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Boozman ready to deliver for agBoozman ready to deliver for ag

New Senate Ag Committee Chair confident he can negotiate new farm bill.

Sen. Boozman
Sen. John Boozman takes the lead as Senate Ag Committee chair, and getting a farm bill passed is top priority to provide risk management tools for our U.S. farmers. He has also been named the 2025 Vandergriff Pioneer Award recipient by the Southern Cotton Ginners Association. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/Staff

There’s little doubt U.S. Sen. John Boozman loves agriculture. The three-term Arkansas Republican has raised Polled Hereford cattle and grown cotton. His daughters were active in 4-H and grew up showing heifers.

He continues to advocate for agriculture because it is such a huge part of his state’s economy. While the ag industry represents a quarter of Arkansas’s economy, for most rural communities it is their lifeblood.

“We are blessed. We have the safest, cheapest food supply of any place in the world and that has taken a lot of hard work of many generations of Americans to get us in that position,” he said. “We have to be careful about making sure that we preserve that.”

While farmers can certainly relate to that sentiment, what they really want to know is how Boozman plans to pass a new farm bill this year. As the new chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he has more influence on that process than any other lawmaker.

U.S. farmers need a break

Boozman makes no bones about the dire conditions many farmers are facing. While the 2018 Farm Bill may have been adequate when it was first enacted, he believes it has more than outlived its usefulness, especially following the pandemic and ensuing inflation.

“The safety nets, the risk management fields that farmers have just don’t work,” Boozman said. “Because of that, there’s lots of uncertainty in farm country.”

Related:Are you tired of tariff talks yet?

He is among the many lawmakers who spent more than a year and a half crisscrossing the U.S., seeking input from stakeholders. He expects to do more of that this year as a new congress, with new committee members who bring their perspectives to the table. He says he is looking forward to working with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the new top Democrat on the Ag Committee, to get the ball rolling.

Where do we start with a farm bill?

Of course, many hurdles remain before a new bill can get passed. 2025 marked the beginning of a new congressional session. Thus, any bill must be introduced from scratch.

Last year, the House Ag Committee passed a farm bill introduced by Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson. That bill was never voted on because Speaker Mike Johnson knew it did not have the votes to pass.

Boozman introduced a similar farm bill framework that never made it out of the then Democrat-controlled committee. While the work that was put into those two proposals could serve as the blueprint for a new farm bill, other factors could force changes.

Any bill must first be scored by the Congressional Budget Office. President Trump has indicated he plans to cut spending and lower taxes. If he follows through with those plans, there may be fewer dollars available for the farm bill. This, after Chairman Thompson’s bill last year already exceeded the farm bill’s baseline budget.

Related:Trump’s influence dominates American Farm Bureau convention

House Republicans dispute that math.

The math does not math for farm country

Still, Boozman believes growing calls from the agriculture world to deliver a new bill will ultimately persuade lawmakers to get a deal done. Higher input costs coupled with lower commodity prices have created an environment where many farmers simply cannot make a living.

“I think just the necessity of getting these things done is such that members of Congress are understanding of that,” Boozman said. “Certainly, the farm community is becoming more vocal.”

Speaking of vocal, President Trump has repeatedly vowed to impose tariffs on major agriculture trading partners, including China, Mexico, and Canada. Boozman said he is not necessarily inclined to impose across-the-board tariffs. Still, he believes something needs to be done to address countries that are not playing by the rules. That, he says, is something President Biden failed to do.

Boozman plans to take a wait and see approach to exactly how Trump intends to protect agriculture while imposing new tariffs. He believes incoming Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins will play a key role in ensuring that any new trade deals will benefit all countries involved, while protecting farmers.

Boozman met with Rollins a few weeks after she was nominated to lead USDA. He said he came away impressed with her love and understanding for rural America. Just as importantly, Boozman believes she has the ear of the president and will be able to effectively advocate for agriculture.

“I think she has the opportunity to make herself a great secretary of agriculture at a time when we desperately need leadership in that area,” Boozman said.

Q & A with the Senator

New leadership brings new questions and farmers are not bashful about asking them. During a recent interview with Farm Progress, Senator Boozman addressed some of the important questions farmers asked us to relay to him.  

When will farmers realize economic relief?

In December 2024, the USDA announced $30 billion combined in economic and disaster relief to our U.S. farmers. In the past when this kind of relief package was passed, many did not think the dollars were distributed fairly.

