Advocating for agriculture: Farmers visit Washington to stress need for trade, insurance programs

WASHINGTON — As soon as the large mahogany door in the congressional building was opened, the farmers were greeted with hellos and handshakes.

“Do you want some Indiana popcorn?” the staff in Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Pence’s office proudly asked as they scooped the freshly popped treat into red-and-white striped bags.

The group representing the Indiana Corn Growers Association and the Indiana Soybean Alliance’s Membership and Policy Committee spent the entire day visiting with legislative directors and other staff members in Washington. Many of the lawmakers were in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention.

In D.C., the farmers also attended the annual Soy Issues Forum hosted by the American Soybean Association and Corn Congress hosted by the National Corn Growers Association.

“It is very impactful when a farmer takes time away from the farm and gets out here and meets personally with their members of Congress and staff members to tell their story, to give that personal story of how these policies impact their farm,” said Steve Howell, senior director of industry affairs for ICGA and ISA.

“They need to hear from us, and they do want to hear from us. They want to know what the impact is going to be on one of the most important industries in their district. Regardless of the district in Indiana, ag is present in each district.

“Corn and soybean production is the backbone of agriculture in Indiana. And they want to know what the impact is going to be on the industry, so they’re always open to get more information from us, knowing what the farmers think about these issues.”

Howell said lawmakers must remember the ripple effect that the agriculture economy creates beyond rural communities.

“If corn and soybean farmers are more successful, more profitable, that’s a benefit to all of Indiana,” he said. “So, we’re constantly talking through the impact that we have on Indiana’s economy.”

Politics is a constant effort that requires cooperation; Howell compared the process to rolling a large, 30-feet-wide inflatable ball across a field, with several people pushing the ball and trying to get it to go the direction they want.

“You can’t get out in front of it and stop it yourself. It’s already moving and it’s got inertia and there’s people behind there pushing. But you can get along the side of it, maybe nudge it a little bit your direction that you want it to go,” he said.

“If you get enough people helping move it in the direction you want it to go, you can guide it a little bit. And then even at times if you get enough people to stop and get in front of it, you can redirect the ball. So, that is what we are constantly doing.”

Connecting The Dots

Kyra Meister, of Hope, a sophomore at Purdue University studying agricultural economics with a pre-law and policy concentration and a political science minor, joined the Capitol Hill visits as a participant in ASA’s Ag Voices of the Future program, sponsored by Valent.

This summer, she is working as a field specialist intern at Advanced Agrilytics in White Hall, Illinois.

Meister said everyone was very gracious and she was grateful to be included in the discussions, even though she is young.

“It’s always been a passion of mine to teach people that you don’t have to be raised on a farm to understand where food comes from and understand agriculture, so having that in the back of my mind made me more open to contributing to the conversation — not that I knew everything they were talking about, but I could connect the dots and participate,” she said.

“Not feeling like I was completely out of the loop made me feel less intimidated. They were smiling, and they wanted to hear about me. They were excited that I was interested in some of these things for the future. So, it made me feel a lot better about being there.”

Making A Difference

In addition to Pence, R-Columbus, the Hoosier farmers visited the offices of Reps. Jim Baird, R-Greencastle; Jim Banks, R-Columbia City; Larry Bucshon, R-Evansville; André Carson, D-Indianapolis; Erin Houchin, R-Salem; Frank Mrvan, D-Highland; and Rudy Yakym, R-Granger; as well as Sens. Mike Braun, R-Jasper; and Todd Young, R-Bargersville.

Here are some of the messages shared by the farmers:

We Need A Farm Bill — Now

“Our group had kind of a three-pronged message that we tried to leave with our legislators. One, kind of leading off with the urgency of getting the rules to the game set in the form of the farm bill. I think a lot of the staffers that we talked to were surprised to learn that we’re only 30 to 45 days from beginning the process of buying inputs for next year. There’s a real sense of urgency of knowing what the rules of the games are, what the crop insurance picture is going to look like, those kinds of things. So, we tried to really hammer home that sense of urgency.

“Second, we really tried to explain the importance of ethanol. On a 15-billion-bushel crop to have nearly 6 billion bushels of that going towards ethanol, we wanted to help them understand the magnitude of that issue for our industry.

“Then lastly, as an industry that’s really dependent on trade, we talked a lot about trade and the need for the Congress to make its wishes known to the administration that they’re in favor of trade, that they’re in favor of market opportunities for agriculture.

“I’m a first-year member on the Indiana board, so this was my first time out here. So, it was very educational for me, too, to learn from them. In fact, I stayed after and talked to a couple of the staffers just to, you know, make maybe a little bit more of a personal connection, to where that if they felt like they needed to talk to a real farmer about a real issue in the farm bill, for instance, they would have a face to go with the name and hopefully would reach out.

