WASHINGTON – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) participated in a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing. During the hearing, Senator Tuberville and agriculture experts discussed several topics, including the Farm Bill, Beginning Farmer Programs, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) Guaranteed Farm Loan Program, and the state of the agricultural economy.
Read a transcription of the discussion below or watch the full interview here.
ON FARM BILL:
SEN. TUBERVILLE: “Thank you very much. Welcome. Glad you’re here. Unfortunately, we’ve heard some very bad news. Mr. Noble, I’ve got friends in Arkansas, you know, that I’m hearing from them quite often. Our ag economy is a disaster right now. And we’ve obviously failed in some degree, I don’t know where it’s failed, but it is obviously in a tailspin. And we need to help. Mr. Noble, what can we do to help? I mean, you’re seeing all this going on firsthand. What can we do to help?”
MR. NOBLE: “The main thing, Senator, is quick action on a Farm Bill. I mean, obviously, that’s easy to say and hard to accomplish. But I think everybody up here has said something along the similar lines that long-term policy matters. And it matters to ag lenders. It matters to the farmers that are the recipients of the loans, but there’s got to be some certainty. And at the risk of spinning off into another aspect, we face intense international competition with the commodities that our company trades in.
We’ve always been free traders, but quite frankly, trades got to be fair, and it hasn’t been. There’s a lot of challenges and complexities to that. So, if we’re going to ask our domestic producers to compete in a worldwide market, there’s got to be stability there and there’s got to be certainty. So, the quicker y’all can provide that the better.”
SEN. TUBERVILLE: “Yeah. Thank you. I hope that President Trump is right on the situation right now with tariffs. Obviously, it’s our last chance to do something to help this country, especially our farmers and producers.”
ON FSA GUARANTEED LOANS:
SEN. TUBERVILLE: “Mrs. Durbin, I’ve been talking about the need to raise FSA guaranteed loan limits for some time. I was pleased Chairman Boozman included this in his framework. Can you discuss the importance of raising guaranteed ownership loans to $3.5 million?”
MRS. DURBIN: “Yes. So, thank you, Senator, for that question. At Farm Credit, we utilize the FSA guarantee loan program as an important tool for serving our customers. And specifically, our young beginning and small customers, that tool is extremely important. So, that would allow us to loan to more customers, to more farmers, and help them get their operations up and going, but also as a risk-mitigating tool for us to better serve agriculture.”
SEN. TUBERVILLE: “Thank you.”
ON RECRUITING YOUNG FARMERS:
SEN. TUBERVILLE: “Mr. Hopkins. We’re trying to save not just farmers that have been doing it for a long time like Mr. Noble, but we’re trying to get young farmers involved in this fiasco as we’re looking at—and why in the world you’d do it? I don’t know, but hopefully there’s a lot of people out there that want to get into farming. I know at Auburn, you know, we have an ag department that’s very strong and you see a lot of great activity. How do we do that? How do we get young people involved? We lost a 150,000 farmers and farms in the last four years, a disaster that nobody’s talking about.”
MR. HOPKINS: “Definitely. Thank you for the question, Senator. We start with the Farm Bill with increasing lending limits. And as much negativity as we see surrounding ag, I’m very optimistic when I look at young producers we have around our area that are very on top of management. They’re very on top of technology. They’re looking for opportunity. Questions is, how do we give them the opportunity? What tools do we have to provide them with opportunity as capital expenses are getting to be so high that the barrier to entry into agriculture, like you said yourself, why would you want to do it? But there [are] still individuals with that passion to be producers for this country. And raising those lending limits in order to keep pace with that increased capital requirement allows us to provide that capital as producers.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP, and Aging Committees.
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