There’s no doubt it’s been a rough go for the U.S. agricultural sector in recent years. Rob Larew, the president of the National Farmers Union, spoke about the movement of the Farm Bill during NAFB’s recent Washington Watch event.
“Times are tough. Obviously, a little bit of hope out there. We see some movement on a farm bill, but otherwise, it’s a pretty bleak landscape right now. You know, ultimately, we’re still a ways away from the finish line, but this is a really important step that ultimately, of course, has to make its way through the Senate and through a conference and be signed by the President. But after so many years of trying to guess when we would see a farm bill, I have to give at least some credit here to Chairman Thompson in the House for getting it to this stage.”
A year-round E15 amendment was pulled from the House Farm Bill after disagreements between oil-patch and farm-state Republicans. Larew was incredibly disappointed.
“This is one of these things that, for those of us in this space, we don’t understand why it has been so hard to get this across the finish line. You have the White House behind it, you have the Senate and the House and bipartisan members, and yet there’s a small handful of folks who have some problems with it, but there is strong support out there, and particularly now, with the fuel prices that we’re facing, this is a win, win, win for everyone. We are 100 percent behind this. We understand the argument that’s being made, that when you try to add other issues not completely in the jurisdiction of the House Ag Committee, it can slow things down, but I don’t think any of us can argue that this is a fast-moving farm bill. We can take the time to make sure we get the policy right.”
It’s time for the U.S. to invest in more domestic fertilizer prices to help withstand the price shocks caused by supply shortages.
“We need to be investing more into opening up further processing here in the U.S. We need to be investing in a domestic production of fertilizer. Yes, it is going to take years for that to actually come on the market and have a lasting impact, but if we don’t start today, that’s going to be an even longer runway before we actually have that.”
It’s been well-documented that the U.S. farming population is getting older, but Larew is beginning to notice the trend is just starting to change.
I’m encouraged on this front, encouraged in some ways. In a lot of our meetings with Farmers Union, we’re actually seeing kind of a resurgence of younger families and so forth. And I love nothing more than any of these farm meetings when I am interrupted from a screaming kid or kids running around and so forth, I will take that every day, because it means that our future is still there. What worries me is that for those young folks who are showing up, this is a question of just pure economics. How can you keep running a business with all of your costs and not be able to have a return?”