Helping our Farmers

In the past few weeks, we have seen an unprecedented amount of rain in the Coastal Bend region. While rain seems like it would be good for farming, we have simply had too much. I heard from many of our local farmers that the water covering their fields was preventing them from being able to plant their crops. Due to insurance policy regulations set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency (RMA), planting deadlines for our farmers are fast approaching. Farmers risk facing penalties for every day they plant past the April 5 deadline.

On March 20, I met with a group of local farmers to discuss their options. With little help from the RMA to extend the April 5 deadline, I introduced the Farmer Flexibility Act (FFA). This legislation would give farmers until May 1 to plant grain sorghum, corn, and cotton crops. This extension would allow for their fields to become dry enough to become workable.

Quite frankly, because Congress has returned home for a two week district work period without taking up the FFA, it’s unlikely that local farmers will get the relief they need this planting season. This situation has, however, created an opportunity to work on a long term solution to deal with extreme weather conditions and one size fits all planting deadlines from Washington that fail to consider real world scenarios.