Members of the Kansas congressional delegation had the upcoming farm bill, along with trade, tax cuts and immigration reform, on their minds as they addressed attendees at the annual Farm Bureau breakfast at the Kansas State Fair.

Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, promised fairgoers that there will be a new farm bill by 2018. He said eight of 11 Senate hearings have already been held, as well as special field hearings in Kansas, Michigan, Montana and Alabama.

Across the country, he said, committee members have been told again and again that crop insurance is the No. 1 priority for farmers, followed closely by expansion in trade.

“We have the reputation of being a good, dependable source of high-quality supplies of food,” Roberts said. “The last thing we need is to damage that, which certainly would be the result of pulling out of trade agreements.”

Sen. Jerry Moran agreed with Roberts that maintaining trade and expanding trading partnerships is vital to farmers across the country.

“Our farming industry can’t survive just feeding ourselves,” he said. “We need to feed the world to have markets for our products. We have great opportunity to be a critical supplier and need to make the current administration understand that.”

Rep. Roger Marshall, who represents the Kansas First, the largest agricultural congressional district in the country, agreed with his colleagues that trade deals are critical to the agricultural industry. He touted the opening of the Chinese market to U.S. beef and sales of port to Argentina as successes and said that getting additional money to support farm bill initiatives such as the Foreign Market Development and the Market Access Program is critical.

He said he would like to see priority given to a bilateral trade agreement with Japan.

Marshall said he believes that congressional action on immigration reform, including a path to legality for young adults who were brought here by their parents as small children, is the right way to approach immigration issues.

“I think the president is right that Congress needs to solve this problem,” Marshall said. “These hardworking young people deserve certainty of a permanent law. These are real people, and we need to do the right thing and establish sound policy.”

Marshall, who is an obstetrician by trade, said the biggest issue to solving the country’s health care problems is reducing the cost of care. The U.S. spends far more on health care than other industrialized countries.

Marshall said he thinks costs can be reduced by innovation, and the best way to spur that innovation is to get government out of the way and give entrepreneurs a chance to come up with cost-reduction ideas.

Ron Estes, representing the populous 4th Congressional District that includes Wichita, talked about his ideas for improving education and developing a workforce skilled in the jobs of the future.

“We need to see a shift from the mindset that a four-year college degree is the right path for everybody and get back to helping kids see that going to tech school and acquiring skills for the workplace can provide a good career; in some cases a better career than you’d have with a bachelor’s degree,” he said.

Estes said he is also working to pass tax reform and wants to see the corporate tax rate cut significantly, something that he insists will lead corporations to bring back the $3 trillion that he says is “trapped” overseas and use that money to build new plants, create new jobs and raise wages in the U.S.

He also advocated eliminating the estate tax and reducing the top rates for individual taxpayers.