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Farm Bill Summit includes discussion of upcoming policy
2018 farm bill priorities were talked about at the University of Missouri as the legislation gets closer to ag committee debate. Producers want to be sure lawmakers retain a strong safety net in U.S. farm policy, said Scott Brown, one of the organizers of the University of Missouri 2018 Farm Bill Summit. Specifically, Brown says farmers want crop insurance, along with Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage.
“ARC and PLC, I think folks are getting used to those new programs,” Brown told Brownfield Ag News. “Maybe there’s some interest in making changes to them, but by and large I think those are the two things we’d to see at least maintained on the crop side.”
Missouri Pork Association Executive Vice President Don Nikodim was part of a livestock panel pushing for funding the development of a Foot and Mouth Disease vaccine bank at an annual cost of $150 million for the five-year duration of the farm bill.
“That sounds like a lot of money,” Nikodim told Brownfield, “but to put it in perspective, economists conservatively estimate that should we get FMD and no way to deal with it, it’s going to amount to about a $200 billion – that’s 200 billion – cost to the United States.”
Scott Brown says it’s likely the House Agriculture Committee will soon debate the 2018 farm bill. At this point, Agriculture Committee members have held listening sessions with producers in several parts of the country.
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