Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Ethan Lane about House Committee on Agriculture Chairman GT Thompson’s 2024 Farm Bill proposal.
The markup of the 2024 Farm Bill is scheduled for May 23, 2024- click here for current details as found on the House Ag Committee website.
“We know what is in the draft and we are very comfortable with the product that GT and his team have put together,” Lane said. “This is a bill that comes from a team that has paid a lot of attention to ensuring that the cattle industry’s priorities are addressed, that this bill is a product that should be bipartisan, even though it is not being treated that way by that minority party in the House of Representatives or said Democrats for that matter at this point.”
Lane said the 2024 Farm Bill aims to address some of the larger issues impacting the cattle industry.
“The reality is that the Inflation Reduction Act created 20 billion dollars in conservation in funding before the Farm Bill process started, but with constraints that don’t exist in the Farm Bill writ large, or haven’t up to this point,” Lane said. “GT’s draft seeks to get that money back into a broader strategy for ensuring that those programs keep up with inflation. There is funding in place to increase money going to valuable programs for producers across the country. That is going to be a fight because Democrats feel like they have something there with this climate-focused implementation of popular programs like EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program).”
Lane added that he believes Thompson’s draft is an elegant way to bridge the gap and move forward with robust funding for farm and ranch programs.
“This bill also takes an aggressive move in the direction of fully funding those disease preparedness programs- what we call the three-legged stool- like foot and mouth disease funding, investment and research and ensuring that if we were to have a foreign animal disease outbreak on American soil that both the cattle industry and the livestock industry at large is ready for that and can deal with it…,” Lane said.
Regarding the nutrition programs in the Farm Bill, Lane said GT’s draft does a good job of balancing out other parts of the bill, yielding benefits for American farmers and ranchers. NCBA is especially pleased that there is no livestock title included.
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