Agriculture groups received notice he could sign off on the bill Thursday
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The final step required to enact an important piece of ag legislation could take place tomorrow.
Speaking during the Congressional Ball on Saturday, President Trump voiced his support for the 2018 Farm Bill.
The farm bill is in “very, very good shape,” he said during the event. “So we’ll get the farm bill. Got to take care of the farmers. But it’s just been something very, very exciting.”
Members of the ag industry believe Trump will sign the bill tomorrow, a day before a proposed government shutdown that would affect the USDA.
“The farm bill appears to be heading for signature Thursday,” Brad Lubben, an extension ag policy specialist with the University of Nebraska, told Farms.com. “It’s been quite the process when you think back and realize we didn’t know if the farm bill would even get done.”
Once enacted, the US$867 billion bill ensures funding for crop insurance and other ag programs for the next five years.
Farmers welcome the president’s signature on the farm bill and the stability the legislation represents.
“Without crop insurance, I wouldn’t be farming today,” Dustin Johnson, cash crop producer from Clinton County, Iowa, and president of the local Farm Bureau, told the Clinton Herald. “It has limited the need for direct subsidy payments, and I think most farmers are grateful to have that. To have that long-term stability and that certainly allows farmers like me to manage our yearly budgets better, and that’s a huge benefit.”
Carl Bednarski, president of the Michigan Farm Bureau, calls the farm bill a “complete package.”
“Farmers in particular will find a good degree of risk-management support they need to help them weather the prolonged downturn in the agricultural economy”, he told The Peninsula.