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AFBF on farmer priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill

As legislators prepare to write the next farm bill, the American Farm Bureau Federation continues to gather farmer priorities.  

Andrew Walmsley, senior director of governmental affairs with AFBF, says early priorities include “protect overall farm bill spending, make sure we’re keeping nutrition and farm programs together as nutritional security is national security, and then for Farm Bureau, at this point, really making sure we protect the commodity title and the crop insurance title.”

The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act includes billions of dollars in conservation funding, which could factor into conversations about farm bill conservation programs.

“The question is does that chunk of funding complicate the path forward on a farm bill,” he says. “…farmers and ranchers have a job at task to continue to educate (legislators) and encourage that traditional bipartisanship to make improvements to IRA funding and make improvements to the commodity title.”

He says “we’re really living through unprecedented times when you look at all the assistance going back to market facilitation payments, to CFAP payments, now to the Inflation Reduction Act. They’re all intertwined with farm programs but they’re outside of the farm bill so does that complicate things as we head into 2023.”

Walmsley, speaking to media during the Ohio Farm Bureau Washington D.C. Leadership Experience, said the organization will continue working through priorities to be ratified at the American Farm Bureau Conventoin in January in Puerto Rico.