WATCH: Dusty Johnson on the farm bill: ‘Farmers will fight you if you do anything to damage their land’
Washington Examiner Staff
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The farm bill is expiring on Sept. 30, 2023, and members of Congress in the House and Senate are developing their drafts for its renewal as the government works to avoid a shutdown. The farm bill is passed roughly every five years. Each bill gets a unique title. The current farm bill, called the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, was passed into law in December 2018.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) sat down with the Washington Examiner’s Sarah Bedford to discuss what could be trimmed and what to save in the latest iteration of the farm bill.
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Johnson also discussed climate change regulations that were previously added to the bill.
“I don’t know any better conservationists and stewards of the land than American agriculture producers,” Johnson said. “Farmers and ranchers will fight you if you want them to do anything that will damage their land because they know it has been a 100- or 200-year asset for them, and it needs to continue to be a multicentury asset going forward.”
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Johnson has spearheaded fighting against allowing China to buy U.S. farmland.
“They have increased their holdings of foreign-owned farmland by 1,000%,” Johnson said. “Now, again, a lot of that’s in South America and Africa and Southeast Asia. But they are turning their gaze toward America, so let’s get out ahead of the problem. Just because they don’t have a lot of American farmland yet doesn’t mean that we should view it as a nonthreat.”