Page 69 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

In retrospect, regional fights weren’t the only reason for delay, but farm bill veterans say the lack
of unity among commodity groups didn’t help improve an already complicated and controversial
farm bill debate.

“We didn’t need a
circular firing
squad showing up,
when we already
had enough external
bullets flying our
way,” recalled a
source who was
involved with the
negotiations.

So as farmers and
ranchers look ahead
to the 2018 farm bill,
it’s not surprising
that farm
organization leaders
have already been meeting for months, trying to find areas of agreement on the commodity title
and other provisions.

“It’s not likely that regional divisions will cease to exist, but perhaps they can be minimized,”
noted one of the leaders involved in those discussions.

Failure to work together could mean that risk management tools like crop insurance – where
there is already strong support from across the country – could also be targeted.
Mike Day, the chairman of National Crop Insurance Services, said that “policy critics will be
working overtime in their efforts to misinform new policy makers.”

Day expects crop insurance opponents to single out recent years – when insurance indemnities
were lower – without acknowledging the crop insurance industry’s performance during the
flooding, droughts and price declines that marked 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

“It will be up to us to remind Congress that the good years help balance the bad,” he said.
“Overhauling a program to make it less economically viable ultimately hurts farmers, who need
risk management tools to produce food and fiber for a growing world population.”

“I think our biggest challenge is going to be, how to be unified when we go forward with a
farm bill,” emphasized American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall during his
organization’s annual meeting earlier this year. “We’ve got to find common ground in that
to make sure that everybody has that safety net that covers them.”

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