WASHINGTON — Many farmers believe 2020 was a volatile year.

What You Need To Know

  • The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved about $26 billion in agriculture spending

  • $7 billion of the spending bill is designated for disaster relief for farms impacted by floods, wild fires, hurricanes and more

  • The FY22 Agriculture bill also include $15 million for a climate resiliency program for farmers

“Not only did we deal with some weather in the spring that caused some areas [and] some fields to be prevented from planting, some of the stem from having extreme wetness for many years prior to 2020,” said Tony Mellenthin, a corn and soybean farmer in Menomonie. “And then the pandemic hit.”

Mellenthin said, all things considered, his family was pretty fortunate. Insurance helped them recoup some of their losses. But as a member of the Pepin County Farm Management Club, he’s talked to folks who’ve had tougher times, especially dairy farmers closer to the Mississippi River who’ve endured flooding.

“Now they have to make the decision,” said Mellenthin. “Do they maintain herd size? Or they decrease herd size? Because the amount of feed they have for their cattle isn’t there.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they understand the need and want to help.

“Extreme weather and disasters have provided yet another big challenge to our nation's farmers and ranchers,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin. “This is on top of all the impacts of the pandemic in the last year, and the impact that had on supply chains and other arenas.”

Sen. Baldwin successfully led a push to boost disaster aid for farmers and ranchers who are picking up the pieces after extreme weather and the pandemic hit them hard.

“It was pretty clear to me that moving forward with bipartisan agriculture bill that we would have to we would have to focus some of those dollars on disaster assistance,” said Sen. Baldwin.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved about $26 billion in agriculture spending, $7 billion specifically for disaster relief for farms impacted by floods, wild fires, hurricanes and more. It’s $2.5 billion more than last year agriculture budget.

Mellenthin says that’ll certainly help farmers but he adds the pandemic hit home the need for Congress to come up with some long-lasting fixes for the industry.

“We found out in a quick hurry that rural America where all the farms are, we are not set up with infrastructure we need to operate the 21st century world,” said Mellenthin. “So that's rural broadband and high speed internet. It's also our roads and bridges and our waterways to make sure we can transport our products, not only off the farm, but have the our inputs transported to the farm.”