Craig Hill
Congress is expected to begin work early next year on the next farm bill. Iowa Farm Bureau president Craig Hill says maintaining a strong crop insurance program is his group’s top priority.
“What we hear from our producers is, ‘don’t touch my crop insurance program. We like the crop insurance program,'” Hill says. “It gives us the ability to farm another year. It’s revenue protecting. We don’t want to go to Congress with a request for a disaster bill if we have a drought or other problem. We want to rely on a good insurance program.”
Iowa’s crop insurance participation rate exceeds 90 percent. Hill is also hoping the next farm bill will help farmers with conservation efforts.
“We’re hearing that across the state. We want to do better and we’re going to need assistance in terms of technical advice and engineering, but also in cost sharing and fundamentally assisting us in doing what we can best do as stewards,” Hill says. Congress passed the last farm bill in 2014.
(Reporting by Ken Anderson, Brownfield Ag News)