As the farm bill debate approaches 2024, a key House Agriculture Committee member is calling for increasing the reference prices that can trigger payments to farmers under the Price Loss Coverage program
Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., says on this week's Agri-Pulse Newsmakers that “the current reference price for the majority of our commodities does not reflect the increased cost of farming today.”
Farmers with eligible acreage receive PLC payments when the average annual market price for a commodity falls below the commodity's reference price.
As chairman of the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities, Risk Management, and Credit, Scott has received plenty of comments on reference prices. The issue is "the primary thing that we hear [about] from producers," he says.
Many Republicans, including Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, have argued that reference prices must be addressed in the next farm bill.
“I'm not for anything that guarantees a profit, that's bad for good farmers and good farmers know it,” Scott says. “But if reference prices don't move, then they effectively provide no stop loss assistance for our farm families at this stage.”
Also on the show this week are Jessica Schulken with the Russell Group and Robbie Minnich with the National Cotton Council. The two speak about several issues facing Capitol Hill right now such as crop insurance reform, farm bill funding and another looming government shutdown date.
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Schulken talks about the failed ag appropriations bill from September and what that means for the funding process now going forward.
“I can’t think of another time… where you actually had appropriations bills fail on the House floor by a pretty significant margin,” Schulken says. “That bill looked very different when it tried to go across the House floor from the bill that came out of committee.”
The full conversations with Scott, Schulken and Minnich can be viewed at Agri-Pulse.com.
