BY TAMMIE SLOUP
The first meeting of Illinois Farm Bureau’s new farm bill working group centered on education about the current law.
The diverse group of members, including corn and soybean farmers, specialty crop growers, livestock producers, ag lenders and others, will review the titles of the farm bill and consider areas for improvement. The goal of the working group also is to gather IFB members’ input on the farm bill and dig into issues with the help of outside issue experts.
The working group may provide policy submittals for consideration to the IFB Resolutions Committee; the purpose is to supplement policy submittals from county Farm Bureaus.
Jeff Kirwan, Illinois Farm Bureau District 3 director and chair of the working group, said the first meeting laid the groundwork for what the members will focus on during the multi-year process.
“We’re going to start educating ourselves on what’s in the farm bill. What works? What do we not like?” said Kirwan, who will retire from the IFB board in December after serving 10 years. “We have to holistically look at the farm bill, what it means to all the commodity spaces and all the titles, and start to understand that. Then maybe there’s things that we can do to change it.”
Kirwan previously served on an IFB farm bill group in the early 2000s, and found it educational.
The Illinois Farm Bureau Board of Directors approved establishment of the working group at its May meeting. Members applied through their county Farm Bureaus. The members were selected from the open application process, and participants were chosen based on their experiences, skills and agricultural diversity.
Aaron DeGroot, whose family grows vegetables, corn and soybeans in Kankakee County, applied to be in the group because of his interest in ag-related public policy.
“Illinois is not necessarily known as a specialty crop state, but there are a lot of programs in the farm bill that affect specialty growers, and I wanted to make sure that as we convene this working group, that specialty crop growers have their voices heard,” DeGroot told FarmWeek following the meeting.
“I think this group represents an awesome diverse array of the different types of production agriculture that we have in the state, not just the different sectors, but also geographically, I think we had a good mix of producers from across the state,” he added. “We had great conversations with folks from the American Farm Bureau Federation, as it relates to the current status of the farm economy, where things stand with farm bill discussions, and I think we’ll continue to have good discussions on that.”
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Another member, Marshall County farmer Bill Leigh, said he has a deep understanding of farm bill policy surrounding risk management as past president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association and current National Corn Growers Association Board member.
“I had spent a lot of years on the National Action Team for corn growers on risk management, which is Title 1 (Commodities) and 11 (Crop Insurance),” Leigh told FarmWeek, adding he’s looking forward to refreshers on all the other titles that don’t necessarily get as much attention.
“I think what we would like to do is figure out how to get a bipartisan movement going again within the ag committees, something that speaks from ag as a whole. That’s important to me,” he said.
The group will meet again in the first part of 2026.
Content for this story was provided by FarmWeekNow.com.