“Some were really leaned in and very engaged, asking a lot of questions back. I felt like we had good engagement in a bipartisan way, which I found encouraging. I hope that the visits will pay dividends — not necessarily that we’ll get everything that we wanted, but that we kept the line or opened a line of communication that may pay off at some future point.

“Sometimes, as farmers, we are our own worst enemy at times in the sense that we work really hard, we keep our head down, we get the job done and we get the job done well, but we don’t really realize what sort of big business we are and that any other industry would set aside money for marketing, they would set aside money for research and development, they would be making those investments in the future of their business and we as individual farmers do not do that.

“What we can do is do it as an industry and you do that by being a member of a group like the Indiana Corn Growers Association, that goes to work every day thinking about how to promote the industry, as a whole, and your farm, in particular, how to make it more profitable, how to protect it from threats.

“So, I hope other farmers will see the value in what the organization does, the markets that have been developed through the corn checkoff side and the policies that have been implemented through the policy side of the corn growers association. I think it’s money well spent, and I would encourage every corn grower to sign up and be a member.”

Alan Dunn

Michigantown

Farming Is Hard Work

“We’re pretty diverse on our farm. Everything we do is a specialty crop. Our corn is food-grade corn that goes to dry millers in Japan, and we also grow some corn for the bourbon facilities down in Kentucky. Our soybeans are food-grade soybeans that get put in a container and shipped to Taiwan and Japan, and we also grow high oleic soybeans that get processed for the oil. We grow a little bit of wheat, mainly for the cattle. We do have a cow-calf operation. And we also raise hay.

“It’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice, I’ll tell you. And it’s not just a sacrifice for me. It’s for the whole family. Farming is a lifestyle. It’s not a job. It’s been a long, hard journey, but an enjoyable one.

“As time goes on, you realize that there’s getting less and less farmers out there and our voices have got to be heard. I decided, in a long discussion with my wife, because we knew we were going to have some time away from home, that it was a good opportunity and I was hoping to be an advocate for agriculture, because I fell in love with it and have a passion for it and hopefully I can pass that passion on for generations to come.

“We have got to have a stronger voice. Somebody’s got to step up. And so I decided I was going to step up. It’s been a great ride. I really enjoy doing this. And I feel like I’m making a difference.

“I just hope that our voices are heard, our needs are heard — the things that happen on the farm, that I’ve relayed them in a good way that can help them understand why we do things and how we do things. So, that helps them make decisions.

“And, hopefully, if they’ve got questions, they can reach out to a farmer, whether it’s me or one of my colleagues, or even staff on the soybean board, that we can further help them make educated decisions, science-based decisions on policy, that we can keep the tools we have in the toolbox going and that we can actually move forward in agriculture.

“Somebody’s got to be out here advocating for agriculture, because there’s not many people that are directly connected to agriculture anymore, to know what really goes on. A lot of people don’t know what goes on in rural America. So, for us to come out here and be able to voice what goes on and voice our opinions and be a resource for them to come to in case they have questions, I think that’s very important to have those connections.”

Mike Koehne

Greensburg

Farmers Are Good Stewards

“Crop insurance needs to be affordable and available. Basically, if you insure your crops at 85%, you’re pretty sure you’re going to be able to pay your bills, at least your rent and your inputs, to get through to farm another year.

“I think the USDA is right, but I don’t want them to overreach and try and limit what we’re doing. We know what’s best for our farm, sustainability-wise, and what we need to do.

“Our farm is in the Lake Michigan Watershed, so obviously water quality and using cover crops and no-till has become a big deal, and foliar feeding the fertilizer instead of broadcasting — all those things are in the back of my mind. We don’t want a government mandate that comes in and says, ‘Hey, you guys have to do this, you have to do that.’ We’re trying to be good stewards.

“I think it’s important that people realize that the Indiana Corn board is out working for them and trying to get positive relationships going with their representatives and senators and trying to have open lines of communication. We’re out here trying to get policies passed that are good for all farmers.”

Tom Murphy

Chesterton

Trade Is Very Important

“I was trying to get through to them on trade and how important trade is. I’m a member of the U.S. Meat Export Federation. We sell meat over the world, and we have a superior product.

“China is the big elephant in the room. We lose them and we’re in trouble, so we need to diversify and get to other markets. India, for example, has a growing middle class. The U.S. Grains Council just got an office in India.”

