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Soybean leader says farm bill faces hurdles on Senate floor

The vice president of the American Soybean Association says he’s glad to see the farm bill advance out of the Senate Ag Committee, but there could be more hurdles ahead.

“Some of the amendments that didn’t make it out of the committee, I think are going to get brought up again on the floor,” says Dave Walton, a farmer from Iowa. “They’ll be able to debate those and decide whether they vote them up or down. Now the challenge is getting the bill through the Senate floor.”

Walton was in Washington D.C. for a recent fly-in, meeting with lawmakers to test their temperature on farm bill support.

“It seems like there’s fairly broad support for most of the ag title issues, but it looks like it will be a fight over the nutrition title,” says Walton.

Walton says he’s optimistic a compromise can be found on the Senate floor. However, he says the farm bill process is getting more contentious, which could continue to be a challenge in the process moving forward.

Other ag groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Sorghum Producers and the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance issued statements encouraging Congress to pass a farm bill by the end of the calendar year.