels until that waiver 

period ended.

I do want to take a moment to give a 

quick shout out to our New Orleans staff who were 

so resilient through all this. They had families 

at homes. I think we had about 40 or 50 staff that 

had significant damage where they could never live 

in their home again. And they still kept coming 

to work and were tending to the duties here at FGIS.

So our assistant managers, Michael 

Malbrook, Quentin Joshua, Dhawan Moore, Courtney 

Trass, Dana Mitchell, Brandon Harness. And then 
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Andy Ping, our associate deputy administrator, 

he's not one to shy away from any challenge, he 

went down to New Orleans right after the hurricane 

hit plus with our recovery efforts and acting 

manager down there. So thanks to everybody down 

there that was able to get everything up and running 

so quickly and didn't miss a beat.

And appreciate -- and even nationally 

-- appreciate the collaboration. It was a 

challenging time for everyone. And we had so many 

offers of support. Thankfully, we didn't really 

have to take up too many.

But we had folks offering assistance 

in getting gas or getting shelter and getting 

places to stay, just fantastic and really 

appreciate that collaboration and support. So I 

don't want to say things are back to normal. But 

things are running more closely to normal in New 

Orleans.

We were down there a few weeks back and 

some places are still without phone service, for 
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example. So instead of using cell phone, we 

normally would use a house phone or something like 

that. And some of the -- flying in, you still see 

tarps over it seems like half the houses down there. 

It's amazing, the recovery they're still going 

through and everything is back up and running.

So those are the highlights from FMD. 

I'd be happy if there are any questions. 

Otherwise, I'll turn it over to next person in 

order.

MR. FRIANT: So, Tony, Nick Friant. 

First, I want to thank you and Arthur and the team 

for the collaboration, particularly after 

Hurricane Ida.

And I think a lot of folks in industry, 

there's probably some learnings, and I'll ask you 

about that in a second.

But I think the work that was done, and 

particularly the collaborational phase, as you 

mentioned, we certainly want to thank you for that, 

and that work that you also did with Industry to 
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get the emergency declaration and waiver 

procedures out there. So, thank you for that.

MR. GOODEMAN: Yes, sir.

MR. FRIANT: My question -- and maybe 

this is you, maybe it's Arthur, maybe there's 

more -- but any key learnings from that event that 

FGIS took away as agency, thinking about future 

events and contingency plans and preparedness? 

Were there any key learnings that you can share 

with us? Or is that something that you're still 

working on internally?

MR. NEAL: Yeah, if everyone wants 

to -- you can start.

MR. GOODEMAN: Well, I would say I was 

amazed by the resilience of everybody. And I think 

the things we can improve on better in the future 

is relying less on personal sacrifice of our staff, 

which was great, but I'd like to do whatever we 

can, infrastructure-wise, to lessen that burden, 

because everybody was fantastic, but had they not 

made such personal sacrifice and stepped up, we 
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would have been a bigger bind.

So, trying to make plans or make things 

easier among staff, a couple of things that did 

work well was, of course, that resilience and that 

dedication.

Our IT systems worked pretty well. 

Like, folks were able to evacuate to, like Texas, 

for example, or anywhere really, and they were able 

to still connect. And so, that was encouraging, 

outside of New Orleans.

Now, one drawback was that the 

connectivity of the cell phones. It took us like 

three days to get a hold of people in some places, 

because they had no cell phone, no Internet and 

no power. No power to charge a cell phone. So, 

that was a major challenge.

But I think the biggest takeaway is just 

trying to improve our infrastructure to support 

our staff, as far as housing, transportation, when 

things like this happen.

MR. NEAL: Yeah. And for the other 
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thing too, and Tony mentioned it, building up 

infrastructure just kind of goes to the 

conversation on seating with the GIAC and industry 

at this point, and what ways can we automate or 

leverage technology around some of the work that 

we do. That's one.

There needs to be, I think, maybe some 

failsafes in place. We need to have some 

additional options, should we run into these types 

of emergencies.

That's not a short-term fix. It's not 

included to the equipment. But who knows? 

Through dialogue, we may find that there are some 

quick fixes that alleviate some of the burden.

I think having a contracting option in 

place that we can leverage in such tight 

challenging times, and in this particular 

situation, like Ida -- I think everybody was 

impacted, including any potential contractor that 

could take on some of the technician functions that 

we're looking at -- but I think we have to be 
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prepared for such an incident, should it occur.

Tony mentioned the IT systems. In 

addition to people being able to connect, also 

having the FGIS distributed system where grading 

can still occur and not have to be online, and we 

can still facilitate work that was (audio 

interference) design by FGIS far before me coming 

onboard. So, that was validated, that we could 

still perform the work.

And making sure that we got housing 

instruments, contacting instruments, ready to go, 

which we were able to utilize fairly quickly 

working with GSA, in case we have a lot of employees 

that need some temporary lodging. So, that was 

another learning.

The other piece was working out the 

labor process the way that we did, in coordination 

with APHIS. Tony mentioned that. But having that 

template also kind of ready to go, in case we 

experience something like this again.

So, there are a number of learnings. 
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There is still more that we can glean. It seems 

like there are so many issues that roll on top of 

each other, having time to adequately breathe is 

what we probably will need right now.

But we'll get through this next hurdle. 

But I think that the collaboration just was 

another testament and learning, is that through 

effective communication and collaboration, we can 

make things happen well.

So, we want to thank everybody again 

for just communicating well during these tough 

times.

MR. FRIANT: Any other questions for 

Tom? Now, we'll turn it over to Byron Reilly, 

Director for our International Affairs Division, 

and I will say this before Byron speaks.

Byron was in high demand, in terms of 

folks wanting to hear an update from our 

International Affairs Division. So, Byron, we'll 

turn it over to you.

MR. REILLY: Hello and welcome. Today 
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I'm going to talk about international trade issues, 

give you some updates on what's happening now, and 

I'll talk about our international outreach 

activities. And I'll finish up with speaking 

briefly about our complaints this year.

So, Vietnam, FGIS has worked with APHIS 

in developing a program directed to identify 

Canadian thistle.

We've had a lot of shipments, which 

Vietnam has complained about finding Canadian 

thistle. So, we work collaboratively with APHIS 

to improve our method.

We've had issues recently with 

Thailand, with finding infestation in DDG 

containers. Prior to that, we've had issues 

Thailand finding infestation in wheat and soybean 

shipments.

So, we continue to work with APHIS and 

industry to come up with a process to improve 

fumigation techniques and to reduce the number of 

identified lots with infestation.
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We mentioned earlier about Japan and 

the phytosanitary requirements to take effect in 

2023. Again, we're hopeful that we may have some 

breakthroughs with APHIS in negotiating on those.

Would also mention that Japan has 

always complained throughout the years of finding 

excessive BCFM in the corn shipments. We've met 

with them through the U.S. Grains Council and 

encouraged them to tighten their contract specs.

We usually buy U.S. number three or 

better. We suggested the U.S. number two or 

better, or even tighten a specific amount of BCFM.

But price was a concern, so there was 

no movement there. But all of the shipments that 

went over there met the grade limits for a U.S. 

number three or better.

We talked about China decree 177. 

Carla had mentioned this. We've been working with 

QACD and we sent out a notice to trade to all our 

stakeholders, stating that China has a four-year 

registration requirement for re-registering for 
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exporters, which will be in January of 2022, will 

be the anniversary.

We're working to get the word out to 

industry, encouraging them to register in a timely 

manner. Hopefully, we'll have a very good list 

available to submit to GIAC.

We are going to require every year along 

with our normal export, registration under QACD. 

This will also be for registering for exports to 

China under trade 177.

We have been working with U.S. pulse 

industry regarding China's new decree 248, food 

safety. The pulse industry is working with the 

Food and Drug Administration to help facilitate 

the registration.

We've been in communications with U.S. 

trade representative and Foreign Ag Service. 

Foreign Ag Service has requested an 18-month delay 

from China, requiring the registration, because 

it's a huge task in a short period of time.

USGR said that they plan to make a final 
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decision whether or not to allow exporters in that 

to register through FDA at this point, because 

they're pushing back with China, saying this is 

not right.

But we have been involved with those 

communications, and trying to facilitate trade 

between the pulse industry and China.

Moving on, I'll talk a little bit about 

our international outreach activities. I've 

worked, back in 2019, with the Iraqi Grain Board 

and U.S. Rice Federation to get Iraq to accept the 

first bulk rice shipments.

However, although we came to an 

agreement back then, administration officials have 

changed over in Iraq. Since then, Iraq has 

relinquished importation of rice to a private 

sister company or organization over in Iraq, and 

we have successfully come to an agreement to accept 

sending bulk rice shipments to Iraq.

(Audio interference.)

We=ve seen the second shipment already, 
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which was a big breakthrough. And we are working 

with the Rice Federation to set up a rice inspection 

lab emulating what we would do in the U.S.

So, equipment has been ordered and 

purchased, and will be put onboard the next 

shipment of bulk rice going there.

We were also recently working with 

Malaysia government. They have set up three grain 

inspection laboratories in the country. We're 

taking a more active role in quality control, and 

particularly for grain imports.

They have very sophisticated lab 

equipment they've installed. I've been working 

with U.S. Grains Council there to help them with 

calibrating the equipment, getting dockets 

machines, and more recently, accurate scales, to 

put in for their laboratories.

One part of our outreach, because of 

COVID, U.S. cooperators have gone to virtual 

meetings, which was really great, versus having 

to travel and conduct these grain grading seminars 
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in person.

So, working with U.S. wheat associates 

this past year, we've held 32 seminars. Actual 

grain grading, hands-on.

We also conducted four meetings with 

U.S. Grains Council, and we had four with USEC in 

Europe.

I've also had a meeting, a briefing with

Foreign Ag Service. They have a lot of new people 

employed, as well as new people overseas. So, I 

developed a presentation to explain how FGIS works, 

and how we work together with industry and with 

USTR and Foreign Ag Service to help resolve trade 

issues.

And finally, I'd like to talk about our 

foreign complaints. Back in 2019 we had received 

nine complaints totaling about 200,000 metric tons 

that were involved.

Last year in FY20, we had only two 

complaints, which amounted for less than 20,000 

metric tons. And for FY21, we had seven complaints 
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for about 164,000 metric tons, but the majority 

of those were due to Canadian thistle complaints 

from Vietnam.

So, less than 1/100th percent was 

involved in complaints. And any questions?

MS. COOPER: Byron, Hi. It's Janice 

Cooper. Couple of things. Are you hearing much 

about the buckwheat issue with Japan? We are 

hearing that from our side, but I wonder if that's 

something that's on your radar as well?

MR. REILLY: Yes, it is. In fact, I 

just to an email today from Foreign Ag Service and 

talking about the buckwheat issue. And I know 

we're working with FMD new management division to 

help address this issue, and providing the 

information that Japan is requesting regarding 

buckwheat.

MS. COOPER: Okay. Secondly, great 

job on the number of grain grading seminars. 

That's a really positive development.

We've seen the ability to deliver 
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information and training virtually, increase in 

certain areas. So, I'd like to share that with 

my board. Do have a list of those seminars that 

I could review and kind of reference?

MR. REILLY: Sure. I can send you more 

detailed information. I'll send that through 

Kendra, so she can distribute it.

MS. COOPER: And the question that we 

are all asking ourselves on training, is whether 

we will ever go back to the in-person, hands-on, 

training model. What is your best estimate or 

guess on when and if you might have to travel again?

MR. REILLY: Well, of course that's all 

dependent up COVID and the department lifting some 

travel restrictions. And of course, complying 

with the destination country's, their restrictions 

and requirements.

That aside, looking ahead, we hope that 

we'll be able to do travel, because we've already 

received requests for impersonal training in 

Central America, as well as in Malaysia.
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So, but we've managed to reach a much 

larger amount of participants in these seminars. 

For instance, the one we had in Romania for USEC, 

normally they would only get maybe 50 or 60 

participants. One seminar we had over 600 

participants, from many countries.

So, whether or not, I guess depending 

on the outreach activity these cooperator groups 

have in mind, and they need to be in-person, such 

as helping to set up an inspection lab, which is 

another question I'm looking for a training to be 

done when the Iraq rice line is set up.

So, these are ones that are on the 

horizon, where we don't anticipate having to go 

there, but we can always come up with hybrid 

solutions of outreach, taking advantage of the 

cooperators in your country, to help with the 

actual hands-on part.

And then, I can virtually help out with 

these seminars.

MS. COOPER: Oh, final question on the 
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Malaysian grain inspection labs that are being set 

up. Is the focus on emulating sort of basic grain 

inspection and grading? Or are they also looking 

at broader chemical residue protection?

MR. REILLY: Yeah. I was asked by 

Grains Council to help out and to get them more 

in line with U.S. inspection procedures and factors 

that we do, such as providing them with the dockage 

testers, so they can include dockage.

We still want to convey to them the need 

to learn how to do test weights, because that is 

a very important factor to look at. But these 

laboratories have invested millions and millions 

of dollars in very sophisticated analytical 

equipment -- HPLC and numerous other methods -- to 

come up with residues, microbiological tests.

