Despite a looming government shutdown amid talks to secure another continuing resolution, as well as upcoming elections, Congress needs to make sure it passes a farm bill this year, says the leader of the nation’s largest farm organization.
If the 2018 farm bill is extended again, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall Duvall says it could be “detrimental to agriculture.”
“We all know that the cost of us producing food and keeping the food system for our country here has escalated tremendously,” Duvall said on this week’s Agri-Pulse Newsmakers.
“For the farm bill to really be a true safety net for our food system, we have to modernize it and that means look at what it actually does provide during difficult times.”
“We need to get it done and we need to get done now,” he said.
Duvall wants his members to stress to lawmakers the urgency of getting a farm bill done early in the year to prevent the effort from getting bogged down due to the 2024 presidential election.
Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, says if Congress makes it to the summer months without a complete farm bill, the legislation is not likely to pass this year.
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“Once we get to that point, it's going to be very difficult to be talking substantively about a farm bill. It's going to be very difficult to be talking substantively about anybody else's legislative priorities,” said Lane.
Mike Stranz, vice president of advocacy with the National Farmers Union, agrees with Lane, saying March and April would be the best time for a farm bill. He adds that the election year could actually propel a bipartisan farm bill forward, since lawmakers will be looking for campaign talking points.
“I think that the desire to show work, there's no choice but to have a bipartisan farm bill. So this is the time to get it done. The conditions might actually work well for that outcome,” said Stranz.
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