Pennsylvania officials hear farmers’ concerns at Ag Progress Days

CENTRE COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) — Penn State’s Ag Progress Days attract hundreds of people each year and while they may not be farmers they do have a particular interest in agriculture.

Some pretty big faces, like Congressman Glenn Thompson, Secretary of the PA Department of Agriculture Russell Redding, US Senator Bob Casey, US Senate Candidate Dave McCormick and US Deputy Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small Both attended the event on Wednesday to hear from farmers about their biggest concerns.

Each said that they value the importance of agriculture, but it appears that they want to focus on different areas.

Both McCormick and Thompson met with farmers to discuss important agricultural issues, while Casey focused on how he and other leaders are working to fix them.

“Agriculture provides us jobs, it provides us economic activity, and quite frankly it provides us taxes,” Thompson said.

McCormick says he wants to work closely with Thompson to help farmers in big ways because agriculture is “Critical” to the state. McCormick added that he was impressed by the level of innovation he saw at the event and that he wants to work to keep that going to increase jobs and farm production throughout the area.

“The thing I hear over and over again is inflation. It’s hard to make a good living as a farmer. So when prices go up, fuel prices particularly, it really hurts farmers,” McCormick said.

Penn State’s Ag Progress Days is meant to show off the latest in agricultural technology, but local leaders also use it as a chance to catch up with farmers to see what the most pressing issues are. Thompson says that farmers are facing a laundry list of concerns, but there is a way to fix it all.

“It’s very very difficult for the hardworking farm families to provide us with food, fiber, building materials, and energy resources. They need this farm bill now,” Thompson said.

The Farm Bill he’s referring to is currently stuck going through Congress. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding it, which is why Redding says they should focus on another approach.

“I always come back to infrastructure. At the end of the day, how do we process what it is we produce. We’re good producers, but we need places in the market that add that value,” Redding said.

However, the US Deputy Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Xochitl Torres Small, has her own list of hardships that she wants to help with.

“When it comes to the challenges that farmers are facing, some of the biggest are input costs, and being able to have fair access to markets,” Small said.

Sen. Casey focused on investing in different aspects of agriculture and said he’s worked to increase funding for things like the infrastructure bill for rural areas.

“We made a great advancement in 2022. For example, we recognized the value of investing in conservation. 20 billion? That’s never happened before,” Casey said.

However, he also feels that they are “on the cusp” of giving farmers access to reliable high-speed internet which he thinks will help them do business easier.

While it’s not clear what the best thing to do for farmers is at the moment it seems as though nothing will go anywhere without bipartisan support.

“I hope in the month of August when we go to events like this it can remind all of us that we need to get a bipartisan deal,” US Senator Bob Casey said.

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A big sticking point in the potential legislation is the limit on the formula that calculates SNAP benefits , something that many rely on. Whether this key issue will be enough to stop the bill or if a compromise will be found remains to be seen.

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