SC Commissioner Weathers: 2023 Farm Bill
- Every five years, Congress gets to work on a bundle of subject-specific “titles” related to agriculture spending, programs, and priorities, and related areas like nutrition assistance and conservation policy
- Otherwise known as the Farm Bill.
- It’s still early, but we can talk about some priorities I have on behalf of SC farmers:
- Maintaining and improving crop insurance programs
- The Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs have allowed many South Carolina farmers to keep farming
- Congress may alter the calculations but we do need to maintain some kind of crop insurance
- Helping specialty crop producers navigate risk
- Support more funding for specialty crop research and promotion through the Specialty Crop Block Grant program
- Simplifying and broadening the definition of what is a specialty crop
- We will be hearing conversations about a permanent federal fund for disaster assistance for farmers
- Instead of Congress having to authorize aid for each disaster
- Might allow relief to come more quickly
- SC legislature did something similar last year
- We’ll be talking about this more as the months roll on.
