Farm Bill and OBBB Pt 1
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. With more federal assistance available for specialty crop growers of late, the importance of getting a new farm bill completed may have eased … a little bit.
Riley Bushue, Vice President at Northwest Horticultural Council, says for agriculture, as a whole, a new farm bill is very important and shouldn’t be put off any longer …
BUSHUE … “There’s been a lot of work done on at least getting a partial farm bill done, but nothing direct as it relates to specialty crops in terms of direct payment programs like this. From our perspective, crop insurance is incredibly valuable for our growers, pretty widely utilized in our industry. And so maintaining that was a priority for us, making sure that those kinds of risk management tools are available.”
But with all of the economic challenges of late, Bushue says their focus has been more on what USDA can do to help our growers now …
BUSHUE … “To my knowledge, at this moment, I mean USDA’s kind of focused on getting the rest of the MASC payments out, this disaster money out as rapidly as they can. And so that’s kind of front and center right now.”
As for the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and some of the farm bill-related assistance it brought, Bushue says that was great to see …
BUSHUE … “It’s certainly good to get a good chunk of that done. We’ve worked with folks from the potato industry, and others actually, other specialty crop entities, through a group called the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance that pursues priorities for the specialty crop industry as a whole.”
Tune in tomorrow for more on the reconciliation bill and other legislation that would help agricultural challenges for specialty crops.
