LEDGER — John Wicks has been a Montana farmer since he was 21 years old.
“I think I crop about 3000 acres of cash crop,” Wicks said.
For the past eight years, his focus has been on organic farming, and he has seen firsthand the holes in the Farm Bill.
“You know, in some ways, crop insurance works really good for organic with the price factored in,” Wicks said.
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With the Farm Bill expiring, many rural farmers, such as Wicks, are left to try and figure out what to do before it is too late.
“The Farm Bill always needs improvement and working on,” Wicks said.
Wicks wants to see the Risk Management Agency, or RMA, expanded, insuring things like cover cropping, where a crop is grown in order to enrich the soil itself.
“Cover cropping, you get penalized for using a cover crop instead of, you know, maybe getting a discount on it,” Wicks said.
Wicks advocates for dual enrollment for Financial Protection Programs and hopes the nutrition title makes it on to the next iteration of the bill.
“Programs like SNAP… you know, feeding people is a lot of farming,” Wicks said.
Wicks recently attended the National Farmers Union’s Legislative Fly-in in Washington DC, where he felt optimistic about the future.
“Every legislator that I spoke with was pretty open, and they knew what needed to be done,” Wicks said.
Wicks expects something to get passed in the spring, and its more about making sure farms survive until them.
“There's going to be some uncertainty that's a little scary,” Wicks said.
Wicks urges ordinary citizens to get involved in making sure the next bill passed is the right one.
“It affects their life three times a day every time they eat, you know,” Wicks said.
Right now, lawmakers are still trying to work out a deal. The extension expired, but many programs are still active through the end of the year due to how they were structured.
