Farm Bureau’s priority issues for the 2023 farm bill
Apr 3, 2023, 10:59 AM
by
INFB Marketing Team
Below is a summary of some of Farm Bureau’s key priorities for the 2023 farm bill.
Crop insurance
AFBF supports a robust crop insurance program with no reductions in premium cost share, and opposes means testing, income limits or add-ins, such as required production practices. Farm Bureau also supports:
- Prioritizing risk management tools and funding for both federal crop insurance and commodity programs.
- The continuation of the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program.
- The opportunity for farmers to re-elect and/or enroll in ARC or PLC programs.
- The need for crop insurance to continue being federally supported and sold by the private sector.
Conservation
Among the concepts supported by Farm Bureau are:
- Maintaining funding for federal conservation programs which maintain environmental benefits, including the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).
- Emphasizing conservation programs for working lands as opposed to those that retire farmland from production.
- Encouraging prime farmland to come back into production, but retaining the program for marginal acres, land that is highly erodible or non-productive.
- Continued investments in voluntary and incentive-based conservation programs.
Nutrition
Farm Bureau supports a farm bill that includes the nutrition title and would be opposed to the separation of the nutrition title from the balance of the farm bill. Additionally, Farm Bureau supports the inclusion of a block grant program that would allow food banks and food access networks to directly purchase specialty crops from farmers.