August 15, 2018

Three on the committee

Topic: Issues

August 13, 2018: North Dakota has an unprecendented opportunity with the farm bill conference committee. Let's make it count!

Download the Farm Bill Conference Committee mp3

Read the transcript:

We are at the halfway point through August, which means we are just a couple weeks from a conference committee on the farm bill back in Washington, D.C. And we in North Dakota have a special opportunity this time around on the conference committee regarding the farm bill, as all three of our elected delegation in D.C. are going to sit on the conference committee, which is going to debate what should be priority in the farm bill and what should not be in the farm bill.

This opportunity should not be taken lightly by any of us in agriculture or any of us in North Dakota, as agriculture is the number one industry in our state. The opportunity to have all three of our elected officials sitting on the committee to make the decisions about what the final farm bill will look like is an unprecedented opportunity; an opportunity for us to tell our elected officials that we sent to D.C. to do for us as we think that we need for our farms and our ranches. It is now our opportunity to give that input.

We should be able to get some of those bad things removed that are contained within those farm bills, one of which is a new permanent easement program for CRP. That’s just one example. Obviously, there are many other things. There is more money being shifted in the RCPP [Regional Conservation Partnership Program] program. There are “fixes” that maybe aren’t really fixes when it pertains to the commodity titles.

And then there are positive things like making sure that, that insurance program is still available there and in good standing until a point in time where we have sufficient private products available, which is a policy of NDFB.

But this chance doesn’t come along every day. The farm bill only happens about every five years. The fact that we have all three of our elected officials is unprecedented when it comes to getting appointments. This is our golden opportunity to make sure the bad things that are in either the Senate or the House version do not make the final version.

So, make those phone calls. Call Senator Hoeven, Senator Heitkamp and Congressman Cramer and tell them to stand up for North Dakotans and our farmers and ranchers.