As part of the IDEAg FarmFest in Redwood Falls, Minn., this week, ASA Vice President Bob Worth joined House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson and Member Tim Walz, along with National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson and American Farm Bureau Federation Public Policy Director Dale Moore on a panel to discuss the prognosis for the farm bill, and the latest in the bill’s ongoing saga in Washington.

Worth was given the opportunity to open the forum, calling on Congress to finalize the farm bill before the current bill expires on September 30. He outlined ASA’s priorities to protect crop insurance as a risk management tool and to prevent any target price program that may be included in the farm bill from distorting planting decisions. In order to protect farmers’ planting flexibility, avoid planting distortions, and avoid risks of WTO challenges of U.S. farm programs, ASA has communicated its insistence that any target price program must be decoupled from current year planting decisions.

“Given the variety of crops we grow here in Minnesota and nationwide, and the need for our farmers to continue to produce more to feed consumers here domestically and overseas, we simply can’t afford to have a farm policy that encourages farmers to plant for the program and not for the market, which is driven by what those consumers are purchasing,” said Worth.

As reported by the Associated Press, both Ranking Member Peterson and Rep. Walz lamented that neither could see “a clear path forward” for overcoming differences between Republicans and Democrats and between the House and the Senate on the bill. The Ranking Member discussed the current state of the House’s bill addressing nutrition, which was split off from the farm bill in July, as part of an effort to cut more expenditures in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Rep. Peterson noted that, given the high cuts to the SNAP program that the GOP has proposed in the House bill, the likelihood of the Senate or the White House approving such cuts is very poor.