DECATUR — Brian Duncan grew up in a farm bureau family and didn't know, as a child, that all kids didn't spend time at farm bureau functions.
Duncan is president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, after serving seven years as vice president and 13 years as Ogle County Farm Bureau president. He and his family own and operate a grain and livestock farm in Polo. He spoke at the Ag Cafe on Tuesday hosted by the Decatur Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“We represent 70,000 farm families and 300,000 non-farmers,” Duncan said. “I'm very proud of the work that we do. Our strength is that we have a farm bureau in every county that engages with our members and with our representatives and we have a network unlike any farm bureau in the country.”
Last week, Duncan said, he traveled to Washington, D.C. He spent six days there, meeting with six representatives and two senators about the Farm Bill. He left feeling more optimistic than when he arrived, he added.
The Farm Bill is still in committee with the United States House of Representatives.
The once-every-five-year omnibus bill contains provisions crucial to farmers, such as the crop insurance program, though the vast majority of the funds spent in the bill go toward the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The latest Farm Bill proposal represents an estimated $1.5 trillion – 2.4% of the total federal budget – in spending for the country, the majority of which is focused on food and nutrition, which makes it important to every American, not just farmers. The “Farm Bill,” he said, would be better described as “the food bill.”
The last Farm Bill, passed in 2018, should have expired last year but Congress could not agree on a new one, and instead gave the previous bill a one-year extension. Efforts to get a new bill out of the House and over the to the Senate have stalled.
The average American household spends 6% of its income on food and while inflation has made grocery bills go up, the average household in France spends 13% of its income on food, more than twice what Americans spend. America's is the lowest in the world.
“The investment this country makes in food security in the form of a Farm Bill is money well spent,” Duncan said.
Duncan said it costs his family $900 an acre to plant their 4,000 acres of corn. That could wipe them out if the crop fails. The vast majority — 96% — of farms are family farms, not large corporations that could absorb such a loss. Crop insurance allows farmers to go to lenders for the money to plant without fear of not being able to pay the loan back in case of a crop failure.
“The best defense is crop insurance,” Duncan said. “When it doesn't rain, I can still sleep at night.”
The House is “doing the lifting” of working on the Farm Bill, Duncan said, while the Senate waits until it has been voted on there and moves to the upper chamber for a vote. The hope is that the bill will move out of committee by April 1.
“The Farm Bill matters to you in Central Illinois because you sit on the hull of some of the best farmland in the world,” Duncan said. “Agriculture flows through this city and through this community. A thriving agriculture is in all of you all's best interests for a lot of reasons. A Farm Bill provides an economic backstop for all agriculture. It provides an economic backstop for food, fuel and fiber.”
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Contact Valerie Wells at (217) 421-7982. Follow her on Twitter: @modgirlreporter