Senator Marshall Joins RFDTV to Discuss Drought, Farm Bill

Kansas City, KS – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. joinedMarket Day Report on RFDTV to recap the bipartisan field hearingon the historic midwestern drought he hosted along the Kansas-Colorado state line earlier this week. Senator Marshall discussed the feedback he received from farmers and ranchers during the hearing, creating effective water conservation policies, and how the Farm Bill must support the agriculture community on the front lines of this drought. 

You may click HERE or on the link above to watch Senator Marshall’s full interview. 

Highlights from Senator Marshall’s interview include:

On Creating Effective Water Conservation Policies: 

“The one thing I can’t do is make it rain, but what we can do is work on our conservation practices. The folks out there like myself, they’re fifth sixth generation farmers, ranchers – they’re innovators, they’re resilient. And there are some conservation farms that have figured out how to use this aquifer underneath us, and still keep it replenished.”

“We need a farm bill that’s going to allow them to use these conservation programs. Right now, the way this IRA bill was written and the current farm bill is written, we can only use about half of the conservation programs out there.”

“They are requiring us to use cover crops in order to access these conservation programs, and cover crops simply don’t work in eastern Colorado or western Kansas.”

On the Importance of Crop Insurance During a Drought: 

“We’re doing everything we can on the conservation side of things. That was the purpose of this official Ag hearing. In Burlington, Colorado, we also had a good roundtable in Goodland, Kansas as well. At the end of the day, crop insurance is what allows the farmer to plant next year’s crop, and crop insurance has gone up, just like your home insurance has gone up, your car insurance. Crop insurance has went through the roof, so we need a little bit of help with crop insurance, and we need to increase those reference prices.”

“One of the testimonies we got is that if we would use the Democrats’ framework for the Farm Bill, it actually hurts wheat and sorghum, it would be worse for wheat and sorghum. They’d rather have an extension than a bad Farm Bill and I agree with them. So we need to up their crop insurance, work on the reference prices, and then we got to broaden the guardrails so that they can use these conservation tools.

On Getting the Farm Bill Right: 

“This is a five-year bill, we have to get it right. We’re not going to sign a Farm Bill just to get one done.”

“We’re just asking for a smidgen of increase in the crop insurance funding, as well as a little bit of an increase in the reference prices, 10 to 15%.”

“The House has a bill that they like, the Republicans released our framework in the Senate, which farmers and ranchers like, but unfortunately the Democrats’ focus is totally upon the SNAP programs. Again, we fully funded those as well, there’s no cut in SNAP. So we’ll be waiting on them, and otherwise we’ll take our chances in November. Hopefully John Boozeman is the chairman next year and we’ll put the ‘farm’ back in Farm Bill.”