Finstad highlights Farm issues in regional stop

First District Congressman Brad Finstad and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson were in Owatonna last week to discuss issues shaping the future of agriculture at an agribusiness luncheon. Finstad is a member of the agriculture committee and the chair of the Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee.
“Our job as farmers is more important than ever,” Finstad said. Only two percent of Americans are involved in farming, he said, and that means “98% of our neighbors don’t understand” the issues. Sometimes they think that food magically appears on their plates. He said he has been asked questions that show many Americans don’t understand agriculture, including one person who asked if the volatility of grocery prices meant we just need more grocery stores.
Farmers, he said, must “embrace who we are,” and that they are involved in the most noble profession the country has ever seen.
The United States is 250 years old, he said, but we must think of what the next 250 years will be. The nation should think of the sacrifices “of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents,” he said. “Don’t take their sacrifices for granted. Protect our way of life,” he said. It’s getting harder and harder to pass a farm bill, he said, because fewer people know what farmers do.
The farm bill itself, he said, is not only about farmers and in fact 85% of the bill is related to food stamps, not farming.
The House, he said, passed a bipartisan farm bill in April but it has been sitting in the Senate since then. The House also added approval of year-round E15 fuel and the Senate Agriculture Committee is now just starting to take it up.
The farm bill is typically reauthorized every five years. The most recent farm bill, the “Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018” is in its third consecutive year under an extension and will expire on September 30. The House of Representatives advanced the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 out of committee in March on a 34-17 vote and the bill was passed by the full House on April 30 by a vote of 224 to 200.
The House has also been working on a bill regarding agricultural workforce labor, he said. “It’s important to the people we serve,” Thompson said. It has 50 co-sponsors, he said, and 550 organizations have endorsed it, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The H2A worker program hasn’t been updated since Reagan, he said. It’s not about amnesty, he said. Eventually, he said, everyone will have to go home for 60 days before reapplying. Minnesota has been a leading state in giving input to the bill, he said.