Following the policy meeting at the 2023 American Farm Bureau Federation Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Vice President of Communications and Public Relations for the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Dustin Mielke, had the chance to visit with Scott Neufeld, who was one of the AFBF delegates from Oklahoma discussing the issues in the policy session.
As a farmer and rancher from Fairview, Oklahoma, Neufeld has also served on an Oklahoma Farm Bureau Farm Bill committee in the past.
“Not a lot of Earth-shaking things that happened this year on the delegate body floor, but some good, solid policy that we adopted,” Neufeld said.
Neufeld said he feels confident in the process AFBF has gone through in laying the groundwork for the Farm Bill in 2023.
“They had a Farm Bill working group that had done a tremendous amount of homework ahead of time, so actually, at this session, there wasn’t a lot of debate,” Neufeld said.
A few areas of interest, Neufeld said, were keeping ESG themes out of the Farm Bill package.
“There are a lot of themes that go along with the conservation title and trying to isolate that and make those incentives voluntary instead of mandatory, and a resolution that was passed was to move to increase the Title I farm bill spending, which is directly linked to the commodity title,” Neufeld said.
The baseline for this Farm Bill is going to be over a trillion dollars, Neufeld said, making it the largest Farm Bill in history.
Neufeld said the AFBF took a strong stance on keeping crop insurance robust and healthy.
“A lot of the resolutions talked about having flexibility for some of the specialty crops and, so, that was interesting,” Neufeld said. “Another area that was discussed was the definition defining regenerative and sustainable agriculture.”
Every county in the entire U.S., Neufeld said, has a voice in the AFBF public policy-making process.
“Here, we have delegates from all of those counties, from all those states that are representative, and those ideas are being heard,” Neufeld said.