So, these appear to be very 

sophisticated laboratories that they're doing, but 

I am unaware of how they will apply that, and even 

if they will apply any method, to imports from the 

U.S. or other countries.
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MS. COOPER: Okay. Thank you very 

much for your report.

MR. REILLY: Sure. Any other 

questions?

MR. NEAL: Thank you, Byron. We 

appreciate the updates. Next, we'll turn it over, 

before lunch, to Dr. Ed Jhee, Director of our 

Technology and Science Division, also Director 

over the National Grain Center. Dr. Jhee?

MR. JHEE: Thanks, Arthur. Thanks 

everybody for having this opportunity to present 

some information and updates to you guys.

Over this past year, there were a number 

of positive efforts to improve processes and 

programs within the Technology and Science 

Division.

I do want to take a moment to definitely 

thank the entire team here at the TSD for their 

efforts related to our priority goals and our 

initiatives.

Today, I'm going to present an update 
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on four key initiatives that we took on. And the 

first one I think is going to be a broader topic 

of discussion later this afternoon, but I wanted 

to hit some highlights, in terms of introducing 

the technology evaluation program.

Under the U.S. Grains Standards Act, 

FGIS has the authority to develop a national 

program to improve grain inspection equipment for 

official inspection.

In September of 2018, the GIAC 

recommended that FGIS develop a comprehensive 

approach to identifying new technology priorities 

that may bring improved inspection results, 

greater efficiency, and/or lower cost.

FGIS is addressing this recommendation 

by the GAIC by developing a transparent review and 

approval process for new inspection technology 

that could be used in the official inspection 

system.

The draft user guide that was 

distributed earlier provides the criteria, some 
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of which includes an initial evaluation criteria 

that focuses on need and benefit of a new technology 

for official grain inspection.

Other criteria include detailed 

technical evaluation of the technology. Again, 

specific performance criteria developed by FGIS.

If the technology is approved, it would 

receive a certificate of conformance, which would 

allow for its use in the official grain inspection 

system.

I do look forward to hearing what GIAC 

has, in terms of their review of the user guide, 

later this afternoon.

The next topic I wanted to talk about 

is rice imaging. And that technology? FGIS 

official inspection locations in California, rely 

on a current instrument that has been discontinued 

over ten years ago.

The manufacturer no longer provides 

parts or technical support. So, if the instrument 

were to become damaged or become unusable, this 
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would lead to an increase in time and cost for 

inspecting rice. Primarily, the medium grain rice 

that is grown in California.

We've developed a Federal Register 

notice to invite manufacturers of automated 

imaging instrumentation to partner in development 

efforts to determine broken kernels, whole 

kernels, and milling yield. The FR notice is 

currently going through departmental clearance.

The goal is to have a commercially 

available instrument to provide official 

inspection results at FGIS field offices and 

official service provider locations.

We intend to enter into a cooperative 

agreement with the manufacturer, which would 

outline roles and responsibilities, suitable 

instrumentation, as well as technical expertise 

for instrumental algorithms of calibrations. And 

our hope is to kick off this effort in the second 

quarter.

The third topic is an update on the 
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Mycotoxin Test Kit criteria.

At the end of 2020, FGIS proposed 

changes to Mycotoxin Test Kit performance criteria 

in a Federal Register notice.

In summary, these proposals include 

changing the ranges required for various 

mycotoxins, tightening accuracy requirements, 

allowing test kit manufacturers to participate in 

FGIS performance studies, requiring three readers 

in performance and verification studies, and 

requiring one extraction method for primary and 

additional commodities.

In February 2021, we reopened a comment 

period based on stakeholder request. We've 

reviewed the comments received, and have submitted 

a Federal Register notice for agency clearance that 

responds to those comments.

And the last topic I wanted to update 

you guys on was the progress we've been making with 

LED lighting.

First, we want to acknowledge that the 
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LED field study was conducted in partnership with 

nine official agencies.

The objective of the field study was 

to determine if light emitting diode, or the 

specific LED lamp, and the currently approved 

fluorescent lamp, yield the same results in 

estimating total kernel damage in corn, soybeans, 

and various classes of wheat.

The LED lamps and instructions for the 

study was provided to the participating official 

agencies. The official agencies examined the 

grains under both LED and fluorescent lighting.

The results were then compared with the 

Board of Appeals and Review at the National Grain 

Center.

For this field study, which was a 

subjective assessment of total kernel damage, 

statistical analysis indicates there was no 

significant difference in meeting kernel damage 

scores for all grains. Thus, there was no 

difference between a fluorescent lamp and the test 
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LED lamp.

We did discover the current 

commercially available LED lamps tend to have some 

technical differences, compared to the official 

fluorescent lamps, especially for red and blue 

colors.

Taking a step back, for official 

inspections, our light standards try to re-create 

natural light, based off of 15 numbers that 

correspond with specific colors. For example, the 

fluorescent GE lamp that is currently in use comes 

close to natural light.

The LED lamp shows a different number 

for blue and red, compared to the fluorescent lamp. 

So, there's a gap in these color numbers.

Our next step is to find a way to address 

this gap. We do feel it's important to address 

this gap and the light numbers to ensure consistent 

and accurate grading.

The inspection instrumentation branch 

here at TSD is finalizing the data analysis for 
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a separate study that was conducted at the National 

Grain Center.

This study examined the ability to 

discern specific colors, under both the LED lamp 

and approved fluorescent lamp.

The objective of the study was to 

determine how well grain inspectors can 

discriminate 96 different grain and grain-damage 

colors.

We asked the question, can an inspector 

match the colors seen under a fluorescent light 

with the test LED lamp?

The outcome we're seeking is possibly 

determining a range of color numbers and other 

technical data that would help select future LED 

lamps for considering in the official grain 

inspection system.

As we continue with these efforts, we 

do hope to have additional information to present 

at the next GIAC meeting.

With that, I'd be happy to take any 
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questions. Yes, Mr. Williams.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, sir. Can you hear 

me okay?

MR. JHEE: Yeah. Got you.

MR. WILLIAMS: So, you mentioned that 

there's a gap that you're seeing with some of these 

colors. So, what specifically is your plan to 

address the gap, I guess is my question.

MR. JHEE: Well, right now the other 

study that was conducted was another subjective 

approach of taking a look at various hues and 

intensities of colors.

And they were examined by members of 

both DIOO and the Bar, under both the fluorescent 

and LED lamps.

We're hoping to be able to find an 

acceptable range, in terms of those numbers, the 

numbers that correspond to those specific colors.

If we can find an acceptable range that 

produces no statistical difference between LED and 

fluorescent, we think that there's an opportunity 
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there to be able to address that gap and see if 

there are bulbs out there that would meet these 

types of requirements.

MR. NEAL: Hey, Jim. This is Arthur. 

And I want to highlight the reason why this is 

a concern.

Inspection for, let's say HVAC, or 

looking at corn that may have blue mold in it. 

If there's a difference between the LED lamps 

capturing red and blue, you want to make sure that 

we mitigate any potential impact they could have 

on the official system, and benefits to the 

exporters that's looking for us to make sure 

there's consistency across our grading activities.

So, we want to make sure that natural 

light that we're creating with our fluorescent can 

be as closely reproduced with the LEDs.

MR. WILLIAMS: I understand. Well, 

thanks for that explanation. I appreciate it. 

I have one other question regarding the rice 

imaging.
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So, and you'll have to forgive me for 

not knowing more about this topic, but is this 

machine that you're talking about that California 

uses, is this used in lieu of an actual inspection 

for rice? I guess I'd like to know more about what 

exactly this machine does.

MR. JHEE: It is used in the official 

inspection of rice. I believe, for total broken 

kernels, and milling yield, and my understanding 

is that it produces the time, in terms of being 

able to conduct those types of inspections, which 

obviously would relate to cost, and I think the 

challenge that we're facing is that it's just no 

longer supported by the manufacturer.

And we do understand that California 

has expressed concern that if this machine were 

to break, that there would be an increase in time 

and cost, which would then be parlayed down the 

supply chain.

MR. NEAL: Right. And it's going to 

impact the productivity, the ability to move rice 
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as they're currently moving it.

And we met with rice industry -- I don't 

know, maybe it was last week -- down in New Orleans 

for the Rice Outlook Conference. And in some of 

the production, this piece of equipment doesn't 

yield the same type of benefit, because there's 

so many varieties and different sizes and so forth, 

of rice in southern production, whereas in 

California, rice production is more uniform. So, 

they're able to utilize this type of technology 

there.

And it's that type of benefit we're 

seeking in the rest of our inspection efforts. 

If we can leverage that type of technology and gain 

efficiency, it'll help us too, in terms of 

increasing our time for -- well, it's just a small 

component of what we're doing.

If we can take out a little bit more 

human element and increase our productivity, I 

think it puts us in a better position.

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you.
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MR. JHEE: Janice?

MS. COOPER: Also, a rice-related 

question. I've been thinking about this because 

I drive by the export facility all the time in the 

West Sacramento port. And most of the product that 

moves through that port is rice.

So, you have an instrument that is used 

there. And I think you might have answered my 

question where there was a similar instrument used 

in other regions for rice inspection. And I'm 

hearing no, because of the diversity of rice types 

that are moving out of the Gulf? Is that accurate?

MR. JHEE: Correct. The frequent 

varieties that are coming out of breeding programs, 

the different sizes of the rice, makes it a little 

bit more complex.

MS. COOPER: I see. And then, you 

mentioned that the rice imaging proposal was in 

review and you wanted to try and get that out second 

quarter. Any guestimate on when that might come 

out for public consumption?
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MR. NEAL: Yeah. Definitely second 

quarter. What month, you know, magic wand? I'd 

say January. But you can't hold us to it. It's 

been reviewed a couple of times.

There's questions, there's education 

that goes on. And just like you all are asking 

questions, we're answering questions internally 

too. So, the goal is early second quarter.

MS. COOPER: So, second quarter, it 

starts January 1? Just to keep my fiscal years 

correct. Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate 

the clarification.

MR. JHEE: And once we have the Federal 

Register notice published, we're opening it for 

a certain period of time to allow manufacturers 

to submit proposals to us.

We would then be taking a look at the 

possible technology solutions, and then entering 

those cooperative research and development 

agreements with them, to work with those 

manufacturers, to see if we can come up with an 
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alternative solution.

MS. COOPER: And would you look at just 

one device? Or if you see promising equipment out 

there from multiple manufacturers, would you 

consider more than one, back to the whole

competition in the market question?

MR. JHEE: That's a good question. I 

guess we will find out who submits proposals to 

us.

MR. NEAL: I was going to say, it's 

going to say it's going to depend on what's 

submitted and the ability to kind of move criteria 

that's going to be outlined in the request for 

proposals. And capacity is also a challenge.

The more you take, the more you have 

to -- when you don't have a huge staff. And the 

goal is not to give anybody a competitive 

advantage. It's to work out the 

technology -- what could work -- so that everybody 

can kind of be aware of what could supply or meet 

the need.
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MS. COOPER: Okay, thanks.

MR. KERRIGAN: Arthur, you just 

brought up a key term there regarding capacity. 

And the technology updates. So, within FGIS, as 

has been discussed before, and it's always come 

down to a lack of capacity or a sustaining capacity.

Obviously, the COVID pandemic has 

changed the workplace, obviously with the IT 

document that's coming up a little bit later this 

afternoon, with maybe a little bit more resounding 

push to go with this.

But that capacity piece is still there 

and maybe a little bit bigger because of the 

pandemic, as far as where's staff working, how 

they're able to review, effectiveness, things of 

that nature, to get across that hurdle.

We may be talking about this later in 

the afternoon, but can you talk to kind of how you 

see maybe getting over that hurdle with capacity, 

for some of these technology reviews, on getting 

through that?
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MR. NEAL: Yeah. Well, we're going to 

be hiring. Definitely hiring more staff in our 

inspection branch.

The reality too, is that there's also 

turnover. And so, as you hire, you bring in new 

people, there's still a training time period to 

deal with, which impacts capacity.

I think that how many people we'll have 

to facilitate the reviews, how many folks do we 

currently have in our IT?

MR. JHEE: Not enough. I will say that 

particular units, such as the NIR, the 

near-infrared technologies, as well as like the 

moisture meters and the protein oil analyzing 

plans, they're down approximately five people out 

of eight.

So, there's a significant need for 

active recruitment to able to get this staff fully 

onboard.

So, we do have some vacancies that are 

actually getting ready to be announced, and we're 
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going to try to take some more creative approaches 

at advertising these positions.

MR. NEAL: So, Matt, in short, it's an 

evolving situation. We're going to be hiring to 

build the capacity, as we've lost some. And we've 

got basically an almost new team then, so that 

there -- I wish I had a crystal ball there too.

But what we plan on doing it as we 

receive our requests for review, it's going to have 

to be a queue of what came in first and whether 

or not it's complete in terms of the package that 

was submitted, whether more from the back is 

needed.

The process will be kind of first-come, 

first-served. But at the same time, it's going 

to be whether or not packages are complete.

Some pieces of equipment may be more 

difficult than others. There's a lot of factors 

that's going to impact, quote unquote, capacity. 

