CHS on the 2024 Farm Bill

CHS, one of the nation's largest agricultural cooperatives, prioritizes expanding renewable liquid fuels like ethanol and biodiesel, along with advancing trade negotiations. Will Stafford, Director of Federal Affairs at CHS, emphasizes these as key focus areas outside the Farm Bill for the cooperative in the coming year.

However, Will says the 2023 Farm Bill’s deadline extension to September of 2024 gives the co-op a buffer to make sure the legislation is done right.

“The last few farm bills have always been that nutrition funding, Republicans wanted to see that scaled back or extra eligibility requirements added to that, um, as cut more of a cost saving measure. That debate will still be there. It it will always be there in a farm bill setting. This time around with the Um, farm side of it, it's a little bit of a wrinkle. You have a lot of grower groups that are saying that the commodity programs are not operating as efficiently um, or the way that they're intended to and would like to see some changes in there, especially the reference prices for the for the PLC program to get more farmers some payouts.

That would obviously cost money. Republicans want to see some funding taken from conservation programs, extra money that was added to the farm bill last year. Democrats Um, we'd like to see that stay more in the conservation title. So we're going to have to see how that debate plays out.”