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Sec. Rollins calls on Congress to pass a farm bill
Photo by Brent Barnett/Brownfield
U.S. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins says farmers and ranchers need a new five-year farm bill in 2025.
“It has failed now to get through Congress the last two times under the Biden administration,” Rollins said Monday. “This is a very, very big priority of mine.”
But she says getting it across the finish line will be a complicated process. “The farm part of the farm bill is only about 15-to-18% and you have to have 60 votes to get it through the Senate. That means that we need, depending on the Republicans, between 10-to-13 Democrat votes. There’s a lot of conversations that have to go on and a lot of negotiations that have already happened.”
U.S. Senator Joni Ernst says the cost for a new farm bill keeps going up as negotiations continue. “Our farm bill had grown in cost from over $800 billion in the last farm bill to $1.5 trillion.”
The current farm bill extension expires in September.
Rollins and Ernst spoke with reporters at the Elite Octane ethanol plant in Atlantic, Iowa on Monday.
With the opportunity of tariffs, now available in many more countries, this should SIGNIFICANTLY decrease the cost!!