It's a great question.

MR. KERRIGAN: Yeah. And I think 
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that's on the can-do-it. And I just want to make 

sure that the department is thinking about that 

capacity piece. Because from obviously an 

industry standpoint, if you're lacking capacity 

or not adding capacity to get through it, the more 

and more you add on, the slower everything goes. 

Right?

MR. NEAL: So, yes, you're right. And 

I will hold my comment. I was about to say 

something. I will hold that for a different type 

of conversation.

One of the things though I want to 

just -- there was a recommendation by the Grain 

Inspection Advisory Committee made in 2018, I 

believe.

We have a $55 million cap that's placed 

on us in terms of our expenditures on grading 

programs.

And then we have appropriations for our 

quality standards development activities, 

international outreach, and out of our inspection 
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review work and methods development.

Our appropriations, the amount we have 

available to us will dictate how much we're able 

to do in terms of hiring as well.

MR. KERRIGAN: And I think that's fair. 

But I'll also point to this facility lighting 

field setting, to where I think everybody -- which 

obviously there's a lot of nuances with that. And 

not to make light of it, of one goes into the 

different shades, the different colors on the 

spectrum there.

But this has been what, three or four 

years in the process. And we haven't moved too 

much off top of the center on finding a new light 

bulb. Right?

And so, when we start thinking about 

other technologies, more complicated 

technologies, I think that's where the concern is, 

is that if we're three to four years in and just 

trying to find an oversimplification here of 

finding a better, new light bulb, what is that going 
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to look like for other technologies that we may 

try and commercialize, put in place, things of that 

nature.

MR. NEAL: Great point. And from 

GIAC's vantage point, you haven't moved off center. 

From FGIS's vantage point, we made a lot of 

progress on this LED issue.

Because initially, there was no field 

study conducted to help us reduce the assumptions 

concerning the difference in grading.

We've gotten that addressed. And the 

only thing now that we want to make sure of, because 

when we approve a piece of equipment, which LED 

light bulbs would be for the official system, we 

want to make sure that we've done it with the data 

that gives the assurance we've addressed outliers.

And right now, reds and blues are 

important because, particularly in the wheat 

industry, if we're judging that red, if the light's 

not capturing red similar to what we're currently 

capturing with fluorescent, and we approved it 
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knowing it, it's just something we want to make 

sure that we've addressed.

So, we're very close. I'll say that 

much. Far closer than what we were when we started 

this conversation when I came onboard in 2019.

We just want to make sure we get it 

right. But I appreciate that and I do understand 

where you're coming from. But I can honestly say 

we're making progress there.

Our goal is to get there. That's our 

goal. We just want to get there right.

MR. JHEE: And to further speak on what 

Arthur's talking about is, I think if we can get 

to the point of an agreeable set of specifications, 

the next step would be what kind of bulb is out 

there.

Any other questions?

MR. NEAL: Any other questions for Ed? 

All right. Well, that concludes FGIS's program 

updates. I will now turn the meeting over to Matt.

We have, I think, done fairly well with 
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time if my clock is serving us correctly.

MR. KERRIGAN: I think you guys have 

done great on time, Arthur. You're really, really 

close to exactly as planned.

We've got about eight minutes here 

extra. Not enough to really start anything else, 

as well as another presentation right after lunch.

It would be my recommendation that we 

break for lunch here. We come back at 2:00 p.m. 

Eastern Time, which is about one hour and seven 

minutes by my clock. Okay? See everybody in a 

little bit. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

went off the record at 12:53 p.m. and resumed at 

2:01 p.m.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay welcome back 

everybody. I'm showing 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 

which I believe, doing the math, is 2:00 Eastern 

Time.

Looks like, Kendra and Arthur, you are 

both here. With that, I'd like to reconvene the 
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meeting. And it looks like, I'm assuming we have 

a presentation by AMS Transportation and Marketing 

Program.

MR. NEAL: Yeah. I see we've got 

representatives from Transportation Marketing. 

I see Jesse Gastelle, Peter Caffarelli, and I 

thought I saw Adam -- yeah, Sparger. I see Adam 

there.

I want to welcome him. I don't know 

if there's anybody else from the team with you. 

But I want to welcome them to the Grain Inspection 

Advisory Committee Meeting. This is their first 

time.

Solid group that represents AMS on the 

analysis of all Ag transportation issues. We 

wanted to bring them in front of the Grain 

Inspection Advisory Committee, because we've heard 

their concerns about rail days, and things of that 

nature.

And this group, I'll let them tell you 

more about themselves, but I'm really proud of 
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them. But this group, they represent agriculture 

shippers on behalf of USDA, regarding all Ag 

transportation issues. And so, we thought it 

would be good for you all to hear from them, what 

they do, the data analysis that they provide day-in 

and day-out. So, I'll turn it over to them now.

MR. SPARGER: Thanks, Arthur. And 

glad to be here with you all today. I'll give just 

a brief overview. I think also, Jesse and I are 

doing a demo of our Ag Transport, if that's part 

of the gen -- okay, so I'll just sort of set him 

up for that. That's kind of the main show. So, 

I'll just be brief in my remarks.

So, I'm Adam Sparger. I'm Director of 

the Transportation Services Division. We're a 

small group, economic analysis. We do Ag 

transportation, covering major modes of transport, 

rail, trucking, barge, maritime shipping, 

including bulk and containers.

We wear a lot of different hats though 

in that role. We provide periodic micro reports. 
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Probably the one you're familiar with is our 

weekly grain transportation reports.

We have several other sort of ad hoc 

and quarterly reports that we do. We also sponsor 

research with academic partners, we do regulatory 

representation on rail, chalk and ocean issues, 

we also do technical assistance and outreach to 

stakeholders.

We serve on a lot of different advisory 

boards across the federal government, such as the 

National Grain Car Council, and then the Water User 

Board.

And we have the Marine Transportation 

System, Rail Energy Transportation Advisory 

Committee, several others.

I guess, going back about six years ago, 

we started looking at a better way that we can take 

all this data that we've collected over the years 

through our reports and our research, and how we 

can put that in the hands of our stakeholders, and 

have a little more impactful use of our data that 
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we've just kind of been either putting out through 

sort of static pdfs, or in Excel files that are 

sort of scattered around on our website.

And we started looking into different 

platforms we could use, and we started using a 

Socrata platform, which is what we used to get up 

and running.

Had to jump through several hoops with 

the USDA, but we finally got it launched in 2019. 

And we did a major expansion of it on 2020. And 

then this year, in 2021, we did a third major 

expansion that's even, I would say, bigger and 

better than it has ever been at this point.

So, yeah, at this point I'll just turn 

it over to Jesse, who's going to kind of see you 

through that. But a lot of the focus in the 

platform is on rail, and probably has some 

hopefully useful things for you all as well.

MR. GASTELLE: There we go. Is that 

better? 

MR. NEAL: Yep.
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MR. GASTELLE: Yep, okay. Sorry about 

that.

I guess I would just start off by saying 

thank you all for giving us your time. We are 

really excited about this platform. We think it's 

a great product for our stakeholders so we are glad 

to get to show it to you and get your feedback on 

it. My plan today has been to just go over some 

of the stuff that we've made and show you what's 

available, and then also cover some of the 

features. 

The thing is I'm not 100 percent sure 

what is of the most interest to you all so my plan 

is to leave, you know, 10 minutes or so for 

questions, but I encourage you if there is 

something you want to see on the platform if you 

have questions, if you want me to slow down or go 

in a different direction, please interrupt, just 

let me know, and we can do that.

I'll start by showing you our homepage. 

You can go to our agtransport homepage at 
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agtransport.usda.gov. Everything that you're 

seeing today, and everything on the platform, is 

totally publicly available. It's all free. You 

don't even have to sign in. 

You can sign in if you want to, and I'll 

show you throughout the demo that there's some work 

you can do on the platform and save your work over 

time so you don't have to keep doing the same stuff 

and it's really cool. But you don't have to sign

in. Everything you'll see today is from like a 

non-signed-in view.

You'll see right at the beginning of 

the homepage we have links to different modal data 

on the platform so we have a number of different 

datasets up here from truck and rail data to barge 

and ocean data. My plan today is to mostly focus 

on the rail data.

As Adam mentioned, we've gone through 

a couple of iterations of this platform, or a couple 

of upgrades. One of the first things we feature 

up here on the homepage is featured content from 
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our latest June upgrade so I think that will be 

an interesting concept to all of you.

Featured further down we have 

dashboards and interactive transportation reports 

shown as well. There's a feature on the platform 

called story and the idea with the story is it's 

just kind of a webpage where we can bring together 

tables and charts that we've made on the platform, 

add some text, and tell a story. We've kind of 

taken this in two directions. 

One direction is towards dashboard 

where it's very text light, a lot of charts. It 

should give you a very quick update into the market, 

whichever market you're looking at, whether it's 

rail or barge or truck. And it's the kind of thing 

you can come back to every single week to see the 

latest data.

Then our interactive reports kind of 

go in the opposite direction. These tend to be 

a little bit slower to update like monthly or 

quarterly or annually. It has lots of text. They 
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tell more of a story, kind of provide a bigger 

picture view of the data and what goes on in that 

aspect of the market. I'll show you one of ours 

from the role of rail transportation.

So let me jump over first to a couple 

of dashboards. The first one I'll show you is just 

our straight grain rail dashboard. This shows 

grain rail data from a variety of different 

perspectives and, again, should just give you a 

quick update as to what is going on in rail.

So the first thing that you see are 

shots of the latest data. On the left we have 

carloading. The little bars here show you like 

what the normal amount of carloadings for that 

railroad for this time of the year. Then the blue 

bars show you what their carloadings were. We can 

see like BN and UP carloadings are quite high for 

this time of year in contrast like Norfolk Southern 

stands out as kind of being a little bit low right 

now.

On the right you're seeing auction 
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market data so this is really useful data for 

indicating like service disruption. If you're not 

familiar with the secondary auction markets, 

railroads will bid railcars out -- sorry, railroads 

will offer railcars out and shippers will bid on 

those cars. 

It's essentially kind of like getting 

FedEx express service when you bid for it so you 

get a kind of like tighter more guaranteed window 

of when you're going to get service. Shippers will 

pay extra for that when they are more worried about 

the timeliness of their railcar deliveries.

We can see again kind of the same thing. 

It looks like BN is sort of on the high end. It 

really looks like UP bids right now are high as 

well so I would suspect that a lot of that is driven 

by ongoing buy chain stuff and shipper concerns 

about the timeliness of their service.

We have more data on carloading. We 

can see like seasonable carloadings. All rail 

loads are pretty high right now like on par with 
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last year when those were really high. We have 

tariff rate data showing the price you're going 

to pay, the publicly-posted price that shippers 

will pay for service in a number of different 

origins and designations.

Then we have a bunch of service metrics. 

I'm going to go kind of quick here because we have 

another service metrics page that I want to show 

you. I just want to highlight that there's like 

maps on the platform and this is one of our -- one 

of those maps. It says terminal dwell time. 

This is like the amount of time that 

your car is going to sit at the terminal yard before 

it heads out to its final destination. Each of 

these dots is sized by the number of hours it's 

going to sit at the station and then it's colored 

by what is an unusually high or low number of hours 

for that yard. 

You can see like the Jacksonville one 

stands out as a big yard, lots of hours. Then also 

it's orange so it's especially high for that yard. 
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There's a number across the country. There's one 

in Iowa, too, that stands out. There's a full map 

that you can explore.

There's other service metrics on this 

page but I want to just jump over to the second 

dashboard here on agricultural rail service 

metrics. This data all comes from the Service 

Transportation Board. It's all publicly 

available, but what I really like about this page 

is the collected data is from railroads every 

single week. 

They collect a ton of different 

metrics, something like a thousand different data 

points they get every week. It's really cool that 

they do that but they don't, in my opinion, make 

it the easiest to get access to and start using 

and visualizing. 

At the very least you're going to have 

to kind of like go through this up-front cost of 

setting up stuff to look at it in a chart and you 

don't want to have to do that every single week 
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when the latest data comes in. 

What we've done is typed this data into 

our platform and made the story page so that you 

can quickly get a sense of what's going on in rail 

service metrics. Again, we have carloading data. 

You can select fertilizer, carloads, or by highest 

in the red line, food and kindred and grain mill.

The other neat thing about this is we 

don't just have ag data up here. We also included 

all the none-ag. Some of that is directly relevant 

to agriculture so we include like the total traffic 

on the non-ag traffic on the rail system. 

Like intermodal is especially relevant 

now to include like coal and petroleum because of 

like the rail crisis that happened in 2013/2014 

when we saw coal and petroleum that had come back 

on the rail line right around the same time so we 

can keep track of those.

What is also neat is that all the other 

commodities are there, two. Each of these charts 

is interactive. If you want, you can choose a 
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different railroad. You can choose different 

commodities. I like to show the motor vehicles, 

as an example. 

Not obviously relevant to ag but it is 

just a good chart to see the effect of the pandemic 

and how bad it was for motor vehicles almost 

immediately. The point being that everything is 

interactive that you can start slicing and dicing 

these charts and data down to the stuff that is 

relevant to you.

