Agri-Pulse Open Mic Interview

This week’s Open Mic guest is Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. Conner suggests the nation’s farmer owned cooperatives are well stocked as producers prepare for the 2025 growing season. Conner says many co-ops anticipated tariff issues and took early shipment of supplies for this season. A veteran of Capitol Hill policy debates, he acknowledges plenty of uncertainty surrounding the farm bill, tax policy and tariffs. Despite challenges, Conner believes legislators will take action on taxes and hopefully a new set of farm and nutrition programs.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Bill Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. In a day where Washington faces mounting issues of government outlays and rising national debt, Hoagland say partisanship must give way to solutions that maintain essential federal programs and services. Hoagland provides key insights on budget reconciliation, DOGE, tax reform, a farm bill and the debt ceiling, which are all critical issues facing the 119th Congress.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer AG. The global company is heavily invested in developing innovative technology for farmers around the world. The company’s pursuit of crop genetics, herbicide resistance, chemical crop protection and data management has benefitted farmer goals toward both sustainability and productivity. Anderson tells Agri-Pulse that legal challenges to glyphosate are limiting the company’s investments in innovation and may result in eliminating the sale of a herbicide that many farmers consider essential to sustainable production.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Chris Abbott, CEO of Pivot Bio. The California company was formed 15 years ago with a premise of using soil microbes to utilize naturally occurring nitrogen to sustainably feed plants and replace synthetic fertilizers. After going commercial five years ago, the company continues to grow the number of farmers and acres utilizing their gene edited products. Abbott sees a bright future for growth in the use of soil microbes to increase productivity, reduce nutrient costs and boost producer sustainability.

This week’s guest on Open Mic is U.S. Representative John Garamendi. California's 8th district Democrat is a strong advocate for agriculture, nutrition programs and global humanitarian aid. As a member of the Agriculture Research Caucus, Garamendi believes DOGE cuts in government employees and spending cuts will lead to ill fated consequences for farmers in the form of crop and livestock disease research and readiness as well as dramatic cuts to food and medical aid for those in impoverished areas of the world. Garamendi sees little chance the California legislature will make changes to Prop 12, leaving that responsibility to Washington and perhaps a new farm bill.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Kurt Coffey, Vice-President, Case IH North America. Reduced farm income has resulted in lower volume sales of large agriculture equipment in the nation.  Coffey expects some improvement if USDA releases disaster and economic assistance funds approved in the continuing resolution in the latter hours of the 118th Congress. Coffey says artificial intelligence is helping in machine repairs as well as more efficient field operations. Case-IH supports farmer repairs to their machines. Coffey says proposed tariffs on Canadian imports as well as tariffs on steel could impact their operating margins in the year ahead.

This week’s Open Mic guest is U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. Less than 24 hours after being sworn in as the 33rd lead of the Department of Agriculture in Washington, Brooke Rollins found herself in Louisville, Kentucky being introduced in Freedom Hall at the Championship Tractor Pull. A native of the small town of Glen Rose, Texas, her career path led to the White House in President Trump’s first term and now as a member of the Trump Cabinet. Speaking on the sidelines of her first event outside the Beltway as Secretary, Rollins shared thoughts on building her team at USDA, working with other cabinet members and how downsizing government may impact the work of the USDA.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Jeffery Hall, Board Chairman and CEO of the Farm Credit Administration and the longest serving member of the current FCA board. Hall reports system debt at the end of 2024 at just over $448 billion dollars - just shy of an 8% increase from the end of 2023. Since the beginning of 2020, system debt outstanding has grown over 52%. The FCA has seen a dramatic downturn in the number of institutions and farmers since the farm crisis of the 1980’s, but the amount of debt continues to climb. He discusses softer farmland values in some areas, the interest rate environment, and future areas of focus for the FCA.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Garrett Hawkins, President of the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation.  Hawkins says his state’s farmers echo calls to Washington to get a new, modernized farm bill approved as quickly as possible. Hawkins says his state takes issue with the Biden administration’s Green New Deal policies favoring electricity instead of an “all of the above” approach to the nation’s energy future. Missouri landowners are facing property rights issues as the private Grain Belt Express has been given the power of eminent domain to run transmission lines across the state.

This week’s Open Mic guest is Paul Bertels, Principal and Senior Consultant for Farmgate Insights. Much attention is given to the potential demand for billions of bushels of row crops should they be included as acceptable feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel. Drawing from his long career with the National Corn Growers Association and the ethanol industry, Bertles says the SAF market won’t be as easy to develop as the process involves creating molecules of actual jet fuel instead of simply blending the product. Favorable regulations, incentives, subsidies and carbon sequestration will all have to be accomplished in order to open this new opportunity for farmers and the ag industry.