Agricultural News
Dr. Bart Fischer Shares His Input and Concern Regarding the Upcoming 2023 Farm Bill
Wed, 20 Apr 2022 17:43:51 CDT
During the National Association of Wheat Growers Leadership Training, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays was able to catch up with Dr. Bart Fischer from Texas A&M, An Oklahoma native and former Chief Economist of the House Ag Committee, Fischer talks about the upcoming 2023 farm bill.
"In terms of the farm bill, it is incredibly important," Fischer said. "I think you need to look no further than what producers are going through this year. With skyrocketing input costs, certainly, we have higher commodity prices, but producers are putting in a tremendous amount of money on the line to get that crop in the ground."
The farm bill, Fischer said, plays a role in all of these things and provides risk management tools for producers, including securing financing to get the crop in the ground and ensuring that if disaster strikes, they can live to fight another day.
"It is looking like between input prices and certainly with respect to Oklahoma and the drought that is raging in the western part of the state, that safety net is incredibly important," Fischer said.
While serving on Capitol Hill, Fischer said many individuals who came through would constantly highlight that crop insurance is the cornerstone of our safety net. Most farmers, Fischer said, can make it a year or two on self-finance before it catches up with them.
"I hear everywhere I go that crop insurance has to be protected," Fischer said. "That was certainly the focus over the last couple of farm bill cycles, but with that said, I think the more traditional farm policy that is more focused on income support, remains incredibly important because producers put a lot of money on the line and margins are really small and you can only handle so many years in a row of really low prices or low margins."
Even though crop insurance attracts a lot of attention, Fischer said the entire suite of the farm safety net is essential.
"If you look at the last three years, I think '19 to '21 alone; there are about a hundred billion dollars that were infused into American agriculture," Fischer said. "The challenge is, I shudder to think what ag would look like had that not happened."
Fischer said starting with the market facilitation of the trade war with China, culminating them with the coronavirus food assistance program, has helped keep producers afloat. A couple of those years' net income would have been roughly half of where it ended up had it not been for the federal government stepping in, he added.
"The challenge now looking forward is high input prices, but with ad-hoc assistance drying up, where does that leave producers," Fischer said.
Many growers, Fischer said, are in a spot where they are wondering how they will make things work.
"The farm safety net we have right now isn't designed to counteract these high input prices we are seeing, so a big question is will Congress step in and try to rectify that," Fischer said. "I think the big open question is, are they able to do that against this backdrop of where our country stands in terms of debt."
It is a matter of balancing those two things, Fischer said, and right now, our country is 20 trillion or 30 trillion dollars in debt.
"To this day, the 2014 farm bill, to my knowledge and certainly in recent memory, was the only farm bill that has ever reduced spending," Fischer said. "In 11 years since, If you look at the federal government as a whole, debt has doubled since that point. So, if the debt was driving the discussion 10 years ago, I can only imagine once we do start to climb out from under covid, and members of our congress start looking at where our country stands from a fiscal standpoint. I can't help but think it's going to be a big part of the discussion once again."
Click the LISTEN BAR below to hear more about factors influencing the 2023 farm bill during Ron's interview with Dr. Bart Fischer.
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