So there's lots of metrics here. I 

won't spend a lot of time on each of them but train 

speeds, there's dwell time, the number of cars on 

line, origins dwell time. We saw terminal dwell 

time earlier. 

Another one that's worth mentioning is 

this manifest grain car order fulfillment. This 

is when a shipper puts in an order and the railroad 

hasn't fulfilled it yet it will show up here in 

this data broken out by whether it's greater than 

or less than 10 days that they haven't filled that 
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order.

What is specially neat about this data 

is that it's broken out by state. Otherwise, like 

outside of the platform state-level data is pretty 

hard to deal with because there's just so many ways 

that you can do it. 

What's really cool about the platform 

is, again, you can just filter data down to specific 

data that's interesting to you. Let's say I pick 

Kansas and then we can see that like right now 

Kansas their unfilled orders are actually quite 

high for the time of the year. Sometime to keep 

in mind.

One other thing I mentioned on this page 

is that it does have this global filter that you 

might have seen follow us around as we scrolled 

up and down. What's really cool about that is that 

you can pick a single railroad and it will just 

filter all the charts automatically to show that 

railroad.

For instance, recently we've heard 
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reports that Norfolk Southern having a especially 

bad service. You can see there Norfolk Southern's 

grain carloadings over the past couple months has 

been particularly low and they show a number of 

service metrics like low train speeds recently and 

things like that. Again, it's really easy to just 

dive down to that railroad that is of interest to 

you.

The next thing I want to show you is 

not a dashboard but it's one of the interactive 

reports that I mentioned. Instead of being the 

type of thing that you're going to come back to 

every single week to see the latest data, it's the 

type of thing that you would use to explore the 

rail data and try to get a bigger picture 

understanding of what is going on in rail. This 

one relies 100 percent on the public waybill data. 

If everyone wouldn't mind muting your 

mics, please.

This relies on the public waybill also 
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from the service transportation. Again, like the 

service metrics data, this data is really great 

data. It's transaction level rail shipments so 

you can see things like where a shipment went 

between different regions of the country, which 

commodity was involved. There are hundreds of 

commodities in there. 

The only problem with this data is that 

it's really hard to use. It's a giant data set 

so you have to know how to work with pretty big 

data. Just in general it's hard to read in and 

get to know. 

If you wanted to ask a question like, 

say, how much grain went from two regions of the 

country -- between two regions of the country over 

time, that question could essentially take you 

hours to answer if you just started from scratch. 

Again, what we did is just typed this 

data up into our platform and then made this story 

around it. We look at things like what are the 
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top commodities moving on the rail system. You 

see like corn, wheat, and soybeans there are the 

big ones.

What's neat again is that these are all 

interactive so --

Mute your mics, please.

So you can start filtering down to 

specific like origin destination areas and quickly 

see what's moving between there. There's a lot 

of show you on this page. Lots of things to dig 

into.

One thing that's worth just 

highlighting is we do have maps on here that show 

where ag products go on the rail system so you can 

see like the routes of corn, or you can see like 

where wheat is produced and where it's moving on 

the rail system. Pretty neat. This actually 

comes from S2B and we were able to embed it in the 

platform.

Then there's just a number of like 

trends shown down here so you can see, for instance, 
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shipment distances have gotten longer on average 

over time. We can see like shipment sizes are 

getting bigger and switch to bigger car types and 

things like that. Like I said, the data set is 

huge. You can spend days exploring it and it's 

all very easy on the platform.

So the last story I wanted to show you, 

again not being totally sure if this is relevant 

to you all or not, but it's definitely relevant 

at the moment and very timely. This is our U.S. 

Agriculture Report Profile page. This page is 

cool for a couple reasons. One is that we have 

always done a PDF report of this profiles. 

It was a big PDF with lots of sections 

and each section on the report had a bunch of charts 

in it. You can kind of imagine this data on a big 

PDF may not be the easiest to use. What's really 

cool about this page is that now in one page you 

get the whole thing, the whole PDF report. It's 

just a single like interactive page. 

The other cool thing about this is that 
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the analysts who build this, April Taylor, she 

worked with the data source provider to get a much 

more disaggregated data view than we had ever put 

out publicly before. I think it's actually a 

better view of the data than you'll get -- of like 

container data than you'll get publicly anywhere 

else as far as I know.

So the story starts off with breakdowns 

of like what are the top ag exports and imports. 

Breakouts of like container versus bulk, 

refrigerated versus dry, and the top commodities. 

I want to skip down here to the bottom half that 

gets into the actual report profiles. Again, it 

relies on the global filter that we saw earlier

so you can select any one of these filters and it 

will filter all the charts below it. 

We have breakdowns of bulk versus 

container and the different top commodities like 

how much is moving out of the ports and to which 

designation countries throughout the year. Then, 

finally, like are the top bulk and containerized. 
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I said designation but it could be origin or 

designation because they have both export and 

import.

Again, what's really neat about it is 

we can just pick a port. I'll just pick the first 

one, New York. Then let's say we want to look at 

imports like what is being imported through New 

York. We can see like the top countries, 

origination countries; Brazil, Canada, Malaysia. 

The top export countries -- sorry, top import 

containerized countries, Italy and China. Pretty 

neat. You can see all the commodities that are 

being imported into New York. It's a lot of 

grocery items and things like that.

Again, like I said, I don't think 

there's any other data set out there that's 

container related that is this aggregated. The 

platform itself makes it really easy to slice and 

dice through all the different ways of seeing the 

data. It's really cool.

So moving on from stories I wanted to 
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show you some of the features of the platform, just 

things you can do on it. The first one is that 

you may have noticed this blue bar following us 

around. One thing to mention here is there is a 

lot of how-to content that we've put up here. 

Some of it is just general stuff like 

what the platform is and how it works. Some of 

it is very specific like how do you sort the 

datasets, how do you create a map, things like that. 

If you're using the platform, I think you'll find 

all of that very useful. 

There's another link on here to the data 

catalog which is the page we're looking at now. 

The data catalog is essentially just an 

interactive list of all the stuff that we have on 

the platform so it makes it really easy to find 

anything that you're looking for, and maybe even 

things that you didn't know you were looking for. 

You can filter down to the modes like 

if you want to look at rail data. You can filter 

just specific types so if you just want to look 
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at the data that we have, you can filter the 

datasets. You can filter just charts. 

You can see just maps or just the 

stories. We've also created some tags down here 

and a bunch more that you can filter to try to 

capture other aspects of the data like performance, 

or grain, things like that.

Then you can just search the page. If 

you search by rates, you'll see the first thing 

that comes up is vessel rates. Maybe that's what 

you're looking for. What's really cool about it 

is that it also shows all the other rate data that 

we have so you can quickly get kind of an overview 

of all the rate data that's available. It makes 

our data, I think, really easy to find.

Once you do find the dataset that you're 

looking for in the data catalog. That link will 

take you to what is called the meta database. As 

an analyst, I think this is like the coolest thing 

on the platform. 

The meta data page is just a way for 
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us to provide descriptions of the data. You will 

see like general information up here, what's in 

this data set. You'll find like links to other 

things that are using the data around the platform. 

You'll find information about the source and how 

often it's updated. 

You can contact me if you have questions 

about this dataset. There's definitions of all 

the columns. To me that's like the best feature. 

There's nothing worse than finding a dataset you 

think is useful to you but then you don't know what 

some of the -- one of the variables or the data 

mean. This page helps us preemptively answer 

those questions and avoid some of those 

frustrations.

From this page you can start creating 

your own visualization. Maybe you like one of the 

carloading charts that we made but it's not exactly 

the way that you wanted to view it. From here you 

can quickly start building your own stuff so it's 

really easy to say I want to look at like carloading 
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over time.

Then, very quickly, you can see like 

carloadings, all the carloading data that we have 

over time. This is all carloading so maybe you 

want to filter it down to a specific commodity like 

grain. Again, that's all available and really 

easy to do.

There's really a lot you can do with 

these charts like adding in different groups. 

There are different kinds of charts that you can 

make from bar charts to histograms to also maps 

which is really neat. I always think of mapping 

as being like the purview of like special GIS 

analysts but if it's GO coded data, then you can 

make a map from the platform. That's pretty neat.

Like I said, you can sign into the 

platform. To create an account you just need an 

email. Once you've created an account and signed 

in, then any work that you make on the platform 

like, say, a chart that you make here, you can save 

and publish, if you want, or just save.
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Then that way when you come back to the 

data a week later, your charts will be updated with 

the latest data that we've put into the platform 

so you never have to make it again and you always 

see the latest thing.

Once you've made a chart, or maybe you 

just really like one of the charts that we've made, 

it's really easy to share stuff on the platform. 

You can send somebody this link to the chart page, 

or you can click this little share button down here 

and it will give you another more consolidated link 

to the page. Then you can also embed the chart 

into pages around the web. 

Some of our customers have like grain 

newsletters, for instance. What they've done --

what we' seen them doing is embedding the chart 

into their newsletter so that then their customers 

also have an interactive chart and it's something 

that stays up to date over time and it's super easy 

to do. Very convenient and then we get traffic 

back from it. Very easy to share.
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Then the last thing I want to show you 

is just this data page. If I back up a little bit, 

go back to the meta data page, all you have to do 

to see this page is click the view data button. 

It will take you to this data set page where you 

kind of get this view of how the data is structured. 

It looks like a spreadsheet, like a flat file. 

There's a lot that you can do on this page.

I want to show you two things. One is 

the filtering and roll-up capabilities. You can 

really easily start adding filters to this data 

set and customize it to things that are relevant 

to you. We're looking at the carloading data. 

Maybe you don't care about received carloading, 

you just want to look at originated. It's really 

easy to create a filter and just look at originated 

data.

Maybe you only care about the grain 

data. Again, it's really easy to filter out all 

the other stuff in there so that you have your 

customized originated grain table just for you. 
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Again, it's same as the visualizations. Once you 

are signed in, you can save all that work so that 

your custom table is saved over time and you never 

have to rebuild it.

The other thing to show you on this page 

is the expert tab. This tab applies whether we're 

looking at a custom data set that you've made for 

yourself whether it's one of the datasets like our 

raw source data. All the datasets come with a lot 

of options for exporting. You can export it in 

pretty much any format you want, but there's also 

geospatial formats if it's geo-coded data. 

Even better, I think, is that the 

platform comes with odata endpoints. If you use 

Excel or Tableau or something like that, like a 

similar software, they often accept an odata 

endpoint. Like with Excel instead of downloading 

the data from our site and then loading it into 

Excel and having to do that again every time that 

you want to see the latest data, just give Excel 

the odata endpoint and Excel will automatically 
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bring in the latest data average when you open up 

the workbook. 

It's crazy convenient. I have access 

to the data. Some of these data are on my shared 

drive for work and it's easier for me to go to the 

site and use the odata and tweak them to like read 

the data in correctly. 

That's how convenient it is. Then the 

other -- the last thing to show you is just that 

every data comes with an API. If you're not 

familiar with API it's a programmatic way of 

interacting with the data. In this case it's kind 

of like a sequel query. 

It makes it really easy to like 

automatically type the data into, say, like 

statistical software, if that's what you're 

wanting to do, or maybe like NICA web app or cell 

phone app or anything like that. Again, this 

applies to all the datasets on the platform, 

whether ours or a custom one you've made. They 

all come up with the API endpoints so it's pretty 
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neat. 

So we've seen through all this like the 

stories and the visualizations and sharing and the 

data catalog. We've made our data much more 

useable, much more shareable, much more 

discoverable, much more accessible or, as we like 

to say, much more USDA.

In general we just think -- all jokes 

aside we think this is a really cool platform. 

We're really excited about it and it's gotten a 

lot of great feedback so we're really glad to get 

to show it to you and we're looking forward to 

getting any feedback or questions that you have 

in the next few minutes.

MR. SINNER: Jesse, I've got a 

question. You alluded to, you know, all the issues 

going on with intermodal. That's a big issue for 

us. You briefly demonstrated the loadings on a 

port basis. Can you filter that down to an IPI 

or inland ramp basis? And how do you extract that 

data?
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MR. GASTELLE: I'm not sure I'm going 

to answer the question exactly right. You can 

filter the data down to the port level but I don't 

think you can filter it down to like a terminal 

or a ramp.

MR. SINNER: Like a Minneapolis ramp 

or a Chicago ramp. You can't filter that down?

MR. GASTELLE: It would be more --

these ones would all be like export and import 

ports.

MR. SINNER: Okay. 

MR. GASTELLE: I don't think we'd have 

anything on Chicago or --

MR. SINNER: Okay.

MR. GASTELLE: If you did want to 

export the data, there's a number of different ways 

you could get to the page. For instance, from the 

story, we could follow the view source link. For 

me right now that's the easiest way to do it. 

The other way would be to go through 

the data catalog. From here I showed like you can 
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export through the data page. You can also just 

export here. It will give you like a CSV really 

easily for connecting PIs and things like that.

MR. SINNER: Thanks.

MR. GASTELLE: Sure.

MR. KERRIGAN: Jim, go ahead with your 

question.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. Hi, Jesse. 