“We were prescriptive in this bill and how it gets done. It is just a matter of getting the paperwork in place and getting the mechanism in place,” Boozman said.

While he doesn’t have a timeline, Boozman said it is forthcoming and will be done as soon as possible. “We are pushing the USDA to get the dollars out the door.”

Boozman underscored how important this monetary relief is, not only to farmers, but also to lending agencies.

“The farmers need the money. It is also important because the bankers and lenders need to know that source of income is coming in, to help farmers in getting their loans for the next crop.”

Farmers make great yields. The yields are so high at times that their hard-earned efforts are not necessarily reflected when the grain or the protein is delivered.

Reference prices are supposed to provide a safety net. Farmers are at the mercy of the markets, and they cannot set their own prices. They need a stable safety net. Instead, current reference prices do not trigger as an effective risk management tool. By the time PLC or ARC payments do trigger, a farm is already going under.

Increasing reference prices is a big part of the next farm bill. But it has also been a holdup. Past proposed farm bills have included price updates.

Boozman said, “Now it is making sure those risk management tools like reference prices are updated because of the way the farm economy is right now.”

Are there mechanisms in place for crop quality?

What happens when a farmer raises his highest bushels per acre for a crop, like rice, then takes the highest quality loss when the crop is delivered? The farmer takes the hit.

That happened this year across the Midsouth. Farmers took it on the chin. Quality loss is expensive, and crop quality is largely dependent on environmental factors.

Boozman said compensation for quality is a possibility, and it is something he heard throughout listening sessions held across the U.S.

As far as the recently passed economic relief package, Boozman said the disaster relief portion would kick in and account for some of the quality loss due to extreme weather like drought and hurricanes farmers experienced in 2024.

Looking ahead, 2025 looks grim for farm country. What is next?

Crop prices are historically low, and input costs are historically high. Farm economists from across the nation are predicting the situation to be worse in 2025. The best solution is a farm bill, and Boozman said it is top priority going into 2025.

“We are going to get this thing done as soon as possible,” he said. “We are talking about a five-year contract with our farmers. As I have said over and over again, we have to have more farm in the farm bill.”

Vandergriff Pioneer Award

Boozman has been named the 2025 Vandergriff Pioneer Award winner by the Southern Cotton Ginners Association. He has been a great advocate of Midsouth agriculture and its farmers. He has provided much needed support to the agriculture community at large.

The award is presented annually to an exceptional individual whose efforts have supported ag producers and the ag industry. Leading up to the Mid-South Farm and Gin Show, the award presentation takes place at the Southern Cotton Ginners Annual Meeting at the Peabody Hotel on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. To register online, go to farmandginshow.com.

About the Authors

Joshua Baethge

Policy Editor, Farm Progress

Joshua Baethge covers food and agriculture policy issues. Before joining Farm Progress, he spent 10 years as a news and feature reporter in Texas. During that time, he covered state and local government, community news, real estate, nightlife and culture.

Baethge earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Texas. In his free time, he enjoys going to concerts, discovering new restaurants, finding excuses to be outside and traveling as much as possible. He is based in the Dallas area where he lives with his wife and two kids.

Whitney Shannon Haigwood

Staff Writer, Delta Farm Press

Raised in a rural town in northeast Arkansas, Whitney Shannon Haigwood has a passion rooted in agriculture and education. As an Arkansas State University graduate, her career began in 2007, teaching middle school. After four years in the public classroom, she shifted gears to be a dedicated stay-at-home mom for her two beautiful daughters.

In 2019, Whitney took a job with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, and her love for agriculture grew even stronger. While there, she served in the cotton agronomy program and gained an appreciation for soil health. She later accepted a promotion to be the Technical and Social Media Writer for Agriculture and Natural Resources, which further channeled her energy to educate others about sustainable crop production.

Whitney joined the Delta Farm Press editorial team in 2022, and she is ambitious to share timely stories and on-farm inspiration. “Our farmers and leaders in the ag industry have stories to tell. We learn from one another,” she said. “If we keep our successes or failures a secret, then we stifle opportunities to impact those around us. I aim to tell the story of agriculture in the Delta.”

Whitney lives amidst acres of row crops in Newport, Ark., where she raises her two “farm girls” along with their spunky Sheepadoodle dog.

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