'23 Lowlights: No Farm Bill

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

Looking at 2023 highlights, it’s hard to get past one glaringly obvious lowlight of the year: no new farm bill.

Dr. Jonathan Coppess, Gardner Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign…

“It is a very large, complex legislative vehicle. It has a healthy price tag.”

…this hefty price tag coming up for reauthorization at a time when all major discussions were circling around budget issues.

“There’s a lot of reason to be concerned. On the upside, you know, we’ve got some experienced legislators. Chairwoman Stabenow in the Senate has worked on multiple farm bills. She wrote the brutal one that became the 2014 Farm Bill. She was ranking on the ’18 Farm Bill, so she’s got a lot of leadership experience. Mr. Thompson, the chairman on the house side, has been in congress for quite some time, has worked on farm bills for a really long time, so he has a deep level of experience, but he has a challenge on the house floor. And even at the committee level, I think he has some challenges with members who haven’t voted on a farm bill, haven’t debated a farm bill, kind of maybe come to this with perspectives that can be counterproductive to putting together the compromises and coalition that you need to be successful.”

Dr. Coppess sums it up by saying good leadership, challenging terrain for them to work on.