Hey, they is Jimmy Williams with Missouri 

Department of Ag. I appreciate you showing us this 

platform today. It was really interesting, but 

I have a question. Has there been any analysis 

been done to look at timeliness of shuttle train 

arrivals?

For example, you know, just looking at 

the initial ETA and then capturing the actual time 

of arrival at customer locations.

MR. GASTELLE: We haven't done any 

analysis like that sheerly for lack of data, but 

we are very interested in following along with 

ongoing STV, proceeding right now looking at first 
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biometrics. 

Personally I'm hopeful that some kind 

of data like that will come out of the proceeding 

that will track things like on-time arrival. As 

far as I know, it doesn't give us any publicly 

available data like that.

MR. WILLIAMS: Let me follow up with 

another question. I don't mean to put you on the 

spot. If you don't know, it's fine, but why is 

it that the railroad companies in this country are 

so reluctant to share realtime data with their 

customers? 

You know, the reason I ask that is I 

was doing some research a couple weeks ago and I 

saw that in Europe, for example, railroad companies 

do this routinely. I mean, I went to 

-- I visited the French National 

Railway Company. I went to their website and I 

was able to pull up all the trains that they have 

going on right now. 

I could see all those trains in real 
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time. Obviously I'm not a customer. I'm just, 

you know, just part of the public and I was able 

to access that information. I just wondered if 

you have any idea or any thoughts on why that 

information is not more readily available.

MR. GASTELLE: No. Honestly I have no 

guess. To be honest, I thought shippers did have 

some access on some railroads to be able to see 

and track like where their train was but I'm not 

sure. We certainly don't have any kind of access 

like that to data. 

The railroads wouldn't share it with 

us so it's a little unclear to us whether like the 

expense when they share if it occurs at all. I 

don't know. I don't know why that data is not more 

readily available.

MR. SPARGER: I'll add to that. We've 

always added in our comments that we do the Service 

Transportation Board on behalf of ag shippers for 

more transparency in the data. Like every chance 

we get we're always making that comment. It is 
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a problem. 

MR. NEAL: Jesse, Adam, are there any 

-- are there any requests that you would have of 

the Grain Inspection Advisory Committee to help 

you in your work as you file comments and share 

perspective with the Service Transportation Board 

on behalf of ag shippers?

MR. GASTELLE: Yeah. I think in 

general we feel a little bit -- we're like at 60,000 

feet and these comments on first mile and last mile 

are very much on the ground. It's sometimes hard 

for us to know exactly what kind of data would be 

most helpful for shippers. We have in mind some 

general ideas about like what was mentioned before 

like on-time arrivals and measuring how delayed 

trains are and things like that.

Certainly those would be helpful to us 

and like being when disruptions show up, but 

hearing more from shippers about what kind of data 

would be useful to you and what the railroads can 

provide either directly to you or through the S2B 
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that would help you -- well, two questions. That 

would help you, but then also we would like to know 

how it helps you and how to use that data or our 

data to make decisions. Yeah, I would just love 

to hear from you.

MR. NEAL: One of the things I'm 

hearing is that perspective on impact to operations 

that are relying on rail would be helpful for you 

guys in view of your economic impact of these types 

of data gaps and delays. 

Say, for instance, if Jimmy's got 15 

employees and he's got to pay them overtime, and 

things of that nature, because they are at a 

location waiting for rail but two months at a time 

the rail cars are delayed by six hours, that's 

costing him X amount of dollars. Having that 

insight is helpful is helpful to you?

MR. GASTELLE: Yeah. I guess I 

picture it being helpful to know what Jimmy, in 

this case, would be looking for in data. Right? 

What does the -- what kind of data would be most 
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helpful to him like specifically we have lots of 

data on light train speeds and things like that 

so we know in general that those don't capture the 

kinds of like first-mile and last-mile issues that 

Jimmy is facing. How exactly to capture those 

issues in data would be really helpful to know.

And just in general I think as issues 

show up, just letting us know that they are there. 

It's not that we can typically do a whole lot about 

it right away, especially if we don't have data 

that we can use to like back it up in a letter, 

or something like that, but just knowing that those 

issues are happening would be helpful.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, absolutely. 

That would be great. We'd be happy to provide some 

additional insight into what's going on. For the 

last 12 months our department we've kind of been 

doing our own little research projects for the last 

12 months looking at shuttle trains and how often 

the arrival times change.

Over a 12-month period that ran from 
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September 20th -- I'm sorry, September 2020 to 

September 2021 we tracked all the shuttle trains 

that we worked in our program. According to the 

data, nearly 80 percent of the time, eight out of 

10 trains, the ETA changed. The time of arrival 

changed.

Start times actually changed multiple 

times 70 percent of the time. I mean, there were 

many cases where, you know, the arrival of the 

train, the time that we were told to report to work 

changed five or more times. I mean, it's 

definitely a problem. Again, we'd be happy to 

provide some additional insight if that would 

ultimately lead to better information for the 

entire official grain inspection system.

MR. GASTELLE: I would also encourage 

you -- I mean, it's kind of last minute now but 

the STB does have their ongoing first-mile 

last-mile data, like a supplemental notice of 

proposed rulemaking, where they are asking for that 

exact kind of information, what kinds of problems 
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our shippers are facing, like how can they capture 

that in data. 

It's last minute because it's due the 

17th, I believe, so Friday. I would -- I am certain 

they would really appreciate that kind of data. 

It would be really useful and really useful to 

us, too.

MR. NEAL: I think Chad had a question 

at one point.

MR. CHAMBERS: Yeah, I did. Thank 

you, Arthur. 

Chad Chambers. So I was going to ask

a couple -- actually, one of the questions, or 

statements, that Arthur made and then that Jimmy 

followed up with. I'll keep it very general. I 

don't want to point a finger at a certain railroad. 

It wouldn't do any good. 

In my experience over, I don't know, 

eight different states, different locations, every 

major railroad, it seems there's a common theme 

where there has got to be accountability at the 
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higher level because when there's limited 

opportunity for competition where you are only 

served by one railroad, you've got one option.

If you don't like it, then don't use 

it. That's kind of the attitude. There's got to 

be higher accountability where you at least do what 

you say you're going to do. There's got to be some 

reliability. If I'm unloading a shuttle train and 

I don't get it done in a certain amount of time, 

I don't get the incentive. I don't get this. I 

get docked. I get so much per car. I get merged. 

If it's the other way around, I'm just 

stuck with 12 guys paying the overtime and waiting 

to work and it's very much a one-way street. 

Again, it's not a bashfest, it's just I think it's 

an industry-wide frustration that I see manifest 

and not improve over the course of a 25-year career 

in agriculture. Again, there's got to be 

accountability at a higher level where just because 

I only have access to one railroad doesn't mean 
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I shouldn't get the same service.

MR. GASTELLE: Yeah, I would say this 

certainly isn't the first time that we've heard 

very similar complaints so I would -- I definitely 

don't think -- I definitely agree it is a 

system-wide issue. I would encourage you -- so 

there is a number of proceedings going on in the 

Service Transportation Board right now that I think 

are really relevant to these issues. 

There's the first-mile last-mile data 

one just tracking these issues. But they also have 

the proposed like small rate case arbitration 

procedures that could potentially -- we think other 

shippers have been supportive of some of like the 

final review process. 

Those proceedings are also holding like 

a competitive switching proceeding in March. You 

mentioned the merge issues. I think like the 

National Grain and Feed and a couple other super 

groups have one right now on being able to charge 

the railroad itself fees when they hold their --
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when their cars don't move for the same reason, 

right? 

The railroads always say like they 

charge to merge to shippers and shippers don't move 

the cars because it's to maximize the efficient 

use of the railcars. But shippers now are saying, 

well, what happens when the railroads don't move 

the cars and they just sit on the rail system? 

Shouldn't we be able to charge fees to 

the railroad because we want to maximize each 

railcar. That's another proceeding that's going 

on at STB right at this moment. They accept 

comments from the public so the more that shippers 

go in and say these are the problems we're facing. 

I think more of that needs to be done.

MR. CHAMBERS: Perfect. Thank you 

very much.

MR. SPARGER: Chad, I wanted to ask you 

mentioned you hadn't seen any improvements in 

20-some years, but in the past four or five years 

have you seen it actually getting worse with like 
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PSR? That's just a general question. Maybe the 

whole group here on the call, have you seen service 

deteriorate or --

MR. CHAMBERS: I think the 

deterioration in service, I would say, is 

localized. I'll use UP. There are locations we 

would have excellent service with UP. When I was 

on the West Coast in PNW working in Portland, that 

was one of the worst terminals I ever worked with. 

Norfolk Southern, again, I've had very 

good and very bad localized. Some of the best work 

we've had as far as partnerships have been short 

lines. Obviously that's a little different issue, 

a little different beast, but they are usually very 

willing to work with us, very willing to help 

accommodate the transfer of cars from mainline to 

us. 

I don't know that I have -- even Texas 

Gulf it was the same thing. It's just not been 

reliable. I don't know that it -- I guess to answer 
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your question, Adam, I don't know that I could tell 

you there was a marked change one way or the other 

in the last five years. 

I can just tell you that as a whole, 

I've never been overly impressed with rail service 

and it's just kind of been -- it's the anti-Burger 

King. You don't get it your way. You get it their 

way.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thanks for sharing 

that.

MR. GASTELLE: Also anti-McDonald.

MR. CHAMBERS: Roger that.

MR. KERRIGAN: Any other questions for 

the AMS team?

Thank you very much for the 

presentation. There was a lot of good 

information. Obviously it's something that we 

have all noted whether internally or externally 

and, you know, being able to find some of the 

information a little bit more readily is great as 

we all just talk and discuss trying to find options 
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for improvement. Thank you.

MR. GASTELLE: Thank you all for your 

time.

MR. NEAL: Thank you very much.

MR. SPARGER: Thanks for having us.

MS. ENGEL: Very good presentation. 

Thank you. 

MR. SPARGER: Sure. Thanks for having 

us as well. Arthur used to be our boss when he 

was over in Transportation Marketing so always glad 

to see him. He's been a big supporter of our group 

and our platform and everything.

If any of you have questions in the 

future, please feel free to reach out. We lot to 

talk transportation and rail issues so I'm always 

happy to connect with stakeholders.

MR. CHAMBERS: Adam and Jesse, I want 

to add that doesn't take away from the website. 

I do really like that page.

MR. SPARGER: Thank you.

MR. GASTELLE: Thank you all.
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MR. SPARGER: We'll sign off now. 

Thanks.

MR. KERRIGAN: Moving on to the next 

agenda item here. We have a couple of industry 

issues we would like to discuss. The first one 

up goes back to FGIS regarding the -- we mentioned 

this just before lunch -- the Proposed Technology 

Review Process. I believe that there's a draft 

document out there regarding trying to formalize 

the review process.

Arthur or Dr. Jhee, I'll turn it over 

to you.

DR. JHEE: Thanks, Matt. I'm hoping 

that you were all able to take a chance and review 

the document. It was a collective approach in 

terms of all of the senior leaders here at the 

Technology and Science Division kind of putting 

their thoughts together on what would be a 

transparent, yet thorough, approach in terms of 

evaluating new instrumentation and new 

technologies that could be used in an efficient 
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system. 

It's by no means final. I think part 

of the public input process was definitely to get 

input and information from GIAC in terms of how 

we could further refine this process, but also make 

it robust enough that it would add value to the 

industry.

MR. NEAL: So at this point, Matt, the 

time is designated for the committee to kind of 

discuss the draft that was shared and have dialogue 

around the contents and kind of generate feedback 

for us.

MR. KERRIGAN: Sorry about that. Does 

anybody have any initial comments here before we 

kind of get into a couple of these sections? I 

don't want to hold anybody up who has had a chance 

to review this draft on the committee. 

Not seeing any hands moving furiously. 

One question I had is it seems to be very, I won't 

say poignant, but more -- it seemed to be a user 

guide for manufacturers to submit items. 
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Will this be a similar process, I guess, 

if FGIS chooses to review something on their own 

to go out for submission? How would that actually 

work or am I reading too much into it, I guess, 

by being a user guide for manufacturers?

DR. JHEE: Really good question, Matt. 

One of the things that we discussed internally 

was given an opportunity where the agency 

identifies a need that is non-existent or needs 

to be replaced in the industry, we should, and will, 

follow this process as well in terms of being able 

to address what the purpose and need is.

I mean, I think if there is a void in 

the system or if there's something that needs to 

be addressed in the near future, we already have 

kind of a need and we would probably want to engage 

GIAC and other stakeholders in terms of what kind 

of value it would bring. At that point it would 

be working with the manufacturer or organization 

to be able to collect the data, the 

technically-based data that the document 
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describes. We would sort of follow the process 

ourselves. 

I think something similar to that would 

be -- what I mentioned earlier about the rice 

imaging technology. There is a difference, 

though. What we're looking for with the rice 

imaging technology is more research and 

development in order to see can we get something 

from R&D to fit for purpose. 

