Senator Marshall Joins RFD-TV Live From AgCon in Overland Park, Kansas

Overland Park, KS – Today, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. joined RFD-TV to discuss the 2024 Agricultural Commodity Futures Conference, also known as AgCon, hosted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Kansas State University. 

This conference focuses on agribusiness and research opportunities, the farm economy, commodity costs, and the fluctuating futures markets. 

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

Highlights from the interview include:

On the CFTC Conference in Overland Park:

“It is great to have the CFTC here where they’re actually interacting with the producers. They’re so important as far as it goes to overseeing the futures markets, which are vitally important to my producers.”

“Look, my dad used to say that farming was the biggest gamble there was in life; he was a fourth-generation farm kid. And what the CFTC does is give us another tool in the toolbox for risk management; all your listeners understand the importance of crop insurance, the Title One programs, the ARC and PLC programs, and a Farm Bill. But the CFTC gives you one more risk management tool that you can use when you’re out there trying to get that operation loan. So we’re doing some good education here. Right now, some of our producers are a little bit scared of using the CFTC; using this futures market is complex.”

“There’s plenty of things in the uncertain category, let’s move what we can into the certain category pile. So when you’re planning a corn crop here, in the very near future, if you can go ahead and lock in a price that you’re happy with come harvest time, and you take that to your local banker and say, look, I got my crop insurance. You know, most I don’t know of any bank that will loan money on an operation loan, crop insurance, here’s the title one funding that would come into place as well. And then use the CFTC product as well.”

“What I’m really excited about is taking the CFTC out to my community banks, to my ag credit institutions, to the Big Co Ops as well, and making sure that those people in ag retail understand it, and they can give even better advice to those producer owners in the co-ops as well.”

On the threats to the Ag economy right now from the Biden Administration:

“Well, look on the world stage. The biggest threat to commodity prices are these wars that you mentioned, whether it’s Ukraine or the Middle East is a powder keg waiting to go off. And frankly, China is acting out in the Indo-China region as well. So we need to do everything we can to keep the peace. You know, President Eisenhower started off the first person to talk about peace through strength. So there’s certainly things at the national security level that we need to do to keep those markets open as well.”

“This administration has not done one trade agreement. They backed off on the U.K. agreement that the Trump administration was close to completing in China. They never did the phase two agreement. In Mexico, the USMCA trade agreement with Mexico locked out GMO corn. Our administration didn’t go up to bat for us. They’re locked in, this administration, on environmental issues, which are important farmers and ranchers, the original conservationists. This administration is locked into labor issues in other countries. How about improving our trade deals? We’ve had an explosion thanks to President Trump’s trade deals with Japan and South Korea and beef sales. How about this administration focusing on the farm, the farm, or how about this administration supporting ethanol?”