**The message of feeding nine-billion people by 2050 helps motivate farmers, but has little effect connecting with consumers.

That’s according to Purdue Ag Economist Jayson Lusk who tells Brownfield, that’s because “feeding the world” isn’t a major concern for most consumers.

Lusk says most consumers are more concerned with their own everyday food issues such as price, safety, nutrition and taste.

He says we need a different message to connect with folks outside the Ag community.

**If the Agricultural Risk Coverage-County level program is to be a viable option in the next farm bill, major farm and commodity groups are convinced the widely used program, developed as part of the 2014 farm bill, needs to be fixed.

According to Agri-Pulse, that’s why U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joni Ernst of Iowa have introduced legislation to improve the program, primarily by directing the Farm Service Agency to use data from the Risk Management Agency as the first choice in county yield calculations, rather than data from the National Ag Statistics Service.

**American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall says he would like to see the U.S. come up with new bilateral trade agreements in place of the Trans Pacific Partnership, but it won’t happen overnight.

He tells Brownfield, pulling out of the TPP leaves us at risk of not having access to those markets and also not taking a lead in formulating what might be the new rules and regulations around future trade treaties.

 

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