In a recent American Farm Bureau Federation podcast, AFBF Senior Director of Congressional Relations Mary Kay
Thatcher discussed the importance of farmers and ranchers taking advantage of
the resources available to them to lobby for Farm Bill considerations.
“The House and Senate Ag Committees have
both been very clear that they’re going to start listening sessions in the
country and hearings in Washington, so we need to be engaged now, or it will be
too late,” Thatcher said. “And I think farmers need to understand that it would
be a very bad idea to split the nutrition title off from the rest of the farm
programs because that’s the way that we get the Farm Bill passed.”
She also discussed the need for farm bureau
members to coordinate on a state level to determine their concerns for the Farm Bill, many of which the AFBF has broken down online to help building member
understanding.
“We have a lot of people that haven’t had
their state annual meetings yet and feeding into that process so that when we
come up to the AFBF annual meeting in January we have good strong policy
telling us what the biggest concerns are,” Thatcher said. “Once we know the concerns
we can spend some time analyzing different options and figuring out what
farmers need to make a good decision.”
Farmers urged to gear up lobbying effort regarding Farm Bill changes
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