• Farmer & Rural Resources Menu
• Farmer & Rural Resources

Farm Bill Priorities

Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) Farm Bill Priorities

Priorities for the farm bill come directly from the grassroots policy process and reflect the beliefs and ideas of our membership. 

First and foremost, we hope to see a farm bill drafted and enacted before the year is over.

IFB believes the farm bill must:

• Maintain current crop insurance programming.
• Be WTO-compliant, provide price and revenue protection for farmers, and link nutrition and commodity programs.
• Maintain both SNAP and TEFAP in their current form.

Title 1 – Commodity programs

We Support:

• Allowing farmers to update base acres and yields.
• Increased commodity loan rates.
• Inflation-adjusted farm program payment limits.
• Producers or landowners - subject to a new or a previous farm reconstitution - to combine farms or maintain an individual farm number.
• Producers who elect to include HPO should be allowed to receive the harvest price if it is higher on prevented plant acres.
• Dairy risk management programs that address negative price differentials; changing or eliminating state-by-state adjustment factors in Dairy -RP that greatly limited support to producers; improving the accuracy of the DMC feed price component; providing NASS with sufficient resources to estimate alfalfa prices more accurately.

Title II – Conservation Programs:

IFB supports improvements to USDA Conservation Programs including:

• • Five-year CRP contracts.
  • A flexible, renewable one-year program that pays rates like CRP that incentivize nutrient loss reduction and other programs that incentivize water quality improvements.
  • Carbon sequestration incentives for farmers who use cover crops.
  • A new water quality credit for producers.
  • Using CSP to reward operators for practices they have already adopted and allow them to earn more points for maintaining practices over time.
  • Hiring more conservation engineers.
  • Providing additional flexibility for harvesting cover crops for feed during normal growing conditions.

Title XI – Crop Insurance:

We support:

• Creation of a local or state-farmer committee to hear farmer appeals of RMA decisions on overspray and planting dates or on any decision that adversely impacts crop insurance policy holders.

 

^{IFB members talk with House Agriculture Committee member, Representative Mike Bost (IL-12),
on the importance of maintaining crop insurance programming. (March 2023)}

^{IFB members talk with House Agriculture Committee member, Representative Nikki Budzinski (IL-13),
about the importance of a farm bill at a farm visit this summer. (August 2024)}

^{IFB members met with Representative Darin LaHood (IL-16) on the importance of passing a
farm bill in 2023 & other IFB farm bill priorities. (March 2023)}

^{IFB members met with U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth on the July Leaders to DC trip.
Members shared why a new, modernized farm bill is needed before the end of 2024. (July 2024).}

^{Representative Casten (IL-6) visited a grain farm this fall. IFB members expressed their concerns
about what kind of impacts their farms will face if a new farm bill is not passed this year. (October 2024).}