With the end in sight for Minnesota legislature, Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation Public Policy Specialist Hunter Pederson says some provisions like the Farmer-Lender-Mediation program might be tabled until next year. “On the House side, their ag committee was not able to come to agreement on a bill to move forward. So, we haven’t seen a resolution on that yet, and I’m not sure that we’re going to since it’s not an actual budget year. But knowing that there’s a few things in there like that farmland remediation, that would be a meaningful thing to get done. But we might not see that.” Minnesota Farm Bureau is also pushing hard for removing the funding cap on the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit, in the tax bill. “The Senate included a provision to take the funding cap off of the beginning farmer tax credit. That program has been oversubscribed since they put a cap on a few years ago. I think it would be a modest difference in funding, but it would be really meaningful to make sure that nobody gets turned away from that program just because it doesn’t have enough money in it.”
