Farm Bill Update

Farm Bill policy is critical to all of agriculture. Join Chairman GT Thompson and Ranking Member Angie Craig to hear the current news about the farm bill in a panel discussion led by Sara Wyant, Founder and Editor of Agri-Pulse.

Speakers:

Rep. Angie Craig, MN-02

U.S. Representative Angie Craig (D-MN-02) is the first woman to serve as ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, which has been a standing committee for over 200 years. The Committee is empowered with legislative oversight relating to the U.S. agriculture industry, forestry, nutrition, and rural development.

Ranking Member Craig, the granddaughter of an Arkansas farm foreman, learned the value of hard work from her mother, a single mom who raised three children while earning her teaching degree. Relying on food assistance in the lean years, she knows firsthand how critical good agricultural and nutrition policy is for farmers and their families.

Ranking Member Craig will work with anybody – and take on the Washington establishment – to get things done for America’s family farmers, ranchers and foresters and ensure that nutrition assistance programs are available for the Americans who need them.

Chairman GT Thompson

Chairman Thompson is the descendant of a long line of dairy farmers and lifelong resident of Howard Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008, Thompson represents Pennsylvania’s Fifteenth District.

As a proud and active Member of the House Committee on Agriculture for more than a decade, Thompson formerly served as Ranking Member of the full committee during the 117th Congress and as Vice Chairman during the 116th Congress. He’s also served as Chairman of the Subcommittees on Conservation and Forestry and Nutrition, and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management.

Thompson is also a senior member of the House Education and Labor Committee. 

Prior to being elected to Pennsylvania’s Fifteenth District, Thompson spent 28 years as a therapist, rehabilitation services manager, and a licensed nursing home administrator.

Thompson is a proud graduate of Penn State and Temple University, where he earned a B.S. and a Master of Education, respectively. He and his wife, Penny Ammerman-Thompson, have three adult sons; Parker, Logan, and Kale, and two grandchildren; Noem and Gabriel.

Sara Wyant

Founder, Agri-Pulse

Sara Wyant is an award-winning agricultural journalist, entrepreneur and founder of Agri-Pulse Communications Inc., a unique digital media firm she launched in 2004 to focus on farm, food and rural policy issues.

An investigative reporter who has written many groundbreaking stories, Wyant has covered almost every farm and food policy debate since the 1980s. She is well-recognized on Capitol Hill, as well as by farm, ranch and commodity associations across the country, as a veteran journalist and sought-after speaker.

Throughout her career, Wyant has been a trailblazer through several “glass” ceilings. In 1995, she was the first female to be named to the senior management team in agricultural publishing as vice president for editorial at Farm Progress. She served as the first female chairwoman on the Farm Foundation's board of trustees and as president of the American Agricultural Editors Association, where she also earned an Oscar in Agriculture award for excellence in agricultural reporting.

Wyant was named to Folio’s "Top Women in Media" in the Entrepreneurs category in 2015. For her leadership within the industry, she has received numerous awards and accolades from a wide variety of organizations including: American Agri-Women, Agriculture Future of America, FFA, Missouri Farm Bureau, National Association of Farm Broadcasters, North American Agricultural Journalists, United Soybean Board and others.

A graduate of Iowa State University, Wyant gained first-hand knowledge of crop and livestock production while growing up on a century farm near Marengo, Iowa, which she now owns and manages. She and husband Allan Johnson also own the farm where her husband's family originally established a homestead near Almont, North Dakota. They are the parents of two sons and three grandchildren.