Some important parts of a typical farm bill were passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. However, Senate Ag Committee Chair John Boozman of Arkansas said there’s still a lot of work to do to finish the rest of the farm bill.

“Well, reconciliation is about taxing and spending. There are a lot of things that are just pure policy decisions that need to be made. We need to increase the loan limits. As I said earlier, things like that just don’t work anymore because of the way that the economy has changed since 2018, so those are the kind of things that we’ll be looking at. We’ve got a great partnership with Senator Klobuchar. Traditionally, agriculture and farm bills aren’t about Democrats or Republicans. They’re about different areas of the country.”

There’s a lot to balance because no two areas of the country farm in the same way.

“Southern agriculture is different than the Midwest. The Midwest is different from California and the Great Plains. We’re all different. Putting all that together and then the various commodities, making sure everybody’s represented, everybody is taken care of. But it’s not about Democrats and Republicans, so we’ve got a great relationship with our counterparts on the committee. It’s a very serious committee, so we’re looking forward to getting the individual members on the committee continuing to be out and about throughout the country, listening to people who are undergoing all the adverse effects that are in farm country right now.”

Many farmers are on the verge of losing their farms, so time is of the essence.

“We definitely have to get it done by the end of the year. Certainly, the sooner, the better. It is very, very difficult, as you describe it. Congress has acted, if you remember, at the end of last year. It was a very difficult time then, and we were able to provide $10 billion worth of economic aid, which was kind of unheard of. Along with that, $20 billion of disaster aid. A $30 billion total, which is a tremendous amount of money. And that was because farmers made the case, the lenders made the case, that without doing that, we were going to have a very, very difficult situation. Now we’re into this year, and sadly, things have not gotten any better.”