A huge win for Iowa agriculture

In Iowa, agriculture is more than an industry, it’s the backbone of our economy and a pillar of our identity.

Our corn and soybean growers, cattle producers, hog farmers and rural communities punch above their weight, and with the passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts, Congress punched back for them.

This bill is pro-work, pro-farmer and pro-America.

The Working Families Tax Cuts include the largest investment in American agriculture in a generation and incorporate sweeping reforms that protect Iowa’s family farms, restore accountability to safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and deliver long-overdue tax relief to rural communities.

Much of the next Farm Bill was even passed and signed into law by President Donald Trump.

For too long, America’s producers have operated with an outdated farm safety net, which hadn’t been updated since 2018.

The Working Families Tax Cuts include the first meaningful improvements to the farm safety net since 2002, raising reference prices by 10 percent to 20 percent, expanding base acres by 30 million nationwide, and modernizing risk management tools that Iowa’s producers depend on to withstand droughts, floods and market shocks.

These updates are especially important for Iowa’s diverse agriculture economy, where commodity, livestock and specialty crop producers often face unpredictable and overlapping challenges.

We also secured key livestock provisions that matter deeply to Iowa’s producers, including expanded coverage for losses caused by federally protected predators and increased support for drought-stricken grazing lands.

The bill invests $1.5 billion in livestock biosecurity, helping prevent the spread of foreign animal diseases like African Swine Fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza and the New World Screwworm that threaten our food security. We were proud to meet these producers at the Iowa State Fair together and deliver real results for farm families.

Iowa’s agriculture sector will also benefit from a doubling of trade promotion funding, giving our farmers the tools to reach new customers around the world as President Trump reopens markets and strikes trade deals that put American farmers first.

Combined with investments in agricultural research at land-grant universities like Iowa State University, which we toured together after a great day at the Farm Progress Show, the Working Families Tax Cuts lay the groundwork for long-term growth rooted in Iowa soil and driven by global demand for what our farmers grow best.

But this bill isn’t just about agriculture, it’s about accountability to taxpayers.

The Working Families Tax Cuts make common-sense changes to the SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Republicans are right-sizing and restoring integrity to a supplemental program that has ballooned to over $100 billion a year and 42 million participants, nearly three quarters of whom are not currently working.

The Working Families Tax Cuts ensure able-bodied SNAP participants without young children work, train, or volunteer and require states with high payment errors in SNAP to contribute to the cost of SNAP benefits, just like they do for Medicaid.

States can no longer send out billions of overpayments a year without being held accountable. Finally, this bill prioritizes SNAP benefits for U.S. citizens, just as taxpayers expect and President Trump promised.

And for Iowa’s small farms and rural businesses, this bill delivers real tax relief. It makes death tax relief permanent, ensuring family farms can be passed down to the next generation, so that they can produce and sell the crops of tomorrow, not sell off their family legacy.

It preserves and expands the Small Business Deduction, which 98 percent of U.S. farms rely on to stay afloat, and it doubles small business expensing limits and renews the Opportunity Zone program to drive investment into rural and underserved areas, including many right here in Iowa.

From restoring discipline to Washington’s welfare programs to investing in the tools our producers need to compete and win; the Working Families Tax Cuts deliver on the promises made to rural America.

We’re proud to champion these wins for Iowa, and we’re just getting started.

This op-ed was originally published in the Northwest Iowa Review on September 8, 2025.