During Nebraska trip, ag secretary announces policy proposals to help small family farms

After a day of agricultural tours across Nebraska and a roundtable with farmers and ranchers from around the state, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a series of policy proposals meant to support small family farms.

"There's been a lot of conversation about how we keep America strong and bring prosperity back to rural America," Rollins said after a closed-to-media roundtable with Nebraska ag leaders at Ohnoutka Family Farm in Valparaiso. "And the face of all of that, the foundation, is our small family farmers."

The 10-point policy proposal, dubbed "Farmers First," includes some technical actions, like digitizing paper applications through the USDA and combining loan programs, as well as loftier goals like "aggressively exploring" solutions for a "stable, reliable and legal" agricultural workforce through nonimmigrant visas, which allow immigrants to come to the U.S. for a short time for a specific purpose, such as a seasonal job. Among some of the more specific goals were reforming certain environmental regulations, like the National Environmental Policy Act and provisions of the Clean Water Act, as well as disincentivizing the use of federal funds to install solar panels on farmland.

The plan also calls on Congress to exempt the "vast majority" of farms and ranches from an increase in the death tax. It says the Department of Agriculture will be "engaging with agricultural tax and legal professionals across the country" to develop tools for the transition of agricultural land and operations between generations.

Rollins characterized the proposals as an opportunity to "save our family farms," which make up the majority of the country's farms.

"This is the first step of many steps we will be taking, and you'll be hearing about more initiatives, more programs, more partnerships in the coming weeks and months," she said.

In a statement released after the event, Rollins highlighted the proposal's support from governors and state agriculture secretaries in Utah, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana - and from Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen.

Norm Krug, a farmer from Chapman, said the roundtable focused on ways to bring in new, young farmers, and the importance of young people coming into agriculture to keep multi-generational farms going. He said tariffs, which have garnered criticism from many agricultural groups, are a "step we got to go through" and hopes they lead to better trade relationships that benefit American farmers.

"Long term, we want as much fair trade as possible, and I was happy to hear that message and that the administration agrees with that," Krug said.