Getting a new Farm Bill across the finish line in 2025 is the top policy priority for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA).
Ted McKinney, CEO of NASDA and native of Tipton County, Indiana, says another priority is ag labor reform—especially, the need for year-round H2-A workers.
“We need full time employees in dairies, in swine operations, and even in poultry, we just can’t get the labor that we need,” says McKinney. “So, to help us move from a seasonal program only to a guest worker—nobody’s saying make them citizens yet—but moving that guest worker to seasonal year-round is very much one of the priorities.”
NASDA is also pushing to make sure land-grant universities—like Purdue and Michigan State—get the state and federal funding they need to maintain their ag research.
“We’re not worried about applied research. I mean, companies like the seed companies, the equipment companies, the biologicals, livestock, livestock genetics, they’re there. They are doing very well. We’re talking about that basic research, those labs that go do things like invent hybrid seed corn from what happened in 1930s and ‘40s, and my goodness, there’s a lot of room for that with gene editing and other things like that,” he says.
McKinney adds that NASDA is also concerned that cuts in federal spending don’t have a negative impact at the state level—particularly, when it comes to state health inspections and food safety.
“When cuts are coming on those areas or the people that perform in those areas, we’re kind of interested. So, we’re not we’re not wringing our hands yet, because we still think that those are likely to be sustained and maybe even replenished. But we’re in that grave zone, that fog area where we don’t really know which is where a lot of this is these days. So, we have to keep that going, because it’s, it’s our food safety at many, many levels that’s in question,” says McKinney.
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