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Farmers and Ranchers Are Stepping Up Opposition to the Estate Tax

The American Farm Bureau Federation was part of a letter to Congress expressing opposition to the estate tax. Dustin Sherer, director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau, talks about what was in the letter.

"The Family Businesses Estate Tax Coalition, of which American Farm Bureau Federation is a member, sent a letter to Representatives Feenstra and Bishop, who plan on introducing the Death Tax Repeal Act in the House hopefully sometime in mid-January," Sherer said. "Farm Bureau has long been opposed to any type of estate tax, and this particular bill would take the estate tax completely off the books."

The large number of groups signed on to the letter, including those that represent a variety of business outside of agriculture, shows how important the issue is to the overall economy.

"It's very indicative of how important it is to small, privately held, family-owned businesses, farms, ranches," Sherer said. "The estate tax is oftentimes talked about only with reference to somebody with a farm or ranch trying to pass down a business from one generation to the next. But you apply those same principles to a family-owned small business that manufactures products or a family-owned construction company."

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Border View Farms is a mid-sized family farm that sits on the Ohio-Michigan border. My name is Nathan. I make and edit all of the videos posted here. I farm with my dad, Mark and uncle, Phil. We also have a part-time employee, Brock. My dad started the farm in 1980. Since then we have grown the operation from just a couple hundred acres to over 3,000. Watch my 500th video for a history of our farm I filmed with my dad.

I started making these videos in the fall of 2019 as a way to help show what I do on a daily basis as a farmer. Agriculture is different from any other industry and I believe the more people that are showing their small piece of agriculture, helps to build our story. We face unique challenges and stressful situations but have some of the most rewarding payoffs in the end. I get to spend everyday doing what I love, raising my kids on the farm, and trying to push our farm to be better every year. I hope that I can address questions or concerns that you might have about farms and agriculture.