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Farm bill extension deal underway

Attempts to include disaster assistance as part of a farm bill extension over the weekend have failed.

Farm Credit Council CEO Todd Van Hoose tells Brownfield farmers and ranchers need economic and disaster assistance.

“We’ve had droughts and we’ve had floods and we’ve had wildfires and there’s been a lot of disasters this year across the country,” he says. “At the same time, markets have been terrible with the exception of livestock, especially cattle, everybody else is really struggling.”

Democratic and Republican leadership of both the U.S. House and Senate Ag Committees are blaming each other for the lack of progress on a deal.

Van Hoose joins several other ag group leaders pushing for assistance as part of a continuing resolution needed to fund the government beyond this Friday.

“To not do that really exposes farmers out there to really tremendous market pressure,” he says. “We’re seeing farmers out there who have one, two, three years of negative returns. If you look at the markets moving forward, there’s not much of a great story there.”

Some Republican lawmakers representing agricultural districts say they will not support any supplemental funding bills that leave assistance to farmers out.

• Let the free enterprise system work.
  As a 35 yr business owner I’ve never gotten any help from the government when I had a bad year. Most of my friends are farmers they all live a lot nicer lifestyle than I can afford.
  Maybe its time they start living on their own Martin’s and not on my tax dollars. In iowa there are very few if any small family farms they are all big corporate farms.
  My wife grew up on the farm and I know for a fact her dad didn’t take any money from the government.
  But he also raised livestock cattle,pigs and milked.
  He also worked a full time job at John deer.

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• Farmers are a resilient bunch, they will survive this currrent economic downturn in the farm economy. However our congress must come together somehow, someway to find a way to strengthen this economic engine of our economy.

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