House Agriculture Committee Chairman GT Thompson released the long-overdue text of the revised Farm Bill last week, and ag leaders are saying it’s about time for Congress to get busy revising the outdated 2018 iteration. North Carolina Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler says while some ag provisions were included in last year’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” farmers need to know the federal government is going to finish the job.
“I think margins are down about $131 an acre. Well, there wasn’t that much there to start with, so we got our nose out of the water, but that’s all. So what we need is policy. Give me a policy statement. Is the United States serious about agriculture? I need to know that. Everybody does.”
Troxler says crop insurance indices must be updated, among other things.
“We need to know more about how are you going to help us manage risks that have come along so frequently later. Everything needs to be reindexed as to the economy as we see it now. Yeah, it’s paramount that we get this Farm Bill, and we get it now, and we start to adapt to the policy that’s going to come out of Washington, DC.”
Partisan politics could delay the bill even more during this mid-term election year.