Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, had the chance to catch up with Congressman Frank Lucas and talk about the 2023 Farm Bill. Lucas is the former Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and now serves as the current senior member of the House Agriculture Committee.
“We are moving from the hearing phase over to the drafting phase of the process,” Lucas said. “Chairman Thompson still believes it is possible to have a markup in September.”
Lucas suggests to his fellow farmers and ranchers to remember there was an extension on the 2008 Farm Bill and the 2014 Farm Bill. The 2018 bill did not have any extensions, he added, but it was still not completed until after September 30.
There are 28 legislative days between now and the 30th of September, Lucas said, so he is guessing there will be an extension. The final bill, he added, will most likely be completed around February or March of 2024.
This next Farm Bill will be an extension of the 2018 Farm Bill with improvements and refinements, Lucas said, just as the 2018 Farm Bill was an extension of the 2014 Farm Bill.
Things are more difficult this time around, Lucas said, because there are five more Republicans than Democrats out of 435 individuals.
As the nutrition title is a large part of the bill, Lucas said the cost of those programs increases in times impacted by factors such as Covid and inflation.
“As we have come out of Covid, and we hopefully stabilize the economy and we will see growth, and we will see more opportunities for people in the consumption of those food stamp type programs go down,” Lucas said. “That is where I am looking when I talk about being able to reallocate resources that already exist.”
The Biden Administration has provided some one-time money for the bill, Lucas said, and much of that is directed toward conservation. The Biden Administration’s idea of conservation, he added, is different than one might think.
Regarding research, Lucas said he is most concerned with making sure the appropriate dollars are making it to the land grant universities and to the agricultural research stations within USDA.
“They have been underfunded for decades now, and when you have to prioritize, typically first making sure crop insurance is there, and price protection is there, and that the basic conservation programs that keep soil, the water, and the air clean and in place are there, sometimes things like research gets left at the end of the table,” Lucas said.
Lucas also talked to Ron about the conversation over foreigners buying U.S. farmland.
“I have been screaming up here for a number of years that food safety was just as important a national defense issue as military access or satellites or a variety of other things,” Lucas said. “Now, with certain Chinese companies buying farmland close to military bases, now it finally got the attention of my colleagues, so there is a major piece of legislation moving that would address U.S. farmland and sensitive sites, is the phrase they used.”
Lucas said that this bill has the strength to become law.
