President-elect Donald Trump campaigned as a supporter of corn ethanol and said he would protect farmers from over-regulation. His senior adviser, Sam Clovis, said the New York businessman does not support the idea, popular among conservative House Republicans, of splitting food stamps from the rest of the farm bill.
“We think the nutrition program has to be part of the farm bill. There’s no way to pass it otherwise,” said Clovis in late October. He acknowledged the Trump camp “doesn’t follow Republican orthodoxy on this.”
While campaigning in Iowa in August, Trump promised to protect the Renewable Fuels Standard and corn ethanol, to provide tax relief to farmers and to eliminate burdensome regulations such as the Waters of the United States rule, “which is a disaster.”
Clovis has said the Trump camp was looking seriously at naming a farmer or rancher to head the EPA.
Opinion polls showed strong support among farmers, a politically conservative group, for Trump, despite his calls for strict enforcement of immigration laws and his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. One-fifth of farm income is generated by ag exports and a large portion of farm workers are believed to be undocumented. Clovis said a Trump administration would take care to keep trade provisions that benefit farmers in any reworking of NAFTA or TPP. Similarly, he said that accommodations would be made for agriculture when immigration enforcement was tightened.
“I think something that’s going to have to be addressed down the road is price supports,” said Clovis during a forum at the National Press Club. “We’re going to have to start weaning ourselves from some of those issues out there. Allow the market to settle some of these factors.” Crop insurance also will need examination, he said, because the steep decline in commodity prices since 2013 has reduced the protection farmers see from the so-called revenue policies that are, by far, the most popular coverage.
Congress is scheduled to overhaul farm policy in 2018, but the three-year slump in commodity prices has prompted some lawmakers to call for action in 2017. “I think we ought to do a 2017 farm bill,” said Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, an Agriculture Committee member. He said a top priority would be to “preserve crop insurance.” The 2014 farm law elevated the federally subsidized crop insurance program to the central source of financial support for farmers.
The Agriculture Committee chairman, Pat Roberts of Kansas, is a steadfast support of crop insurance. With Republicans maintaining control of the Senate, Roberts could take a leading hand in writing the 2018 farm bill.
Besides ditching the so-called WOTUS rule on the upstream reach of clean water laws, Trump plans to scrap all of the Obama administration’s climate change regulations and he supports an end to the estate tax, said DTN.