With Farm Bill 2023 talks well underway, farm groups are speaking up with their priorities. The National Corn Growers Association notes that many of the House Ag Committee members have not been through the Farm Bill creation process before, and with many new members in Congress, there could be challenges.
According to NCGA’s CEO, Jon Doggett, “It’s going to be very difficult. We are going to have to work at it, but we were pretty fortunate in the ’18 Bill. I think we got a lot done, mostly that was we tinkered around the edges, but the 2012-2013 and 2014 Farm Bill took a long time, and a big part of that was arguments about SNAP, and it does us no good to just go ahead and fight this to a draw. We need to help feed people in this country. We do it on our farms, we also need to do it in the halls of Washington by making sure that there’s adequate funding for the SNAP program. Those folks have been our friends, we want to keep them our friends because we have a good relationship with one another.”
He says that Titles One, Two, Three, and Eleven are the primary concerns for corn growers, but he notes that crop insurance is the biggest topic his colleagues are talking about for the new Farm Bill.
Senator Amy Klobuchar says that she believes the existing Farm Bill is a good template for the next one with improvements to disaster aid, crop insurance, and select dairy programs. She says that she is hopeful the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the Senate that included $20 billion dollars for conservation efforts, will help ease funding for the 2023 Farm Bill.
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