Farm bill should protect, maybe strengthen, crop insurance, says Thompson

The incoming Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee said the new farm bill should protect the federally subsidized crop insurance program and “maybe we need to see about strengthening it.” In some cases, crop insurance could preclude the need for stopgap bailouts, said Pennsylvania Rep. Glenn Thompson in a congressional Western Caucus video.

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“There’s some things related to disaster relief that we can incorporate into crop insurance,” said Thompson. “I think that we be really helpful if we could.”

The government spent tens of billions of dollars on trade-war, pandemic relief and disaster assistance since 2018 through a variety of impromptu aid packages. An ongoing program, such as crop insurance, would give farmers more certainty of survival in hard times than hoping for assistance, he said in the “Chairman’s Chat” video recorded last week. Thompson described crop insurance as “very important.”

“We need to protect that. You know, maybe we need to see about strengthening it,” he said.

Commodity prices have boomed since summer 2020 and net farm income, a measurement of profitability, is forecast to set a record this year. Thompson said he was concerned about the income margin for producers between high market prices and rising production costs.

“You know, reference prices are irrelevant if your input costs keep rising,” he said. “And I know we’ve been blessed with most commodities where commodity prices have gone up. The problem is they can drop overnight, and input costs don’t tend to drop overnight. They go down very slowly.”

Thompson said he wanted the committee to look into funding levels in the farm bill for agricultural research. A priority, he said, “is to incorporate what defines American agriculture — science, technology and innovation; I want to see that incorporated in a very robust way in every subcommittee … because that’s the future of American agriculture.”

He said there would be farm-bill listening sessions around the country, beginning as early as Jan. 7 at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He said he wanted the farm bill “to be the priorities of the American farmer, rancher, forester.”

The “Chairman’s Chat” video is available here.