The House Ag Committee held a hearing on the economic crisis in farm country. Chair Glen “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania says a crisis is exactly what hundreds of thousands of farm families are facing as we speak.
“Across the board, commodity prices have fallen precipitously while input costs remain at or near record-high levels. For some commodities, returns have been in the red for several years. Producers are burning their hard-earned equity and being forced to have incredibly tough conversations with their lenders to figure out how to hold on for one more year.”
He says, unfortunately for some, there won’t be one more year.
“In fact, the Agriculture and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University, which tracks the financial performance of 92 representative farms all across the country, recently stated that in the 42 years of keeping records at the center, there has never been a time where there has been such a bleak outlook over the next five years for their representative farms, with every single major commodity deep in the red. Producers deciding what to plant this year aren’t thinking about what rotation is likelier to make money, but rather, what crops will cause them to lose the least.”
Thompson says he wants to address the underlying causes of these record-high input costs.
“Such as burdensome regulations, uncertainty around taxes, and harmful energy and environmental policies that are relics of the previous Administration. I will also be working with the Trump Administration to expand markets and create demand for U.S. agriculture products. I know there is a lot of concern about tariffs and potential retaliation, but as we have seen in just the past two weeks with Colombia, Canada, and Mexico, access to the U.S. consumer provides him powerful leverage to negotiate with foreign nations, and he needs to use this leverage to advance the America First agenda. I will be keeping a vigilant watch over these actions, and where U.S. agriculture gets caught in the crossfire, I will be the first to speak up on behalf of our producers.”
He says downturns in agriculture are nothing new, it is and always has been a cyclical business.
“But it sure seems like the good times are shorter and not as profitable as they once were, and the bad times are lasting longer and are more severe. The needs of the industry have changed, and this underscores the critical importance of enacting a new farm bill with a significantly enhanced safety net. This won’t by any means make producers whole, but a bolstered and properly functioning safety net will help them weather the storm. I was proud of the work this committee did in the last Congress to advance the Farm Food and National Security Act of 2024 in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, for numerous reasons outside of my control, we weren’t able to get that bill across the finish line, and America’s producers are the ones paying the price. We cannot let this year be a repeat of the last.”
Thompson says he will push to get a Farm Bill over the finish line this year. He also urged the Senate to act quickly to confirm Brooke Rollins – who he thinks will be the best Ag Secretary of our lifetimes.