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Crop insurance, precision ag funding among NEFB farm bill priorities

The president of a state farm bureau organization says a new five-year farm bill would give farmers and ranchers some much-needed certainty.

Nebraska’s Mark McHargue says lawmakers need to boost farm safety net programs. “Crop insurance is king,” he said. “We need to make sure that we don’t disrupt that. I think that’s one of the things that touches our producers the most, but things like funding for ag research certainly is up there on the list and has been there for a while.”

He tells Brownfield funding for precision agriculture tools should also be a priority. “Fertilizers, pesticides, things that we put on our crops to mitigate the pests and insects – when we can do that in a precision manner, it just saves our resources both for the farmer, allows us to be more judicial, and then at the same time it allows us to really produce more on less.”

The current extension of the 2018 Farm Bill expires at the end of September. McHargue spoke to Brownfield at a recent USDA-ARS groundbreaking event at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

AUDIO: Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue