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American Bankers Association outlines farm bill priorities

The senior vice president of agricultural and rural banking policy with the American Bankers Association says the industry has several goals for the next farm bill.

Ed Elfmann tells Brownfield, “Here’s our farm bill priorities.”  He says, “Increasing the guaranteed loan limits, modifying the beginning farmer and rancher programs fixing something called the Down Payment Assistance Program, re-establish the Interest Assistance Program, and Rural Development funding is lacking.”

He says farmers and bankers would also benefit from farm bill funded technology upgrades within the USDA.

“The sad thing is, for a lot of our FSA offices, especially on the loan side, sometimes they’re using DOS programs.”  He says, “We need to make sure we modernize technology to help USDA better make loans, create more efficiency and better communicate with lenders.”

Elfmann says if a farm bill is tackled by Congress this year, then he expects it to likely resemble the bill passed out of the House Ag Committee last year.

Elfmann shared his remarks during a recent webinar hosted by the Illinois Soybean Association.