Policy efforts aim to restore profitability

Keeping farmers profit­able is agriculture's most pressing issue amid on­going uncertainty with farm bill negotiations, trade and other policy challenges, Iowa Farm Bureau President Brent Johnson said last week in his annual speech to voting delegates at Farm Bureau's Summer Policy Conference in West Des Moines.

Johnson pointed to a growing imbalance in agricultural trade as a key challenge facing farmers.

After a positive trade balance for nearly six decades, U.S. ag trade shifted into a deficit due to a trade dispute with China during the first Trump administration.

Exports rebounded briefly after the signing of the Phase 1 trade agreement with China. But with no new trade deals during the Biden administration, the deficit continued to widen, Johnson said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects the ag...