When we get to that transition of fit 

for purpose for use in the industry, then it kind 

of starts meeting all these criteria in the ITE 

process. In a nutshell that's just kind of what 

our position is with that perspective. Does that 

help, Matt?

MR. KERRIGAN: Yes, it does. Yes, it 

does. 

DR. JHEE: Also with that, I mean, the 

Section A really is -- what I go to which is that 

in this review criteria, which is a lot of the meat 

of it, to where the manufacturer providing the 
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information and data was really where that question 

was driven from because, you know, on who creates 

that. It's not manufacturer driven but need-based 

with that. Thank you.

MR. KERRIGAN: You can see this also 

as almost a living document, but obviously I don't 

know if those are allowed in the government process 

but given that this is, you know, new technology 

obviously and is ever evolving and different 

criteria would change. 

If this is adopted by the agency, how 

would that work as far as review and update if, 

like I say, as you get into this if there are changes 

that need to be made, is this a pretty set in stone 

type of document or is this more of, I don't want 

to say on the memorandum side, but open to 

interpretation just to make sure that it's not too 

lose that certain manufacturers can skirt the 

system but not too tight that it's impossible for 

the agency down the road to actually adhere to it?

DR. JHEE: Good question. I'll 
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probably turn the second half of my response over 

to Arthur. Matt, to your question, I would 

perceive this being sort of a living document. 

Following, I guess you would say, the 

Administrative Procedures Act, I think our next 

step is to go out with notice and comment in terms 

of the overall structure and content of the 

document itself. 

I would say once we get to the point 

of implementation, we will probably learn new 

information and new ways to take a look at these 

criteria looking at some of the specifics such as 

quality control, calibration and standardization. 

We did our best to capture what we thought would 

be the critical information at this juncture. 

We may be able to make amendments to 

the document, you know, version two, version three, 

etc. I would probably foresee us going through 

the FR notice process to make sure that the 

public's aware of identified areas of improvement.

MR. NEAL: And so one of the topics of 
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conversation that we're having with general 

counsel is kind of process what goes into the 

Federal Register. Also, what goes into the 

regulations because I want to make sure that this 

document is living and that we -- as we learn 

through this more transparent process, if 

adjustments need to be made, we can do those. We 

can make those adjustments in a transparent way 

with everybody knowing.

However, we also want to maintain some 

level of flexibility where it doesn't take us two 

years to make the change. We're trying to balance 

that out right now so I can't tell you exactly how 

it will be and look but we're trying to make sure 

that it's a living document where changes are made. 

Those changes are not done without full knowledge. 

It's a level of engagement. We're working all 

of that out through conversation with general 

counsel.

MR. KERRIGAN: Obviously, you know, 

the initial discussion kind of talking about the 
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pandemic, you know, world of future state. How

do we look at staffing, how do we look at items 

and work with them, but then also think about 

everything that comes into play with everything 

from LED light bulbs to computer systems and things 

of that nature.

Do you feel that this is too focused 

on the act of grain grading and less on some of 

that supporting technology, or do you feel that 

this document has the flexibility for all 

encompassing technologies, I guess?

DR. JHEE: Great question. Tim 

Norden, if you're on the line as well, feel free 

to open your mic. My initial gut feeling is that 

we tried to write this document so that it would 

be as much all-encompassing as possible in terms 

of being able to address the flexibilities that 

are going to be needed in terms of the evaluation 

process, and then ultimately making sure, as Arthur 

said, we are consistent in the way we approach these 

types of processes, evaluation processes. 
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Tim, that was kind of the approach that 

we took in piecing this together, right? We wanted 

to make sure that we didn't box ourselves in. We 

wanted to make sure we didn't box the manufacturers 

in as well.

MR. NORDEN: Yeah. So we did try --

so if you look at section 4, you'll see additional 

requirements for specific technologies. In that 

section we tried to include everything. 

If you see something in here, you know, 

we are certainly interested in feedback but when 

you talk about things like sieves, manual sampling 

devices, test weight, you know, things like that, 

a lot of those things are approved by dimensions 

and specifications that we already have and they 

are already documented. 

But if you see something in here that 

we've missed then, of course, we really want to 

hear about that but we did try to include everything 

we could think of.

MR. KERRIGAN: And more of where my 
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mind goes, you know, especially after reading 

section 4, this thinking about the barge storage 

inspection cameras or, on the export side, the AWMS 

systems, there is a lot of technology that goes 

into that that is part of the overall system that 

requires significant manpower and significant 

cost. 

As that technology is changing so 

quickly, even on the industry side, you know, 

having that flexibility to be able to adopt new 

items because of either the potential savings or 

just because everything else is outdated and at 

the end of its service life to keep what we have 

running.

MR. NEAL: So I think I hear where 

you're coming from and that's a great question. 

Official grading equipment versus some tools that 

we may use such as a camera for storage exam, are 

they the same thing is kind of what I'm hearing. 

Or should they be considered in the same manner. 

Great question. 
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I think the process we've used for the 

storage exam pilots -- Tony, you all correct me 

-- may be a little bit different than 

kind of official equipment and inspection, actual 

grading component, that was there. What do you 

think about that?

MR. GOODEMAN: Yeah. I mean, it's not 

like we put the camera in and then it gives us a 

green check or red X if it was pass or fail. It 

was really just the inspector using that as an aid 

and the inspector was making a determination based 

on what they saw in the image. 

I don't know if that answered the 

question. But, yeah, it's not like they put the 

machine in there and it did something and then it 

said "bing" you know, you get the green light for 

pass. That would be nice.

MR. KERRIGAN: I'm not saying that it 

should or shouldn't be in this document. I'm just 

more asking if it is or not in this document, right?

MR. NEAL: Great question. Great 
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question. Clarity can be provided there.

MR. NORDEN: So I think that in that 

case, what Ed described earlier in terms of 

research and development, I think it falls right 

there because it was something that didn't exist 

before and it's not quite fit for purpose so there 

needs to be some development done. I think it's 

slightly outside this process so FGIS would 

identify it as a need and then we would work on 

that need to make it happen. But it wouldn't 

quite, I guess, fit in this process.

MR. KERRIGAN: Understood.

Any other comments or questions 

regarding the document at hand from the committee?

MR. AYERS: Yes. Dr. Jhee, David 

Ayers with Champaign, Illinois. When they brought 

up the topic of scales, last year I believe they 

came out with a new scale that was self-calibrating 

and was much more accurate than what our weights 

would allow us to check custom for. 

We actually bought some and sent them 
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back because we couldn't use them. Is this 

included in this document, something like that? 

I know FGIS bought some, too, and they were having 

a problem check testing them.

DR. JHEE: Right. That's a good 

question. Maybe Tony and folks from FMD can help 

chime in as well, but I think what Tim was 

mentioning earlier in terms of Section 4 of this 

document, you know, we've got policies and 

processes currently in place for scales, for 

testing of scales and test weights as well so that 

would probably fall within existing processes. 

Tim, it kind of falls under Section 4, 

right?

MR. NORDEN: No, I agree. I mean, so 

the scales need to hold that NTEP certificate of 

conformance. I think there's some work going 

backwards to try to make everything harmonized and 

aligned with all of that. I think once that's 

taken care of, I think that issue will be solved.

DR. JHEE: Does that help? Dave, 
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you're on mute.

MR. AYERS Thank you.

DR. JHEE: Oh, sure.

Thanks, Tim.

MR. KERRIGAN: Jimmy, I think you had 

your hand up there?

MR. WILLIAMS: Yes. So I have a 

question regarding No. 3 when it talks about the 

process summary. So when I read the paragraph it 

sounds like -- correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds

like as far as what the process actually looks like, 

there's the initial evaluation that will be 

conducted by FGIS. 

Then following that there's a more 

detailed evaluation by FGIS. Then the 

manufacturer would presumably need to provide 

validation data backing up the fact that this 

product works. Then FGIS has to verify that the 

data is accurate. Then after that there's a 

certificate of conformance that would be issued 

if the data was verified. 
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I guess my question is during the 

initial evaluation would it be possible for FGIS 

once they've done the initial evaluation to see 

what they're looking at, would it be possible for 

FGIS to then provide a time table to the 

manufacturer and say, look, we've looked at this 

-- we looked at the preliminary information and 

we determined that we can -- you know, the detailed 

evaluation will take X number of days.

Therefore, you will need to submit your 

validation data by this date. Then we're going 

to take so many days to verify. I guess, again, 

what I'm asking would it be possible for you all 

to provide some kind of time table so that it's 

not just kind of broad? Does that make sense what 

I'm asking?

DR. JHEE: It does. It does. I 

understand where you're coming from, Jimmy. I 

think one of the challenges that we will probably 

face in the near future once this program is 

implemented is what is the specific type of 
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technology, what is the purpose of the instrument. 

For example, is it an instrument? Is there --

are we comparing a new instrument to something 

that's already deployed in the field? 

What we foresee is somewhat of a fluid 

and interactive process between the agency and the 

manufacturer in terms of data collection and 

information transfer, and then being able to work 

with the manufacturers to come up with an 

acceptable time frame by which we also balance our 

internal resources to make sure that we're doing 

a thorough validation and verification process. 

I don't know if I can answer your question about 

can we say X number of days.

MR. NEAL: Yeah, and just kind of 

chiming in. Because this is fresh, Jimmy, I think 

it's going to take us getting into it first before 

we can really estimate what that looks like 

considering it's going to be such a potential broad 

deviation between the types of instruments we're 

looking at, and the level of engagement that may 
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be required to get what we need as we're starting 

out. 

The number one goal, though, is to 

ensure that we're communicating with the applicant 

so that we've got clarity and expectations once 

we've had an opportunity to receive and renew their 

submissions.

MR. WILLIAMS: Understood.

MR. KERRIGAN: Ms. Cooper? Oh, I'm 

sorry.

MS. COOPER: I have a couple of 

questions. Some of them might be a little bit kind 

of too far out there to even answer.

But, kind of -- well, first of all, let 

me say I'm of course thrilled with this initiative. 

Something that the Committee has been in favor 

of for a long time.

And I think this really brings us 

forward a lot. So, I want to certainly let you 

know that I have a positive reaction to it.

Arthur has stated today and in our 
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meeting here in the PNW a month or so ago that the 

FGIS recognizes the need for automation to help 

address future staffing issues.

So, have you as an agency, as you 

develop this, and maybe I've missed it in here 

already, but as you develop this -- this set of 

guidelines, did you actually look at kind of the 

A to Z of all of your operations and identify areas 

where automation would be particularly helpful or 

desirable?

In other words, do you have kind of a 

target list for pinch points?

MR. NEAL: So, short answer, and it is 

a little mixed. Earlier efforts by FGIS and Lee 

Capper let some of this, and we looked at FGIS kind 

of operations in ways, you know, we can kind of 

automate some of our functions to increase --

increase efficiencies.

However, from a systemic inspection and 

weighing perspective across the entire efficient 

system, we do not have a short list of areas where 
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we need or either would like to start.

That's why we want to engage industry 

around that conversation, because we have to have 

agreement one, that this is where we want to focus 

attention.

Any time you're talking about 

modernization and technology, it costs money, of 

which right now, our reserves are already low.

So, it will limit what we'll be able 

to do FGIS wise. But, from an industry standpoint, 

if you can focus on something that we know is 

realistic, we may be able to discuss and figure 

out a way how to accomplish that within a reasonable 

amount of time.

So, that's a mixed answer to your 

question. But the short answer is no, we do not 

have a short list.

MS. COOPER: And then kind of looking 

at a more specific point in the process, again 

referring to Section 3 on the summary of the 

process. 
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If a company receives a certificate of 

conformance, then it allows for its use. But, is 

there a process to make that information available 

broadly through the system?

In other words, let everybody know that 

this technology has been approved. And then 

thinking of the example of falling number and 

shake-o-matic.

For years, the official system allowed 

both hand shaking and the use of the shake-o-matic, 

ultimately as you know recently required the use 

of shake-o-matic.

So, is there a thought if the new 

technology or a new device, if there is one, really 

improves the accuracy of the testing?

Is there a thought that that new 

technology might become a requirement in the 

official system? Or just an option?

MR. NEAL: Another great question. 

I'm not the scientist, but from a practical 

standpoint, and Dr. Jhee and Tim, I think that as 
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we look at granting certificates of conformance 

and then implementation, that there will have to 

be some discussion around implementation and 

what's best for the official system.

And similar to any rulemaking and 

standard development that occurs that require 

massive changes across an entire industry, that's 

typically a transition period.

So, things like that will probably have 

to be discussed as we're looking at implementing 

a potential new piece of equipment that may improve 

efficiency or productivity. Things of that 

nature.

So, I think all of that will be 

considered in this process. But, I'm going to, 

you know, this is hypothetical talk right now. 

We've not gotten that far.

But, Tim and Dr. Jhee and others --

MR. JHEE: Arthur, I think you're on 

the right track there. You know, there's going 

to be a number of variables in terms of what sort 
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of grace period there would be, or implementation 

period there would be.

I would foresee engaging the industry 

in terms of what kind of impact there would be. 

And then adjusting the time frame of 

implementation based on that impact.

