By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – How will President Donald Trump’s policies on agriculture affect Illinois’ farmers?

With the president’s new Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue confirmed and the signing of an executive order setting up sweeping changes to how farmers are regulated, Illinois Farm Bureau Director of Governmental Affairs Adam Nielsen said Trump likely will be good for the Illinois farmer.

Perdue helped Illinois farmers in week one by persuading the president to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, rather than cancel it, Nielsen said.

“Modernizing it and renegotiating portions of it would be better than throwing out the entire North American Free Trade Agreement,” he said.

Nielsen said Trump will keep family farms intact by supporting the repeal of the estate tax, or the “death tax” as it’s commonly known as.

“Families spend a lot of money trying to avoid the estate tax,” he said. “Some get captured in it and end up having to take out loans to settle estates and, essentially, re-purchase the farm.”

Perdue gave his commitment to ethanol production in Iowa last Friday.

One thing in particular, Nielsen says, is the chance for Trump to speed the technology approval process, allowing new products to compete in the marketplace.

“Maybe we would see more companies involved in trying to create products for U.S. agriculture. As law is now, it looks like we’re gonna have fewer companies,” he said in a reference to former President Barack Obama’s administration slowing the process, leading to companies consolidating and prices rising.
“We saw the last administration as more ideologically based, not on science.”

The reception hasn’t all been rosy. Trump’s administration is being criticized for relaxing the standards for school lunches, which are the purview of the Department of Agriculture.