Jesse Allen dove into a conversation on farm bill, the election and ag policy at the NAFB convention with Syngenta’s Mary Kay Thatcher.
Q: So 1000 foot view here, we at least have certainty. We know who’s going to be in the White House in January. We know that the Republicans have taken back the Senate. I know we’re still waiting on House races here, but things are starting to take shape to some degree, I guess. What’s your reaction to at least what we know right now and what it means for agriculture?
MKT: Well, I think you have to believe the House is going to be Republican. There are only two votes short. It would just be like a major unbelievable event if somehow it went Democrat at this point in time.
So you’re going to have a Republican trifecta. And I think that means that President Elect Trump is going to have a lot of authority to try to work with those members of Congress. Certainly he helped numerous ones of them get elected. And so he’ll be working with them to push forth his priorities.
I think one of the biggest things we have coming up in 2025 is this massive tax bill. We passed a lot of tax provisions in 2017 that are incredibly important to farmers, be it estate taxes and stepped-up bases and individual rates and 199A, et cetera. And so there’ll be an emphasis, I believe, trying to extend those.
But there’s also ideas for other new tax priorities. And it’s going to be imperative in agriculture that we get our act together and that agriculture as a whole is talking with a unified voice as we move forward.
But what will likely happen is they’re not going to take probably all year to figure this out. They’ll probably put this in a reconciliation bill, meaning they only have to have 50 senators to pass it. And so it will be not easy, but easier than it would be probably if you had to do a lot of negotiating. I don’t think taxes will be the only thing. I mean, you could throw some farm bill stuff in there. You could throw immigration. There’s a lot of things; they’ll fill that reconciliation bill as full as they can and they’ll probably do it in the first 90 days in terms of taxes.
Q: I’m glad you brought that up because I know a lot of farmers are looking at this expiration of these tax incentives and cuts and more coming up. And there’s been some uncertainty there for farmers and ranchers wondering with bonus depreciation stepped up, things like that. I mean, just a lot of unknowns.
But it seems to me, to your point, we’re probably going to see these extended to some degree, I would think?
MKT: Well, one would hope. Now, I do have to say that if you just extend them, it’s almost $5 trillion over the next 10 years. So it’s a lot of money. And you know, there was a time 20 years ago in this country I thought Congress talked a lot about the deficit and the debt and getting it under control.
But that’s not something we’ve been hearing about much until maybe the last year. And I feel like now there are more members of Congress talking about that. Do I think there’s enough of them that they’re going to we’re going to go in and have some massive cut? No, but I think that’s going to enter in more into the conversation about how much can we really spend on tax cuts. Certainly, the president’s talking about imposing tariffs to pay for part of those tax cuts.
So there’s just a lot of reasons. And again, if we got every little group in ag sayingI want this added on, I want this. No, I want more here. You know, we’re not going to be as strong, so it’s always important we hang together. But this tax bill is going to be really important.
Q: When you mentioned farm bill too, and obviously, the prospects of a lame duck session farm bill have been pretty slim. I would say the chance is still there, but if I was betting, I wouldn’t bet good money on it. So then that means we’re looking at 20, 25 new Congress getting his farm bill done. What’s the latest? You’re here and there.
MKT: I think getting a farm bill done in the lame duck is just maybe 1 or 2% that it would happen. But the fact is that the four corners, the chairs and ranking members of House and Senate Ag, haven’t been talking while they’ve been out of session here in October.
And I think now, again, assuming we have a Republican trifecta, there’ll be a push to just say let’s wait till next year. When in general, not that the Republicans won’t have to deal with the Democrats, but they won’t have to deal with them in the same way they are now.
And so I think they’re going to view it as we could write a farm bill that’s more to our liking then than we can now. Now, I do think that we’re going to get some weather disaster assistance in the lame duck.
You know, you think the hurricanes, but floods and droughts and everything else, I think there’ll be enough push for that to happen. I think the administration is going to need to come out soon with what are the real estimates about how much money needs to be spent. I’m not as optimistic that we get an agricultural, economic, financial package. Certainly you could make a good case for it. But the bill that probably has the most chance of at least being the starting point is about $20 billion. And I’m just not sure we’re going to find that in the next 20 days.
