Politics

RSS

Farmers and bankers are pressing lawmakers to maintain and even expand access to crop insurance through the next farm bill.

Lawmakers continue to struggle with what to do about commodity programs in a new farm bill, including how to pay for increases in reference prices. One idea is to require farmers to update their base acreage to reflect current plantings.

People in some of the poorest and hungriest nations in the world may be the hardest hit by India’s decision last month to ban exports of long grain, non-basmati rice – a move that’s already pushing global prices higher and forcing import-dependent countries to scramble to find supplies, according to analysts and trade data.

Farm Credit lenders are asking Congress in the upcoming farm bill to expand their authority to rural community facilities and fisheries projects, but some community bankers are worried the changes will siphon away their business.

As Congress prepares to write a new farm bill, animal welfare advocates are preparing to safeguard California’s Proposition 12 and similar laws regulating agricultural practices while also pushing to tighten standards for dog breeders, ban the export of horses for slaughter, and eliminate the last vestiges of animal fighting and dog racing in the United States.

The House and the Senate are different, its members like to say. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident this year than the spending bills that are advancing in both chambers.

A bipartisan quintet of House Ag Committee members visited Maine Monday for a listening session on the next farm bill, and many local speakers used the event to call for improved crop insurance in the region.

A South Dakota lawmaker is calling on Congress to move forward with plans to add more transparency to cattle markets to help address “underlying frailties within the marketplace” even though current prices for market cattle are reaching record prices.