National Farmers Union Vice President Jeff Kippley is a farmer and tax preparer at Aberdeen, South Dakota. Kippley drew on his tax season experience when he shared comments at a Capitol Hill event. “Bankers came up to me after tax season and said they were surprised because they thought the returns for the cow-calf producers with these high prices.” Kippley said he was not surprised. The high prices are a recent phenomenon, while there have been low prices since 2014. Ranchers invested back into their operations because everything had been neglected for years. “Now is the time to do something for our commodities; we can’t let what happened to the livestock industry for the last ten years happen to the commodities.” Kippley said the farm safety net with the current farm bill is inadequate.
