Farm bills are important, but they're way down the line.
They're below economic policy. They're below antitrust policy. For example, interest rates are more significant to a producer's bottom line than is a farm bill, he said, and that means farmers should pay close attention to general economic policy. Flinchbaugh noted that the gene pool has been in the public domain since 1862 when Abraham Lincoln created the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's a hundred-fold more important than what the loan rate is for wheat.