WASHINGTON, D.C. (RFD NEWS) — The House version of the Farm Bill has cleared committees and is now waiting on the sidelines for a floor vote before it heads to the Senate, where ag lawmakers are eager to begin their work to finish the legislation and push it over the finish line.
Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) told RFD NEWS that he is proud of the bipartisan work so far and hopes to see full passage soon.
“There are a lot of key components in here that will really help, especially when it comes to opening more markets, more trade ideas in here,” Rep. Feenstra says. “Also, the safety for food. There are a lot of different nutrition issues when it comes to safety, and then also the Farmland Act protecting the farmland in America and Iowa, which our foreign adversaries aren’t buying. So, you know what? I think we’re going to get bipartisan support on the House floor to pass it. We’ll probably get 15 to 25 democrats, and that will be enough to get it over to the Senate.”
House officials hoped to get the Farm Bill to a floor vote by Easter, but so far, nothing has been set in stone.
Senate Ag Committee chair John Boozman says he is eager to debate the House Farm Bill. As senators await that upcoming House vote, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), another member of the Senate Ag Committee, is talking with farmers in her state of Michigan about what they need from the cornerstone bill.
“I’m not going to ‘B.S.’ farmers. I’m glad we have the House Ag bill, and we have a draft — it’s a real concrete thing,” Slotkin said. “I’m on the Senate Ag Committee, and we’ve been pushing for the better part of a year to get a draft, and we haven’t seen one.”
Sen. Slotkin assured farmers that stakeholders have never been more crucial in crafting Farm Bill legislation. Since the beginning of the year, various ag groups have been visiting with lawmakers in Washington to discuss sector-specific concerns — from boosting domestic demand for U.S. grains markets and protecting farmland from data center expansion to increasing ethanol production to reduce dependence on foreign infrastructure and oil.
“This is why it’s so important that farmers come in, you know, on these Farm Bureau trips and actually pound the pavement in D.C., because nothing is more compelling than farming organizations pushing,” she said. “We need a farm bill desperately. We shouldn’t have to live off year-long extensions that were written, like eight years ago, at this point. So, I don’t want to ‘B.S.’ you into thinking we’re on the edge of passing a Farm Bill when we’re not.”
Slotkin said she’s joining farmers to champion issues such as year-round E15, fertilizer costs, labor issues, and demanding more relief for farmers struggling with last year’s losses.
Her advice to farmers is to make more noise about issues like fertilizer instability that citizens outside of agriculture, including lawmakers, need help understanding.
“People are just starting to feel how the fuel prices are going up, but the price of fertilizer and the instability in the price of fertilizer is more of a hidden issue unless you’re a farmer, unless you’re someone who does the planting,” Slotkin said. “So, it’s really important to be banging pots and pans on that issue and, you know, demanding some help and relief from the White House. They gave relief on oil, right? They removed Russian sanctions on a bunch of oil. They should be looking for creative solutions on fertilizer and working to bring this war to an end as soon as possible. We need to expose this issue to the public so that they understand what the average consumer is feeling from the price of gas. It’s nothing compared to what our farmers are about to feel in planting season.”
Sen. Slotkin also disapproves of the Administration’s handling of immigration policy at the expense of farm labor, which she said is an issue she recognized as a much larger issue after speaking with farmers about their concerns.
“Michigan farmers really helped me understand the labor issue years ago at this point, and I was really happy to see the freeze,” she said. “We have to be able to afford the labor that comes and works on our farms. That’s just normal bake sale math. The thing I’ve always felt is that farmers all want to pay decent wages to their workers, but they need the workers to get in quickly without the process being so onerous. And then they need to be able to afford the labor that they hire. [...] We’re not doing anything to increase and ease up legal vetted immigration to make it easier for people like farmers to bring people in to have them come and work on their farms to give them some confidence that if they play by the rules and do everything right, they don’t have to have so many regulations and so many fees and so many things. I’m a big believer that we need more legally vetted immigration in this country, and until we realize that, we need an immigration policy that actually works.”
