Farmers, agri-businesses, and lawmakers are all eager to see Congress pass the next Farm Bill.
Senator John Thune out of South Dakota says the industry deserves the certainty of a five-year bill.
“We need to get a five-year bill in place, people in production agriculture need certainty. You can’t just operate on extensions of the existing bill, you know, with time for reset, things have changed. You had way higher input costs, fuel, fertilizer, interest rates are are significantly higher. So the average farm loan out there, they’re paying a lot more and servicing that debt. And you got, you know, weakening commodity prices. So we need attention to that and to making sure that we have good policies in place.”
Senator Thune thinks the focus of the Farm Bill should be strengthening the producer safety net.
“The Farm Bill ought to be about farmers, and unfortunately, too often that Democrats here, at least in the Senate, are making it about issues, like climate, environmental policy, the nutrition title.”
Congress has until September to either extend the 2018 Farm Bill or pass new legislation.