Jerry Osterholt

Roanoke

Technology Has Changed Farming

“I’ve lost track how many times I’ve come out here, probably 12 or 14 times, something like that. Years ago, I was here with United Producers. I’ve been here with Farm Bureau before that. I think it’s much more important now, because there’s less members of Congress that have any experience with agriculture and we are getting into much more complicated issues than what we dealt with 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

“The farm bill seems more contentious now than it did back then, but that’s partly, I believe, because of maybe the lack of understanding of agriculture and farming. So, it’s very important for us to get out here and educate our legislators and the staff. Let them know we’re a resource for their questions.

“We’ve had Greg Pence three or four times out to our farm, we’ve had a couple Shop Talks and then I was on his ag advisory group. It’s always good when we can get our elected officials out to our farms.

“Technology has really changed the way we operate. It allows us to do more work with less labor. But also the risk and our cost of operating the farm is substantially higher than it ever was.

“We need a farm bill. We need it worse than ever — low grain prices, inflation. We need it to help stabilize agriculture. And we want to make sure that the trade incentives, the Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development Program, in the House version have been doubled, and we’ve been asking for that for 20 years, and we really need that to help try to move our products.

“It’s extremely important to talk to your legislators. And I know that people think, well, they can’t make a difference. But they can. And that’s one reason we keep coming out here and talking to them, giving them our story from the farm because they want to hear that. And we can make a difference.”

Phil Ramsey

Shelbyville

You’ve Got To Promote Trade

“Trade is a biggie. That level playing field is not there. That’s the reason I’m involved with the U.S. Grains Council. You’ve got to promote trade, that’s all there is to it.

“We bit a big bullet with Mexico. They were going to do away with GMO, and now they’re accepting GMO yellow corn, but still not white corn. They are protecting their own producers on white corn. I can understand that. But they are the biggest customer we have for yellow corn. I’ve been to Mexico many times. I was on a dairy farm with about 25,000 cows. Every 10 days, he gets a 100-car hopper bottom trainload of corn out of Kansas and Nebraska.

“I don’t know if the powers that be know how important trade is. I live in Dubois County. We’re the No. 1 county in the state of Indiana for turkey production, and we’re fourth as counties go in the nation in turkey production.”

David Ring

Huntingburg

Funding Needed To Develop New Markets

“We definitely wanted to make sure that the farm bill is one of our top priorities, that the expansion of biofuels and the regulations surrounding that are improved and we’re allowed access to the markets for ethanol and for biofuels. And then we really wanted to make sure that our message was heard on trade and some of the implications that are going on with some of the tariffs on ethanol grown in Brazil and just trade in general.

“We’re continuing to look at domestic markets with biofuels and some new uses. Within trade, in our partnerships with the U.S. Grains Council, we’re really looking for those overseas markets, particularly in Southeast Asia, Latin America, where we already have a strong presence in developing those markets for U.S. corn. Within the farm bill, we definitely want to see a robust Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development Program funding so that we can develop those new markets.

“It’s just invaluable that we’re on the hill and we’re fostering those relationships and getting our message out and showing the members and the staff that, you know, things in D.C. may not look the same as they do on the farm. We need to just continue to push our messages to foster those relationships and show them what the American farmer is capable of — without a bunch of burdensome regulations and things that may inhibit our ability to farm.”

J.R. Roesner

Ferdinand

Ethanol Is A Win-Win-Win

“One of the things on the forefront that is important to me is the farm bill. We just haven’t got this done yet. I was here a year ago and we hadn’t gotten it done, and here we are a year later and we still don’t have it done. I’m disappointed. They have a lot of work to do, I get it. But it’s time to get this done. It’s time to stop talking about it. Let’s get it done.

“It’s a pretty good farm bill to the one we had in the past. So, there’s not a lot that has to be changed. But we need to get it done. It’s time.

“Crop insurance is a big thing today, especially with the depressed markets. We have to have the freedom to farm, but yet we have to be able to farm with a little bit of a safety net. Farmers overall, I think, are optimistic people. Otherwise, you wouldn’t farm. If you’re pessimistic, this is definitely not the right occupation for you.

“I’m a big proponent of ethanol. It’s a cleaner fuel, it’s better for emissions, it’s better air that we all breathe, it’s cheaper at the pump and it’s an alternative to dependency on more foreign oil and it’s by far more reliable than what electric is today.

“We need to have ethanol available year-round — that’d be a great starting point, not to make it where it’s just seasonal. It’s clear it’s a win-win-win. It’s a renewable fuel. I grow it every year. I don’t have to go to foreign lands to pick up the oil. And it’s cleaner. And it’s cheaper. It is a win for everybody.”

Scott Smith

Windfall