BY TAMMIE SLOUP
Ali Gibbs said a frantic text from her husband on July 8 about plummeting grain prices reinforced why she was in Washington, D.C. last week.
The sixth-generation Woodford County row crop farmer joined more than 20 other Illinois Farm Bureau members on a two-day Leaders to Washington trip where she and others in her congressional district met with U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Dunlap.
Top of mind for Gibbs was crop insurance and the farm bill’s safety net as input prices continue to rise and commodity prices fall.
“This is the first year that we will rely heavily on our farm for crop insurance for a revenue loss,” she told FarmWeek. “I’ve never in my years on the farm actually had a revenue loss claim ... When I pulled up the markets (July 8) it was very scary, and so having that crop insurance in the farm bill as a safety net, and having pro-farm programs such as ARC-County (Agriculture Risk Coverage) and PLC (Price Loss Coverage) is extremely important to be able to rely on when we have a loss in revenue.”
With a projected 25% loss in farm income estimated this year, the Illinois farmer group used meeting time with their respective House members, as well as U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Hoffman Estates, to advocate for a farm bill to be passed in 2024.
The clock is ticking as the 2018 farm bill was already extended a year to Sept. 30, and while many in Illinois’ Congressional delegation are hoping for 2024 passage, a fast-approaching election and hard lines drawn on several key issues could result in another extension.
The House Ag Committee in May passed its bipartisan farm bill proposal, which awaits a full floor vote. Both Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, and Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman, R-Ark., both released their frameworks, but the committee is yet to schedule a markup.
“Come September, it’s going to be harvest time, there’s going to be a lot of farmers trying to figure out what inputs they’re going to have for next year, they’re going to start purchasing with basically no security. So it’s real important to get this (farm bill) moving for peace of mind, and get everybody to where they can plan for next year,” said Clinton County Farm Bureau President Mark Litteken, whose row crop farm was recently converted to a regenerative operation.
Litteken and six other IFB members met with Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, who serves on the House Ag Committee.
Illinois Farm Bureau President Brian Duncan, who was in town for American Farm Bureau Federation’s Council of Presidents, said in his opinion, the farm bill is a “food bill” for the American public.
“It’s a food availability bill, and it’s a food production bill,” Duncan said as he joined the group on Capitol Hill. “I remind elected officials of the empty shelves that we had during COVID and that the farm bill is an important part of ensuring that we can produce the food, fiber and fuel that America needs.”
Calling Leaders to Washington a “cornerstone activity of the organization,” he told the IFB members before their trek to Capitol Hill their face-to-face interaction with legislators has a huge impact in Farm Bureau messaging.
Carroll County Farm Bureau President Brad Smith, who grows corn and soybeans and raises a few cattle, took the opportunity to thank Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Moline, for being one of four Democrats on the House Ag Committee to vote yes during the committee markup of a farm bill.
“He showed a lot of courage to give a yes vote for the farm bill out of that committee,” Smith said.
Both the House farm bill proposal and Stabenow’s framework provide for expansion of crop insurance coverage and enhanced credit resources for beginning farmers, and fold $14 billion in federal climate-smart dollars into the conservation title baseline.
However, the parties continue to clash over nutrition funding, where to install the guardrails when it comes to reallocating the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) conservation dollars into the farm bill and proposed restrictions on the ag secretary’s use of the Commodity Credit Corporation fund. The committee leaders also disagree on proposed funding resources.
Stabenow’s proposal, the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, updates the effective reference price formula under the Price Loss Coverage PLC and ARC programs to incorporate recent high price years, and provides for at least a 5% increase in reference prices.
The House version increases support for the PLC/ARC programs and expands base acres to include producers who currently cannot participate in ARC/PLC.
Updates to those programs to reflect the realities of today’s market are crucial to farmers’ bottom lines, Smith said.
“It’s getting ugly out there. Every time I look at my phone, look at the markets, the path of least resistance right now is down, and it kind of caught everybody off guard,” he said. “And when you’re facing stubbornly high input prices, and then come up with much less revenue to pay for that ... the math just doesn’t work, and there’s going be a lot of red ink in the coming year, and it’s going to be a painful, painful proposition for all of us in that business.”
Content for this story was provided by FarmWeekNow.com.
Bonus Content: Watch IFB members recap the Leaders to Washington trip (https://www.farmweeknow.com/video-recap-leaders-to-washington/video_d96d4124-3fb4-11ef-9eb7-77db33c97b14.html)