One of the impacts could be cost. It 

could be really cost prohibitive at the very 

beginning to purchase and to implement a new 

instrument for official grading.

So, we have to respect that as well, 

in terms of, you know, we can't just flip a switch. 

I think that's the issue.

MR. NEAL: And there's an assumption 

that it would be required. It may not be required, 

but a permissible instrument.

An instrument that's allowed for use, 

but not necessarily required for use. So, it could 

vary.

But, whatever the resulting decisions 

may be, and whatever issues we're trying to 
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resolve, is going to dictate that implementation 

practice.

MR. JHEE: And then alongside, I think 

Janice to close out the back half of your question 

was, you know, after certificate of conformance 

is issued, how do we communicate that?

And we could go a number of ways. We 

could go notice. Not necessarily notice and 

comment. I don't know what it would take, or what 

kind of notice we would go.

The other one would be what we normally 

do in terms of issuing a policy issuance, such as 

a program notice or a program directive.

It could be part of that type of roll 

out as well. A number of directions.

MS. COOPER: And if I could just make 

one -- one final comment on kind of the role of 

the industry.

Often, I think what is going to come 

forward, is technology that is being used 

unofficially for internal streamlining of testing.
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So, does the -- do the guidelines, I'm 

sure they allow for it. But, do they encourage 

that kind of input from industry so that you can 

benefit from experience in the private sector with 

some of these potential devices?

I just want to make sure that industry 

is being fully engaged in any evaluation process. 

Because, you know, customers know whether 

something works or not.

And I think that would be valuable 

input.

MR. NEAL: Right. Right.

MR. JHEE: Well, so --

MR. NEAL: Well, let me just -- and this 

is a short answer. So, one of the criteria that 

we're putting out there, is a proposal has to 

address need.

And so need, I believe, is going to be 

tough to demonstrate if you don't have industry 

input on the need for whatever it is you're 

proposing to evaluate. Because it's industry that 
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has to use it.

So, industry will definitely have 

input. Should have input on whether or not there's 

a need for the piece of equipment.

Also, through the process, we'll be 

sharing what we've received and asking industry 

for additional input on what's been requested. 

Because we don't want to waste our time and 

resources on reviewing something that industry 

does not feel we have a need for.

Because resources of time are a 

valuable commodity right now. And we need to make 

sure that we have agreement.

Ed, you were going to comment. I 

apologize.

MR. JHEE: No, no. You got it. That 

was it.

MR. KERRIGAN: Hey Chad, I believe you 

have your hand up?

MR. CHAMBERS: Yeah. It maybe cart 

way before the horse, and a rabbit hole.
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But, I'm just curious, especially with 

foreign buyers, do they care how we arrive at the 

grades, as long as the grades are accurate?

MR. NEAL: Interesting question. I --

so, let me step back. We govern ourselves 

according to the U.S. Grain Standards Act.

And so what we do and how we do it, we 

do according to standards that are agreed upon by 

this industry.

How negotiations occur with foreign 

buyers, we facilitate those kinds of dialogs in 

partnership with Foreign Ag Service and things of 

that nature.

But, and ultimately, most countries 

agree that -- agree to the official system that 

we employ here in the United States. 

There may be conversations that go on 

around other topics around, you know, such as what 

we were talking with registrations and things of 

that nature, that could impact the flow of exports.

However, for the most part, if our 
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standards cover the inspection and weighing of the 

commodities, typically we don't have much of an 

issue with our processes.

So, for us, we want to make sure that 

what we do, and how we do it, is in accordance to 

the grain inspection standards.

And that includes whatever pieces of 

equipment that we use, they have to be approved 

in order to be used in the official system.

MR. CHAMBERS: Excellent. No, I'm all 

for being pioneering and efficiency and use of 

technology.

I just didn't know if that had been 

asked or if we'd even gotten any feedback or input. 

Or if it even mattered as long as we approve of 

it as a whole, and it meets the -- the standards.

MR. NEAL: Thanks for the question, 

Chad.

MR. KERRIGAN: Any further questions 

on this document?

(No audible response.)
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MR. KERRIGAN: I'm assuming that given 

the comments that you don't -- aren't looking for 

anything formal.

I was more an industry discussion as 

far as checking the pulse for your next move for 

potentially putting out there for comment after 

revision.

Is that correct?

MR. NEAL: Well then, it does not have 

to be anything formal. But, if there is any 

feedback from the Committee as a whole, we 

appreciate that.

And this is our opportunity to engage 

the Committee around this, and just was a 

recommendation. But also, just to have a broader 

discussion about the process.

So, if the Committee feels like, you 

know, there's no need for anything formal to come 

to recom -- you know, by way of recommendation, 

that's fine.

But, this is an opportunity by, you 
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know, by which we could have this dialog, and the 

Committee could discuss the document and share 

whatever feedback they wanted to collect, if they 

so choose.

MR. KERRIGAN: Well, you --

MS. COOPER: Would it be --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Sorry, go ahead Janice.

MS. COOPER: Well, I just wondered it 

would be helpful to have a recommendation just 

endorsing the process and encouraging you to move 

forward expeditiously in making this happen?

I don't know. If that would be 

helpful, and if that's allowed under our rules, 

I certainly would be in favor of that.

MR. NEAL: It is. It is helpful, and 

it is allowed.

MR. JHEE: I would think that it would 

be helpful, especially in terms of what our next 

process may be in terms of getting this plan out 

for notice and comment.
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MR. KERRIGAN: Well, it would be my 

recommendation that we take that discussion up 

tomorrow and hope that we have a quorum that could 

potentially make a recommendation.

Otherwise, we'll be sitting here, I 

don't want to say wasting everybody's time, but 

using everybody's time without an outcome.

MR. ENGEL: Matt?

MR. KERRIGAN: Yes?

MR. ENGEL: This is Curt.

MR. KERRIGAN: Yes?

MR. ENGEL: I believe that we should 

make a recommendation. From the contents of this 

document and in the conversations that we've had, 

this is, at least to my knowledge, new ground.

And I think this group should be 

commended for the work that they've done. And this 

is a difficult proposition to maintain the 

integrity of the system as it is today.

You know, it takes a great amount of 

rigor to, you know, not allow any of it to be 
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compromised.

And what I read in here, and I've read 

this and it causes me as many -- well, it causes 

me to ask as many questions as it provides answers.

But, it does -- it does appear to me 

to be a platform that is flexible enough to, you 

know, encourage the innovation we've been talking 

about, and do it in a manner in which the industry 

and the suppliers can provide some of the 

direction, some of the answers.

And engage a little competition to see 

if people can then come up with a better solution. 

So, I really like it.

MR. KERRIGAN: Thanks Curt. Okay. 

Well, I think we will -- we will definitely add 

it to our discussion tomorrow.

Like I say, it is going to depend a 

little bit on making sure that we do have a quorum.

But again, because the GIAC did have 

some support recommendations from a couple of years 

ago, I think that we do have a basis that we can 
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start from for motioning that support as well.

MR. JHEE: Thank you. Appreciate it.

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. Anything else on 

this topic?

(No audible response.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. With that, we'll 

move onto another industry discussion that we've 

talked about a couple of times regarding Average 

Inspection Flexibilities.

Really, we've been discussing not only 

in the GIAC, but I think we also touched on it again 

at the PNW forum here a few weeks ago.

And you know, there were a couple of 

comments here today that actually piqued my 

interest a little bit, being the one to bring this 

up a little bit.

You know, what this is really about is, 

you know, the handbooks that are out there, and 

as they're worded currently, there are some 

customers that request grade requirements that do 

not fit either the average or the cusum, depending 
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on the specification.

That then requires the loading facility 

or shipper to use what we would call elevator 

instructions, to watch the outcome of the grade 

from the official agency.

And then kind of self-regulate whether 

it fits within -- in those guidelines. And that's 

what started this initial discussion.

You know, there was a lot of discussion 

about, you know, can we -- can we get our customers 

to do one or the other?

And I think that if we could, we 

probably would have by now. I will -- I will also 

point to the comment that Byron made, you know, 

even about Japan and corn BCSM.

You know, that they aren't really happy 

with it. But they didn't really want to pay for 

number two, they really wanted to pay for number 

three, right?

And so I think that -- that kind of ties 

into what's at stake here. Right. Is -- it is 
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some of our customers are looking for something 

that is in that middle ground.

That doesn't really change the actual 

grading or the integrity of the grade. But, more 

how it's been reported to the -- to the loading 

facility.

You know, either what could come into 

play with that is also, is there a reinspect process 

depending on what -- if there was something that 

was changed in the handbook.

If it was just an indication or flagging 

system to have an extra set of eyes on it, because 

most facilities have had times where lots have made 

it aboard the vessel that -- because they met the 

definition of the FCIS handbook, but not what a 

customer was asking for.

So, there's been a lot of commentary. 

As far as what the back story is, last time we 

spoke I think there's also several handbooks that 

this would -- could potentially touch, and several 

sections as well.
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And it's kind of still out there for 

discussion, I guess if, if there's an easy way. 

If there's any thoughts back from FCIS, how the 

rest of the Committee or industry thinks about the 

actual need for continuing down this process.

So Tony, I guess I ask on FCIS' behalf 

if you'd like to make some -- some kind of initial 

comments, and if you've had any more thoughts on 

this as well? 

MR. GOODEMAN: Yes, definitely. I 

appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

So, when we had spoken last time at the 

PNW matter, or last meeting, we talked about a 

couple of the options.

And one of them being just trying to 

have some guardrails in place, or flags, or alerts, 

for everybody involved, including the loading 

elevator and staff, so they know if one of these 

self-imposed limits might have been exceeded. And 

having some -- somewhat initial conversations with 

Lee, our Chief Innovation Officer.
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My dad was in the car business for a 

lot of years. And he'd go to the auto auctions 

all the times.

And if there was a really rough car that 

would come through, we really -- the local 

auctioneer would say, ladies and gentlemen, 

there's nothing wrong with this car that money 

can't fix.

And so, it is very possible, very 

possible to make a modification to our inspection 

testing and lane application, ITW, and I suggest 

online.

To make it flag, or turn a different 

color, or put an asterisk by things that are off 

or different, you know, outside different limits, 

but not necessarily eligible for material 

portions.

That all is certainly feasible. But, 

it sounds like that would be a pretty big change 

to the software, and therefore a cost and priority.

And so that's -- that's the initial 
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take. And Lee can help correct me if I'm way off 

base there.

But, it unfortunately wouldn't be an 

easy fix or a setting change or something like that 

upon our -- on our initial review.

So, a couple of the other things, and 

so that warrant more discussion, you know, 

depending on the impacts and the priority and the 

interest in the industry, you know, pretty broadly.

The second thing is, it doesn't look 

like -- it doesn't look like most folks use, you 

know, sublot to exceed.

And it seems like the average and then 

elevator maintained. You know, sublot limit is 

-- is preferred.

And that's okay. But, that could be 

a potential benefit, is if you went, you know, 

sublot to exceed like in some of the examples. 

And heat damage, if you want to have an average 

of zero but no sublot to exceed .2.

You could potentially set it up as, no 
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sublot to exceed .2, and then you at least have 

the option for a reinspection if you exceed that 

limit.

Now, you'd still have to then maintain 

in the average of zero. But, -- and these are 

probably things that folks have experimented with 

before.

On the protein side, kind of the same 

deal. If you do have a no sublot to exceed, you 

are eligible for re-inspections if you violate 

that.

It's just if you go straight average, 

you're not, because if it's average, it would say 

it meets the loading plan requirements and moving 

on.

If there's anything else that we're 

missing as far as the displays in the ITW program, 

ITW application, as far as showing an average, or 

running average.

Or, if there's any more outreach or 

education we can do on options, or what -- how the 
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system works as far as, you know, when a sublot 

is loaded aboard.

Or, how the calculations are -- are 

entered, or when the calculations occur, we can 

certainly do that.

We'd be happy to do any kind of more 

training our outreach or look and see how the 

current system is reporting.

Also, on the -- wheat of other class, 

so there was some discussion about wheat of other 

class where like a subclass.

We do allow average quality on those 

things. And that originated from, you know, not 

wanting to have an entirely different subclass of 

wheat being loaded once.

You know, if you have like for western 

white wheat, if you already loaded enough club 

wheat to have an average of like 15 or 18 percent, 

and all you're looking for is 10, you get to the 

last couple of sublots, you don't have to load any 

of that club wheat on there.
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And if you didn't want to have different 

classes or subclasses of wheat going onboard in 

those cases.

However, the example you provided was 

for 25 percent western white wheat, where the limit 

is 10, that I think from a policy standpoint, we 

might be able to look at more closely.

Because while you could have some 

variability, so long as you're meeting the 

subclass, you know, again the intention behind that 

restriction was so that you don't have a bunch of 

different classes or subclasses all throughout the 

ship.

If you want to have some flexibility 

within a subclass, I think -- I think we might have 

some room to work with there from a policy 

standpoint.

But, that's the initial take. And 

those are the things I wanted to report out on, 

is the potential challenges, because of the way 

the system -- the program is designed.
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It would be a pretty big change in order 

to have any kind of flags or alerts built in, aside 

from the -- what we have in there now for material 

portions.

