Farmers are pushing for Congress to pass a new farm bill this year, after failing to update the 2018 farm bill in either 2023 or 2024.

The farm bill covers a wide range of issues, such as crop prices, federal loans for farmers and crop and disaster insurance. It is usually renewed every five years, but Congress has instead extended the 2018 bill.

As climate change has contributed to rising crop insurance costs in recent years, Ohio farmers called for stronger safety net measures, such as subsidies for crop yield and natural disaster insurance, as well as commodity support programs to maintain a price floor for certain crops.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who sits on the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, said a new bill was critical to address the current needs of Ohio’s 75,800 farms.

“We’ve been trying to get it out of the House, out of the Senate, so we can actually provide the funding that’s needed for 2025, including to meet the crop losses that have occurred in the majority of my counties," Kaptur said.

Kaptur highlighted farmers’ concerns by bringing Bob Jones, Jr. as her guest to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this month. Jones, a second-generation farmer, is the co-owner and CEO of The Chef’s Garden, a regenerative farm in Huron, Ohio.

Jones said the next farm bill should prioritize conservation, which includes programs to improve soil health on farms.

“We believe very strongly that we have a real issue in our country because we have the cheapest per capita spending on food in our country and the highest per capita spending on health care,” Jones said. “We believe that those statistics are linked and that we could, through the farm bill and other measures like it, if we were able to invest in regenerative agriculture and soil health, that we could make a real positive impact on health outcomes for the population of our country.”

Members of the Ohio Farm Bureau traveled to Washington during Ohio Agriculture Week to discuss pressing agriculture issues, including uncertainty over a new farm bill.

“To try to plan and predict for your business model in these kinds of one-year chunks is difficult. So certainly to have that predictability and the certainty that comes with a five-year or multi-year farm bill is one of the priorities that we have as an industry,” said Jack Irvin, the bureau’s vice president of public policy.

The farm bill is not farmers’ only urgent concern. The industry is also bracing for the impact of tariffs on U.S. crop exports in response to Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign goods.

Source - https://spectrumnews1.com