10/01/24 No Help from Congress

The lack of a new farm bill, not updated since 2018, has negatively impacted me. I applied for conservation waterway CRP as part of an NRCS cost sharing program in July that they expected to be approved in August so we could get the work done this summer. August came and went with no word of approval. It is now October. Now they informed me that they cannot approve it until the next fiscal year. They assure me that it will eventually be approved but we will miss the opportunity of having had this land in prevent-plant corn when the work could have been done this summer with no crop damage. They tell me that the lack of new farm bill authorization for CRP funding causes it to be approved in tranches, limiting and delaying approval. Most likely now, at least some of this work will have to be done next spring. It is frustrating. For most farmers the most important component of the farm bill is crop insurance funding. Crop insurance is really the only safety net that farmers now have. It will be attacked in the next farm bill from both sides of the aisle in Congress because…