Second thing was, the opportunity for 

any kind of outreach or training on the program 

itself. We'd be happy to do that. That's 

something we are very open to.

And then thirdly, receptiveness on the 

subclass average within the subclass. And I do 

want to defer to Lee if I messed up on the quick 

take on ITW.

MR. CAPPER: No, that's correct, Tony. 

I mean, it's a -- if we start maintaining multiple 

sets of criteria about the specific factors that 

we're not currently set up for.

And quite frankly, we would need to 

understand how would then collect that information 

in a more rigorized way. Currently the load order 

process is fairly nonstandard.

And so there's a lot of interpretation 
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required by APHIS personnel in even how to 

configure our systems based on how these load 

orders come in.

Perhaps as we may explore in the future 

some more standards there, there might be an 

opportunity to include this type of input as some 

of that information we might collect.

MR. KERRIGAN: That was actually going 

to be my next question. Is, obviously as the 

systems age and while the policies behind it don't 

change quite that frequently.

But, I mean, is there a known plan to 

upgrade or update so that that's on the horizon 

for the Agency in general?

Whether it be just system maintenance 

so that we could, you know, that this could be 

something added to, or that we could discuss at 

that time, versus a one off to shoot for?

Or is that more of an ad hoc on a major 

need basis?

MR. CAPPER: I'll defer back to Arthur. 
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But, just due to kind of the financial constraints 

that we have with the use fee cap, we've not been 

able to employ and pursue, you know, enhancements 

that we would otherwise have considered.

And we've had to table a lot of internal 

initiatives just due to that.

MR. GOODEMAN: But this -- and 

something that I learned just talking to Lee, like 

we were talking a little bit about buckwheat 

earlier.

So, that's like adding a count for 1,000 

grams for buckwheat. That's a very, very minor 

change.

I think Lee and his team did that, you 

know, in a matter of minutes or hours. And it's 

going to be pushed out in the next routine update.

This is beyond that. This would be a 

more substantial programming change. It would be 

much bigger.

MR. NEAL: And so Matt, just from an 

internal perspective. Any changes to our IT 
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system at present, we've undergone a lot of changes 

inside of USDA regarding what we can do internally 

to our IT system.

It has to go through full blown board 

reviews and things of that nature. We have to have 

a dialog about what that is. What it would look 

like. What type of resources would it take.

And as Lee mentioned, because we do have 

the use of fee cap, right now we wouldn't even 

probably be able to take on any new type of 

developmental projects that relate to IT, because 

they're already really at the cap as it pertains 

to just covering service, providing services.

We will definitely have a conversation 

about it. And figure out what's kind of the best 

course of action to address if we can.

MR. KERRIGAN: So, I can appreciate the 

type of change being -- being an export lead for 

two major AWMS systems.

The certifications and what that takes, 

to not only do the initial write, but all the bench 
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testing and then follow through of, you know, the 

system itself.

You know however, I will, you know, just 

kind of point out that these type of automation 

updates, you know, is something that we in the 

industry see.

And when we talk about technology 

enhancements, you know, just on the grading side, 

you know, it's these types of enhancements on the 

backside that have a similar, if not larger impact 

as well on manpower going forward.

And if you get too far behind and then 

the update gets so big, right. So, like I say, 

I definitely can appreciate it.

I actually figured honestly, Tony, that 

this was going to be the first comment 18 months 

ago when this topic came up, because you know, in 

discussing with others it seemed like it was likely 

a technology, I don't want to say a hindrance, but 

system capability items more so then the handbook, 

as we had originally discussed.
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You know so, it's not an item that 

happens every day. But, you know, like I said, 

I'm willing to back down from it because of the 

limited times it's used, other than just the, you 

know, when updates are needed.

That is a big concern on my end about 

the, you know, how -- how the Agency and Department 

is going to view enhancements, you know, and the 

technology going forward with the previous topic 

that we just talked about.

Is that there's some big limitations 

there. And it's not getting any cheaper any time 

we do anything.

MR. CAPPER: We can certainly keep this 

as part of an overall requirement request going 

forward. Especially as we talk about, you know, 

we have done some initial work on standardizing 

the collection for load orders.

And so, accounting for this wasn't part 

of that. And we can certainly include it in our 

plans.
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And, as we engage with you on our future 

there, you know, and different priorities, we can 

certainly speak to that then.

MR. KERRIGAN: Yeah. And --

MR. CAPPER: We would also like to move 

forward. We're just kind of hamstrung.

MR. KERRIGAN: Hey, like I say, I know 

what -- I know the costs. And I know how difficult 

it is.

I mean, like I said, of being on the 

opposite side of trying to get a system that 

conforms, right. You know, there's a lot of moving 

parts to it.

You know, and like I said, I'm a little 

bit surprised, you know, by the lack of consistent 

load orders across facilities.

And it's something that I probably 

hadn't thought about, you know, just in general 

as part of that notice.

But absolutely, I appreciate it. 

Anybody else --
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(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. CAPPER: And this --

MR. KERRIGAN: Have any discussion? 

Oh, I'm sorry Lee, go ahead.

MR. CAPPER: Just one final thing. 

So, we are -- extra has considered part of the 

national script lens restructure.

And so, all these changes go through, 

you know, critical infrastructure boards and 

reviews. And we recently completed a, you know, 

DHS review of our system.

And so, there's a lot of kind of 

security certifications that go along with these 

systems as well.

And so, you know, as we go forward 

through these different steps, those will also, 

you know, take place in the future as well.

But, we did go through that process. 

And there were not any critical findings recently.

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. While we're 

actually talking about this, and we are on a little 
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bit separate issue to this.

But, in just kind of talking about the 

AWMS program, export facilities. You know, as far 

as the system as a whole, are we expecting any, 

any other changes when you talk about the actual 

infrastructure of the system? 

Either to the regs, the application 

requirements, things of that nature?

MR. GOODEMAN: I don't know if Ryan 

Seapy is on here in our policy staff. So, we had 

a couple of folks that were very much involved in 

the automated wing program, Nelson Buck and Lima 

June, both of them retired in the last several 

years.

We did replace -- replacement of that 

for now. Ryan Seapy, he's an engineer that was 

actually a grader before coming to the policy 

staff. He was out of our League City office. He 

now resides in New Orleans, in the New Orleans area.

The program and the requirements are 

probably stale. So, I don't want to say that, you 
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know, there's no changes coming. I don't think 

there's anything eminent.

We're looking at, you know, we've got 

a few outdated directives like close circuit 

television systems. The Wang handbook is going 

through a routine update.

I think we're pretty cognizant of the 

fact that if we do make any changes there, that 

they're pretty high impact.

We also want to make sure that the 

existing systems are functioning properly and are 

sound and are secure.

So, I think that's where our focus lies. 

Again, I would defer to Pat or Ryan. But, I think 

-- I think we'd want to make sure our existing 

systems are working the way they're supposed to 

and that they're secure.

MR. SEAPY: Tony, this is Ryan. Do you 

want me to -- you said it all or?

MR. GOODEMAN: Yeah, especially if I'm 

way off base.
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MR. SEAPY: Yeah. That's pretty 

accurate. Right now we're just, you know, getting 

everything -- making sure that we're following 

everything that's currently established and set 

in place.

There are some pieces of the automation 

that weren't -- we weren't like 100 percent 

following the guideline as states.

So, we're working on getting those all 

really dialed in, automating some of it where 

possible, so that we don't have to be relying on, 

you know, people checking it every 12 hours.

We need to actually have an automated 

system do that for you. Once that's in place, 

there's some things that we're looking at.

But, nothing -- no solid plans for any 

updates other than just getting everything really 

dialed in and reducing issues as they currently 

happen.

MR. GOODEMAN: The only thing I could 

see coming up is like if an elevator made any 
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changes. And any of those changes were not in 

agreement with the current instruction.

It might feel like a big change if we 

were to come out and did review or noticed something 

and said hey, this isn't -- this doesn't comport.

And you say, oh, this is a big change 

and a big upgrade that we have to do. But, I hope 

we won't see much of that.

I hope I answered the question.

MR. KERRIGAN: Yeah. And like I say, 

it was more of a, you know, just trying to make 

sure that there wasn't anything on the Department 

side.

MR. GOODEMAN: No.

MR. KERRIGAN: Because as was said, 

when you talk about funding to --

MR. GOODEMAN: Right.

MR. KERRIGAN: To change a system 

across the board, you know, it's one piece of 

software.

MR. GOODEMAN: Yeah.
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MR. KERRIGAN: But, you know, we are 

obviously undertaking, you know, that piece for 

each facility. Which turns into, very easily, a 

multimillion dollar endeavor, you know.

MR. GOODMAN: Right.

MR. KERRIGAN: Anybody else from the 

Committee have any questions on this discussion, 

issue as discussed?

(No audible response.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Pretty quiet group for 

66 people being on here. So, we will -- we will 

move along then.

Arthur, do you want to keep moving on 

given that public comment is next? Or do you want 

to take a short break?

We're about right on time. Any 

thoughts?

MR. NEAL: I would assume folks need 

some type of bio-break or something. We can take 

a break and then re-engage for public comments.

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. Let's take 17 
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minutes here if we can. And let's come back four 

o'clock eastern time, please. Thank you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

went off the record at 3:45 p.m. and resumed at 

4:00 p.m.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. I appreciate 

everybody coming back. We're now onto the public 

comment section of our agenda.

I see that we have 56 participants 

anxiously awaiting to -- to discuss, well, I guess 

whatever topic they'd like to for that matter.

Kendra or Arthur, is there any way we 

want to do this, as far as do you have a set of 

comments that's been received?

Do we go with a simple hand raise? How 

would you like to proceed with this?

MS. KLINE: I haven't received any 

requests to address the Committee. Usually they 

come to me, and I haven't received any.

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay.

MS. KLINE: So, I don't know, Mr. 
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Chairman, if you want to open up the floor for any 

comments?

I mean, it's your right to do so.

MR. KERRIGAN: We've got a little bit 

of time here. I just thought I'd ask, is if anybody 

on here would like to address, if you have any 

comments, raise your hand within Zoom.

I'd at least offer that opportunity up.

(No audible response.)

MR. KERRIGAN: Wow Arthur, you have 

done a tremendous job over the past year of 

addressing everything that everybody has had a 

question about.

MR. NEAL: Wait a minute. No, that's 

not the case. I think, you know, it's a process. 

You know, folks probably do have questions.

It's just some questions have been 

asked and there are -- there's still answers 

waiting to be, you know, conveyed.

And so, you know, I think it's just that 

-- I think at least we're communicating.
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MR. KERRIGAN: That's a fair 

statement. Anybody else on the Committee have any 

topics that would like to discuss during this time?

MR. FRIANT: Matt, this is Nick. And 

I was thinking about this earlier during the --

during the technology review process.

And I wasn't real sure if it was 

appropriate. But, I had noticed that it looked 

like previously some technology providers had been

on the call.

Is this an opportunity for any of them 

to make -- share thoughts on the technology review 

process?

If any of them have thoughts that they 

want to share.

MR. KERRIGAN: I think they can. I 

don't know that they've seen the document at this 

point though.

MR. FRIANT: Okay.

MR. KERRIGAN: That would make that 

difficult.
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MR. NEAL: We did post it along with 

the agenda --

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay.

MR. NEAL: On the website.

(No audible response.)

MR. NEAL: I think that the good thing 

about it, is that this won't be the only time people 

will have an opportunity to see it and -- and 

provide input on it.

MR. KERRIGAN: Okay. Well no one --

oh, Jimmy?

MR. WILLIAMS: I just had a question. 

So, is the purpose of this discussion this 

afternoon to talk about what resolutions the 

Committee wants to put forth tomorrow?

Or are we going to have more discussion 

along those lines tomorrow?

MR. KERRIGAN: So, what I was going to 

suggest is we don't have our quorum today. And 

that there's only a couple of recommendation, 

potential items here that we talked about, was to 
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wait to see if we had a quorum tomorrow to further 

that.

Because if we don't have a quorum 

tomorrow, I don't want to say it's a waste of time. 

But, there's nothing that we can do in that public 

setting to actually make a recommendation.

So, that was going to be where I was 

going to go with it. Is you know, this is good 

for open discussion for a potential question with 

FDIS, you know, with the Agency and other members,

maybe topics that we want to get out in the open 

to -- for potential future agenda items for 

instance.

And if nothing, my recommendation was 

going to be to -- to break, or I guess, further 

adjourn for the day, and see if we can call to order 

tomorrow to go through recommendations if we have 

a quorum.

Okay. Well, hearing nothing, that is 

my plan, is to adjourn the meeting for the day. 

We have scheduled another full day tomorrow, 
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coming back and calling to order at 11:00 a.m.

Where we will discuss one of the items, 

the FDIS FDA MOU discussion that the subcommittee 

had worked on a recommendation already.

We have another potential 

recommendation out there regarding the support of 

the ITE document as well. And any other 

recommendations that may have come out of 

discussion earlier today that I have not noted.

With there being no further comments, 

we'll adjourn and we'll see everybody tomorrow.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

went off the record at 4:06 p.m.)