Potato Grower

Ag groups defend funding for the 2018 farm bill in an unsettled political and economic environment. With the 2018 U.S. farm bill on the horizon, ag policy experts and leaders are turning their attention to creating legislation that benefits agriculture as a whole. It comes at a time of uncertainty. "We don't think we have a crisis yet, but it could be not too far down the road, depending on weather and yields this year," says Mary Kay Thatcher, the American Farm Bureau Federation's senior director of congressional relations. "We always say you write farm bills for the bad times, not the good, and here we are." Although farm bills are created every five years, they use a 10- year baseline. For example, when the 2014 U.S. farm bill passed, it was projected to cost $956 billion over the decade. In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it will cost $80 billion less than projected, primarily as a result of lower-than-projected costs in the nutrition and crop insurance programs. Many say that as members of Congress consider a new farm bill, they should recognize the substantial savings already achieved. "Advocates in agriculture will fight to keep the most funding they can, no matter what the score is," says Laura Peterson, head of federal government relations for Syngenta. "That ties to the reason for keeping SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] in the farm bill. Nutrition accounts for a large percentage of the farm bill budget, resulting in benefits to constituencies across the country, from families putting food on the table to retail supplying food and farmers supplying retail. The whole food chain is arguably involved in the large cost, but also the big benefit. Without SNAP, the farm bill wouldn't get as much attention. Every state has people using it." Thatcher agrees on the importance of not splitting farm and nutrition programs: "If that happened, we don't believe we would ever get a farm bill through the House of Representatives, so that's a very high priority." A full 77 percent of the current farm bill's funding goes to those nutrition programs, leaving 23 percent for issues that directly affect ag programs. CROP INSURANCE Crop insurance, accounting for about 8.5 percent of the farm bill and covering 90 percent of U.S. cropland, is especially crucial now. The Department of Agriculture estimates net farm income for 2016 was $54.8 billion, compared to $123.3 billion in 2013—a 46 percent reduction. By Suzanne Bopp 14 POTATO GROWER | NOVEMBER 2017

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