Reference prices are the driver for Farm Bill holdups

Lawmakers have been back on Capitol Hill for more than a week and there has been little progress on the new Farm Bill. Ag policy leaders closely watching the situation say a big holdup has been talks around reference prices.

Jonathan Coppess with the University of Illinois says the largest hurdles center around budget projections and spending requirements. The Congressional Budget Office is having a hard time projecting these costs but Coppess says that is because there is no way to know where crop prices will be in 10 years.

He tells Brownfield Ag News that something needs to happen soon in order to meet the September deadline, when the one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill expires.