Q: No, and there’s been some talk of that to your point, and there’s been some members of Congress, I know, Senator Grassley for instance, who said he doesn’t foresee anything like that happening. Let it be a disaster package and leave it at that, basically, is what I’ve heard from some members of Congress.
MKT: Well, I think you got to look at again, 20 billion. You look at the bill that passed out of the House Ag committee, it’s already $33 billion short and having enough money to spend it.
So then you have to really walk through, if we spent 20 billion now, does that have a negative impact on a more permanent five year farm bill that we might do in the near future? I think those questions are big questions. And again, 19 more days of being in session is not much when we haven’t passed a single appropriations bill. We got to do the national defense authorization. We’re having votes today on new leadership positions in Congress and then it’ll be fights about who gets to be a committee chairman.
And there’s just a lot to do between now and Christmas.
Q: And on top of that we have to extend the current farm bill in the next 20 days, plus then as we get into 2025, if that ends up being the case, there’s going to be a lot of new members of Congress that have never worked on a farm bill.
Now, on the flip side of that, there will be plenty of experienced members still on the ag committees in the House and Senate. But I just think about new members coming in and worried that it could be a bit of a reset, so to speak.
MKT: Oh, I think it will be without a question. You know, certainly on the Senate side, it’s going to be a big reset to have Chairman Bozeman from Arkansas pushing the bill versus Senator Stabenow who’s retiring.
You’ll have Amy Klobuchar coming in. I know she’s hunting for staff already. She’ll be a great ranking member.
And then I think one of the kind of things that I’ve marveled at about this election is when you looked at members of the House Ag Committee, there was twice as many from a percentage perspective of aggies in peril in this election that were in toss up races. And really very few of them have lost.
But there’s always turnover in the Ag Committee. There’s always people who do want to be on when you’re doing a farm bill and don’t when you aren’t. And especially when you think about the Democrats on the committee. You know, we don’t have that many Democrats representing rural America anymore. So a lot of the people to get on the ag committee aren’t there for the farming, they’re there for the food stamp, the SNAP program, et cetera. But you’re right, 70 new house members coming in, lots of education to do. 70 out of 435 is a pretty good chunk.
Q: On top of all of this as well, I think, who’s going to be the next Secretary of Agriculture? And this list is continuing to grow by the day. Honestly, like you or I could maybe get a phone call to be Secretary of Ag at this point, Mary Kay, because it just seems like every day there’s a new report from somewhere, somebody saying, oh, so and so is in the running.
I think for right now, it’s just until we get that certainty. We can speculate all we want. But of course, whoever is going to be the next Secretary of Ag is going to play a key role in all of this as well.
MKT: Absolutely. And you’re exactly right. You know, I’ve seen up to 15 different names by now and I’m sure there are people I haven’t even heard of.
But I think you also have to remember that half of those people are probably in the self-promoting mode. You know, they may not even want to be secretary, but they want their name out there as somebody who’s influential.
So we can look at all those names and there’s certainly some good candidates, but it could easily be somebody we’ve never thought about. I mean, who would have predicted Lee Zeldin would be picked for EPA administrator? Mr. Trump has already picked several people a little bit out of where most folks thought positions would go.
Q: And Lee Zelda going to EPA, that in itself is a very interesting one I think for agriculture specifically; I think about the ethanol and biofuels side. I know he’s not necessarily been a huge proponent, I guess is what I would classify that as, right?
MKT: He has not. He really didn’t want to extend ethanol anything past E10 and other things with environment. He really wasn’t all that active on environmental issues when he was a member of Congress.
And I don’t think we really know a whole lot about how that will work out. But the thing I do remind myself is anybody who comes in, whether it’s Secretary of Agriculture or head of EPA, or secretary of Health and Human Services, you serve at the pleasure of the President. And when you sign up for that, you say, yes sir, I’m going to do whatever you suggest. I might, you know, give you options or I might, you know, say, hey, have you thought about X? But in general, what the President says is what’s going to go.
And I think this president will indeed be supportive of renewable fuels in the future. So a lot of work to be done, but I have faith.
