As farmers face tighter margins, rising input costs and uncertainty surrounding trade policy, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet says Washington is falling short of addressing the challenges facing rural America.
With the midterm elections approaching, control of the Senate could determine who leads the Senate Agriculture Committee. Bennet, a member of the committee, could be in line to become its next chairman if Democrats gain control of the chamber.
In an interview with U.S. Farm Report, Bennet discussed why he voted against advancing the Senate’s 2026 farm bill, what he believes is needed to restore bipartisan cooperation and how Congress should address agricultural labor shortages and other concerns facing rural communities.
Q&A With Senator Michael Bennet Exploring the Challenges Facing Farmers and a Divided Washington
What are the biggest issues farmers and ranchers are facing heading into the midterm elections?
Michael Bennet: The number one issue is economic, which, by the way, has been true for a very long time. The margins that farmers and ranchers are getting are reduced all the time. The cost of inputs just keeps rising and rising. The cost of tariffs has been a big problem for a lot of people, and there is really uncertain trade policy.
Then, not to mention, the cost of fuel and diesel, which is really killing people. During harvest here in Colorado, it was absolutely brutal.
Those economic challenges are squeezing margins and making people worried they can’t finance their operations, and that their kids and grandkids aren’t going to be able to take over that operation.
On top of all that is a concern that our democracy is kind of falling apart around us, and we just don’t have the ability to talk to each other in a way that can lift the interests of people living in rural America, or anybody else for that matter.
Do you believe farmers and ranchers are losing their voice in Washington?
Bennet: I used to say all the time, “Thank God for the Agriculture Committee in the Senate,” because we always did a bipartisan farm bill every five years. While the entire Senate was collapsing around us, we were there to keep bipartisanship alive.
I hate to say this, but we’re now done with that for the moment, at least. I think we’ve got to find a way to rebuild that bipartisan coalition.
It’s a reflection of the polarization we’re seeing and people moving into their respective political corners. In my opinion, the only people that serves are the political parties themselves and the politicians. I do not think it serves farmers and ranchers well, and I do not think it serves the next generation of Americans well.
If you believe this country still needs to demonstrate that we’re the land of opportunity, where you can make economic progress if you work hard and your kids can live a better life than you did, there’s not much in Washington’s politics helping to address those challenges.
Why Bennett Voted “No” On the Latest Farm Bill
You voted against advancing the Senate’s 2026 farm bill, saying it did not do enough to address the pressures facing farmers and ranchers. Why?
Bennet: Being a Westerner, I was deeply worried about the cuts to the conservation programs and the fact that EQIP was being cut to fund other conservation titles.
We’re in a 1,200-year drought out here in Colorado. People all over my state are dealing with the fact that we’re in the Colorado River Basin. We’re at the headwaters of the Colorado River Basin, and 40 million people live downstream from us. A lot of those are farmers and ranchers.
They need some predictability when it comes to our water, our conservation programs and what we’re doing to try to sustain forestry in our mountains. That was one of the reasons I voted against it.
I’ll also say honestly that I was upset we’d seen a separation of the historic coalition that joined the producer elements of the farm bill and the food elements of the farm bill. I’m hoping we’re going to be able to bring that back together again.
The Possibility of a Bipartisan Farm Bill in the Future
Do you believe Congress can pass a bipartisan farm bill again?
Bennet: I absolutely think it’s possible.
I don’t accept the idea that we’re just in a permanent game of “shirts and skins” in America. The founders of this country did not create this democracy expecting that.
They believed we would battle it out and disagree because we were in a free country, and out of those disagreements, we would create a more imaginative result than any king or tyrant could come up with on their own. That’s the point.
When Republicans and Democrats can’t work together, or when people in rural and urban America are told they can’t find common ground, that’s its own tyranny, in my view, and we have to overcome it.
Even if we think we shouldn’t overcome it, our kids deserve us to figure out how to model something better.
I believe absolutely, to my core, that the people working on this committee will come together to pass a bipartisan farm bill again.
Bennet Weighs in on His Priorities if He Becomes Senate Ag Committee Chair
If Democrats take control of the Senate and you become chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, what would you prioritize in the next farm bill?
Bennet: I think we could do a better job on the conservation programs I mentioned earlier.
Farmers and ranchers I know want us to move away from these unpredictable payments they’re getting as a result of the logjams in Washington, but also the president trying to solve problems in a kind of herky-jerky way through tariffs and diesel prices.
I think people are really tired of that. They’d like to see a safety-net program that was more strategic and more thoughtful.
We’ve got to do a better job on trade as well. That’s not just the Agriculture Committee; that’s also the Finance Committee, which I’m on.
