This year is going to be a busy year in D.C., with a variety of issues impacting farm country. Val Dolcini (doll-SEE-nee), Head of Public Affairs at Syngenta North America, says tariffs are one of the top issues he’d like to see addressed in the coming months.
He added that farmers can’t afford to wait forever for things to get better and for the Administration’s tariffs to get the results the President would like to see.
“At the end of the day, a farmer wants to make his or her income from the markets, from selling their crops either domestically or overseas, and not have to rely on a government check or a relief package of some sort. I think that to the degree that tariffs can provide some much-needed revenue to our national treasury, that’s a good thing. To the degree that it equals out some of the trade relationships where we’ve had imbalances and trade deficits over the years, that’s also a good thing. But today, American farmers want to be able to sell their crops overseas, and tariffs stand in the way of that.”
Dolcini doesn’t just want to see action from the Trump Administration. When it comes to Congress, he wants lawmakers to focus on passing a Farm Bill, addressing trade deficits, and all during a mid-term election year.
With so much going on and so much out of a farmer’s control, producers can struggle with what they should listen to and what they should ignore. Dolcini’s advice?
“To use an agricultural term, you’ve got to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there’s a lot of chaff out there. I think for farmers, it’s tough to focus on the things that are really important because we’re being besieged and bombarded by all kinds of news and other information on our social media and throughout the course of the day. Farmers just need to continue to do what they’ve done so well for centuries, and that’s just produce a crop, bring that crop to market, hopefully at a profit, care for their families, build up the rural communities in this country that have been the backbone of our nation for 250 years, and I think we’ll be in good shape.”