Members of Congress have several key agriculture-related items on the to-do list in 2025. South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds says farmers and ranchers need the certainty of a new farm bill.

“Let me lay it out. First of all, we’ve got a farm bill that’s due. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about what’s going to go into it, so we’ve tried to put together our list of items that we’ve requested to get through Congress, which has not been very cooperative over the last couple of years in terms of getting anything out. But with the new farm bill coming through, we’d like to throw some amendments in there that we think would improve things for a lot of our folks back in the Upper Midwest. Number one is that the Livestock Indemnity Program, the Lip program, does not get updated the way that it should. And so, what we’re trying to set in, and we’ve got a proposal. It’s a simple one. It simply says these payment rates should be based on a quarterly update so that we don’t have our farmers and ranchers getting old data in terms of what the value of their livestock is in the case of a loss.”

They also need to make changes to the Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.

“There is the Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, or NAP. We’ve got an enhancement program that we’d like to get in place, and what that allows for is an update on what the actual payments would be made on those items that are not part of the regular assistance programs. We’ve had a good review of it. But the bottom line is, particularly in times like this, and as we move into what looks like a drought time period, grasses and so forth used for grazing and so forth, we just simply don’t have a good recovery plan for those. We think with an enhancement to the NAP program, we can make that better for the farmers and ranchers out there.”

There are other reforms he’d like to see put in place.

“The third item we’ve got is what we call the New Markets for State Inspected Meat and Poultry Act. This would allow for meat and poultry products that are inspected by state meat and poultry inspection programs to be sold across state lines. It’s time we get this thing done. We’ve got good support, Republican and Democrat alike. We want to get that in the farm bill this year. Then we’ve got the Natural Resources Conservation Service Wetland Compliance Appeals Reform Act, and that legislation would reform NRCS into the Department of Ag so that there are some safety provisions built in to protect farmers and ranchers from heavy-handed activity by the folks within NRCS.”