News
Farm Bureau offers farm bill proposal
American Farm Bureau Policy Specialist Mary Kay Thatcher says the organization’s farm bill proposal offered this week helps reduce the nation’s budget deficit and maintains a farm safety net. She says, however, that farmers may be shocked to discover just how little safety net can be provided with the amount of money available.
“We based our proposal on the idea that we would save $23 billion over current programs like the Senate passed last year and like the Senate budget resolution called for,” Thatcher told Brownfield Ag News this week, “and then of course we had to make up for a little bit more funding because when the Congressional Budget Office rescored the bills last year, they said they, quote, saved even less.”
Because of funding limits, American Farm Bureau proposes to reduce crop insurance premium subsidies from 80 percent to 70 percent. Thatcher says that having famers pay for 30 percent of crop insurance premiums contrasts with direct payments by providing for farmers to have, in her words, “skin in the game.”
She says this proposal involves a three-legged farm safety net.
Program crop producers should have crop insurance available to them, should have a marketing loan and then for the third leg of that safety net they would choose a between a STAX county revenue insurance-type proposal and target prices,” she said.
Approved last weekend by the organization’s Board of Directors, the farm bill proposal offers what they refer to as a mix of risk management and safety net tools. Cited are savings of $23 billion compared to the cost of continuing the current program.
if the farmers need crop insurance they can pay for all of it out of their own pockets. No body pays my ranch insurance & we don’t get gauranteed safety net for our products . Its about time the farmer to farm the land instead of farming the goverment..