Chief Economist of the House Agriculture Committee Dr. Bart Fischer offered his thoughts on the next farm bill. Speaking during a National Association of Wheat Growers Leadership Training event, he said the next farm bill will be extremely important for farmers.
?I think you need to look no further than what producers are going through this year with skyrocketing input costs, certainly we have higher commodity prices, but producers are putting in a tremendous amount of money on the line to get that crop in the ground,? Dr. Fischer said. ?And so, the Farm Bill underpins all of that and it provides the risk management tools that producers use to be able to secure financing to get that crop in the ground, but it’s also there to ensure that if disaster does strike that they can live to fight another day.?
Most farmers can make it a year or two on self-finance before it catches up with them. While serving on Capitol Hill, Dr. Fischer said many individuals who came through would constantly highlight that crop insurance is the cornerstone of our safety net.
?Almost resoundingly I hear everywhere I go that crop insurance has to be protected. And that was certainly the focus over the last couple of Farm Bill cycles,? Dr. Fischer said. ?But with that said, too, I think the more traditional farm policy that’s more focused on income support remains incredibly important because producers, they put a lot of money on the line and margins are really small, and you can only handle so many years in a row of really low prices are low margins.?
Even though crop insurance attracts a lot of attention, Dr. Fischer said the entire suite of the farm safety net is essential.
?If you look at the last three years, I think 19 to 21 alone, there’s about $100 billion that was infused into American agriculture,? Dr. Fischer said. ?I shudder to think of what ag would look like had that not happened. Starting with the Market Facilitation, trade war with China, culminating then with the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, has really helped keep producers afloat. And in a couple of those years net income would have been roughly half of where it ended up had it not been for the federal government stepping in.?
Dr. Fischer added that many growers are in a spot where they are wondering how they will make things work.
?The farm safety net, for example, right now isn’t designed to counteract these high input prices we’re seeing,? Dr. Fischer said. ?And so, a big question is will Congress step in and try to rectify that? I think the big open question is are they able to do that against this backdrop of where our country stands in terms of debt.?
It is a matter of balancing those two things, Dr. Fischer said, and right now, our country is 20 trillion or 30 trillion dollars in debt.
