Managing farm and ranch risk will be key in writing the next farm bill after the recent turbulence of inflation, COVID-19, war, and storms. The challenge will be tight budgets. The American Farm Bureau says risk management tools like Title 1’s ARC and PLC will be key for shallow-loss coverage.
But Iowa farmer and Senator Chuck Grassley says he’ll also be fighting for other farm bill programs in the new year.
“Keeping the crop insurance program pretty much like it is. Some tweaking to CRP. It would include more money for agricultural research and money for foreign agricultural sales—promotion of it.”
But the question is how to get that money amid competition for scarce dollars in a new more conservative GOP-controlled House. Grassley vows to renew his fight for failed payment limits in the 2014 farm bill.
“What we have today is just a ‘spit in the ocean’ compared to what I tried to accomplish then, but I’m going to go back to my original approach, and it’ll save the taxpayers a lot of money. We’re going to need more money for the farm bill, and that’s one way to get it.”
American Farm Bureau, in its latest analysis, says producers need a variety of risk management tools amid the “unprecedented” events of recent years.