More broadly, every decade things get harder and harder in rural America. We have a decision to make right now: Do we want rural America to exist in America or not? Do we want rural hospitals, rural schools and rural main streets to exist?
This isn’t just an issue about what the farm bill does. It’s also about how we work together to make sure our rural communities have sustainable economies and people have confidence that their kids can get an education that gives them the ability to earn a living and move forward in the economy.
Those are the kinds of questions we should be asking. It’s not about agreement or coming to some shabby compromise. It’s about having enough confidence in ourselves and our kids that we can have the battle our kids need us to have, and out of it comes a better set of policies.
That’s what we need to have rural America not just survive, but prosper.
Why Washington Failed to Fix Agriculture’s Decades-Long Labor and Immigration Challenges
Agricultural labor remains a contentious issue. Why has Congress struggled to find a solution to immigration and farm labor challenges?
Bennet: I agree completely that we haven’t had a policy that works.
When you add the headwinds of costs, diesel, tariffs and Brazil eating our lunch for the moment because of the dispute we have with China on soybeans, and then add the labor problem, it’s almost impossible for anybody to survive out there.
It’s not that we can’t figure it out. It’s because there are people who have created a cottage industry of using the immigration issue to divide the political parties and win political elections.
Unfortunately, that choice has come at a serious detriment to our farmers and ranchers, our rural communities and America itself.
About 10 years ago, I wrote the last farm labor bill that passed the Senate. We got 68 votes. I worked on it with Republicans and Democrats, including Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein.
We sat in a room for months with farmworkers and growers from all over the country, including Western growers, and made some really tough choices. We got a bill that 68 senators voted for. Unfortunately, it went to the House and was killed.
That’s the kind of legislative effort I think we can make. We obviously can’t give up on this.
We have to have an immigration policy consistent with our commitment to the rule of law and our history as a nation of immigrants. We have to defend the border of the United States. That has to be part of it.
But unless we want our dairies to move to Mexico, our tree nurseries to move to Mexico, and what’s left of our farm production to move south of the border, we’re going to have to deal with this labor problem.
Possibility of Immigration Reform After the Midterms
Is there momentum for immigration reform after the midterms?
Bennet: Not right now. But there’s an election coming, and hopefully, on the backside of this, there will be an opportunity to make some change.
Politics often moves in one direction. It’s a pendulum that swings back and forth. The opportunity is to catch the pendulum at the right moment and say, “Okay, now is the time to try to get it done.”
I would have said that was 15 years ago on the issues you’re talking about now, and I think we would have saved ourselves a lot of misery if we had done it then. But hope springs eternal.
In Colorado, wolf reintroduction has become a flashpoint between ranchers and wildlife advocates. How do you balance wolf conservation with protecting ranchers’ livelihoods?
Bennet: I’m not sure about that, but I don’t think we should do anything that makes ranchers feel, as they have in Colorado, that they’re being driven off their private lands.
There’s a real concern among Colorado ranchers that the state has been trying to drive them off their land. The reason they feel that way is that we reached a set of agreements about how to implement wolf reintroduction, and then those agreements were not followed, or not followed well enough.
The result has not been good for wolves, and it hasn’t been good for ranchers.
Agricultural producers are a huge part of our Western heritage. That’s not just public lands; it’s private lands as well. It’s working lands.
I’ve literally had ranchers sit across the table from me and say, “Michael, we just feel like we’re being driven out by these policies.”
To me, that’s completely unacceptable. We have to strike a balance. Whatever balance we strike, we need to make sure our agricultural producers can see themselves in the policies we’re making.
The Future of the Senate if Democrats Move Back to the Majority in the Midterms
What would Democratic leadership in the Senate mean for agriculture?
Bennet: I hope it would mean an effort to try to stitch us together, not divide us further.
The first committee I asked to be on when I went to the Senate was the Agriculture Committee, and it’s the only committee I’m still on. It’s such an important part of Colorado’s economy and the culture of the West. It needed representation, and for better or worse, that came from me.
I think I have the added benefit of being in this job and being able to work to stitch us back together and say we don’t have to accept this partisanship.
We can work together for the good of our communities, especially for the good of the kids and grandkids we hope to turn these farms, ranches and communities over to sooner rather than later.
The Possibility of a Farm Bill in the Lame-Duck
With so much legislation stalled in Washington, are you hopeful Congress can pass agriculture-related legislation after the midterms?
Bennet: I am hopeful. I think we might have a shot during the lame-duck session, one last shot to try to get a farm bill over the finish line.
It’s hard to predict exactly what that will look like because we don’t know what the elections are going to hold. But I hope we’ll take the chance to sit down one more time before January rolls around to see if we can get this done.
I do think there’s a shot we can do it.
