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NCBA members set policy priorities for 2023

The president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says getting a farm bill passed in 2023 is a top priority for members.  Todd Wilkinson of South Dakota says within the farm bill the organization would like to see additional funding for Foot and Mouth Vaccine.  “We were successful in getting it put in the last farm bill and we’re really hopeful, given the potential harm and the food security risk, it gets funded again,” he says.  

He tells Brownfield members also want to see funding made available that would support the reauthorization of programs like Livestock Risk Protection.  “I have always looked at the corn producers and the soybean producers and saw that they had crop insurance and we really didn’t have a product that was similar to that,” he says.  “Now we do and it’s available to somebody with as few as one cow to several thousand cows.  It is something that is really helping our cattle producers across the country.”

NCBA policy priorities also include securing reauthorization of animal health provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill and advocating for expanded funding of the National Animal Vaccine and Veterinary Countermeasures Bank (NAVVCB) to protect against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), protecting and funding EQIP, CSP and other voluntary conservation programs that incentivize science-based, active management of natural resources, and protecting the cattle industry from regulatory attacks under Waters of the United States, the Endangered Species Act, emissions reporting and more.

Brownfield interviewed Wilkinson during the recent 2023 Cattle Industry Convention.  

AUDIO: Todd Wilkinson, president National Cattlmen’s Beef Association