The hearing was the first official action on the 2023 Farm Bill. Congress passes a Farm Bill only once every five years. The current Farm Bill was passed with strong bipartisan support in 2018 and expires in September 2023.
The Farm Bill is critical to Michigan and Wisconsin agriculture, which supports one in four jobs in Michigan alone. Input from farmers and industry leaders is important to maintain the strength of the industry and the stakeholders is the territory GreenStone serves as part of the Farm Credit System. GreenStone submitted written testimony at the hearing which was entitled Growing Jobs and Economic Opportunity: 2023 Farm Bill Perspectives from Michigan. The hearing focused on agriculture, as well as conservation, rural economic development, research, forestry, energy, and nutrition policies. Among the two panels of witnesses who testified live at the Michigan hearing, many member-owners represented the great diversity of Michigan agriculture. Each witness did an outstanding job when called to testify on the strength of the Farm Credit System and the role GreenStone plays to service the mission to provide necessary financial services in the marketplace.
Important to the GreenStone testimony was sharing the overall success of the association and the critical nature of delivering high quality financial services to ensure rural communities and the agricultural industry have a reliable, consistent, and constructive source of financing irrespective of cycles in the economy or the volatility of the financial markets. Farm Credit’s unique cooperative structure means that the customer-owners who sit on our Board of Directors are living, working, and raising their families in rural communities they serve. They are deeply invested in the success of those communities and are interested in finding more ways for Farm Credit to contribute to that success.
Further, a focus in the testimony was to explain and assure the Committee of the commitment to serve young, beginning, and small (YBS) farmers and ranchers. GreenStone’s CultivateGrowth program and the Farm Credit System overall makes extraordinary efforts to do so. According to the most recent Farm Credit Funding Corporation’s Annual Information Statement, the overall volume of Farm Credit lending to YBS farmers again increased from 2020 to 2021. In addition, the number of new loans Farm Credit made to YBS farmers also increased from 2020 to 2021. This will continue to be a focus for GreenStone to assure the overall mission to agriculture is served both now and into the future.
Another key component of the Farm Bill development for the future will be a focus on climate-smart agricultural policy. GreenStone testimony encouraged the crafting of solutions that are voluntary, incentive-based, market-based, and reflective of sound science. From a lending perspective, financing options must be based on repayment capacity. Lenders are not the appropriate avenue to determine efficacy of practices or penalize/incentivize producers based on their farming practices. Simply put, lenders cannot be a referee in this area. We will be keeping a close eye on the development of additional programs in this area and the responsibilities placed on GreenStone and our members in the future.
As the clock ticks for the next Farm Bill to be drafted ahead of its 2023 expiration, there is much to do and communicate in anticipation of the expiration. GreenStone will continue to advocate for our members, and provide updates to our members as progress advances!
To view the article in the online 2022 Summer Partners Magazine, click here.
