Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays had the chance to talk with Altus, Oklahoma, farmer and outgoing National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) President Keeff Felty as he completed his year serving wheat farmers in that capacity.
Several years ago, Felty’s friend and neighbor, Bob Howard, asked him to serve with the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association. He readily accepted and served for a few years before becoming a state delegate on the NAWG board of directors. “At my first NAWG meeting, I volunteered to be on the budget committee. That was in January 2017, then I got elected to Secretary in March 2020 – two weeks before COVID shut everything down,” he shared.
He has since moved through the different chairs in NAWG leadership until he was elected president during the 2024 Commodity Classic.
Each year since 2023, farmers have been looking for an updated farm bill to be approved and are now hoping it will finally happen in 2025. Felty noted that it is the second full year that the farm bill has been extended. With the new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and the Ag Committee working towards finalizing the bill this year, optimism is still present.
“The biggest issue with the whole thing is getting through budget reconciliation to see where all of that settles out and how long that may potentially take,” he noted.
Considering the debates surrounding GMO wheat, Felty said that it is still a topic of ongoing conversation but noted that Argentina has developed a drought-tolerant gene that is gaining traction.
NAWG has long advocated for common-sense strategies concerning regulatory policies, and under the new Trump administration, they are hopeful that the tides are finally turning.
“Common sense is a great place to start the process on a lot of the different things that we work on, and applying common sense to regulations, using the scientific data, and working through the process and the structure of the way that we derive conclusions over how to use things as we go forward is going to be another critical aspect as we keep our heads level, I suppose,” Felty said.
As president of a national association, Felty was interviewed a lot during the Commodity Classic and said that he was asked about his opinions on President Trump’s tariff policies, to which he simply replied, “Patience.”
For how long, he couldn’t say but urged others to be patient and watch how things play out. As to his time serving other wheat growers on both state and national levels, Felty said that it has been an “interesting journey.” He added, “I’m really glad that I did it. It has been an experience of a lifetime.”
