One of the two Western members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, New Mexico Democrat Ben Ray Luján, took his time on Agri-Pulse Newsmakers to stump for language in the farm bill that would aid producers in drought-prone areas.
Luján and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., have introduced legislation to change USDA’s “one in four” prevented planting rule to “one in five.” Currently, land must be planted, insured, and harvested in at least one of the four most recent crop years to qualify for prevented planting payments.
“That one-in-four rule is actually punitive to producers across the west,” Luján said on the show.
He said it “works for places where they get a lot of water and it's a little wetter. Not so much in places like New Mexico or in the west where we have drought conditions, even in a good year.”
The bill would require the Risk Management Agency to create a “one in five” rule that would apply to producers “in counties and contiguous counties experiencing three continuous years of D3 (extreme drought) intensity in any area of the county at any time during the normal planting period as measured by the U.S. Drought Monitor,” according to a summary of the bill.
The latest farm bill will be the third that Luján has worked on during his time in Congress. The first two were while he served in the House. Congressional leaders recently agreed to what is effectively a one-year extension of the current farm bill, but still face a difficult road toward completing a bill.
Also on the show this week was Tara Smith with the Torrey Advisory Group. Echoing Luján, she said education of new members is important to the passage of a farm bill.
“I think the ag community overall has done a really great job of reaching out to those new members, building those relationships, getting them on farms and making sure that they understand the key issues,” Smith said.
One concern Smith has, however, is that many key lawmakers are in toss-up races. Going into 2024, she said a bill needs to be passed sooner rather than later to prevent an entirely new Ag committee from having to restart the process.
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“I think as you look ahead, though, if this does get to 2025, we could find ourselves right back in that same situation,” she said.
Mike Lavender of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition was also on the show to discuss the potential timeline for farm bill completion.
“I don't think the election year itself is going to be a driving factor in whether we do or do not get a farm bill,” Lavender said. “I ultimately think it's going to come down to whether we can get a strong bipartisan bill out of the House of Representatives.”
The full discussions with Luján, Smith and Lavender can be viewed on Agri-Pulse.com.
