Congress will have a tight deadline to get the 2023 Farm Bill completed, but U.S. Representative Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said the House Agriculture Committee members will give it their best effort.

Cloud said the year was filled with hearings, but there is still much work to be done.

“Thankfully, our incoming chair, GT Thompson, was good about putting together some unofficial hearings to really start to get us all working toward the farm bill,” he said.

Cloud noted he has enjoyed working on the House Agriculture Committee.

“Working with the ag community has been great,” Cloud said in an interview with the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “It’s awesome to work with people who are working in the fields, working cattle, doing what they can to supply our country with the food and resources we need to keep moving forward. Wish we could have gotten a lot more done. We’re going to have to work with earnest, but we’re still on track to get the farm bill out before the deadline.”

He said they are working diligently to prepare for the approaching deadline, and the committee will take into consideration what has been done in the past.

“We’ll spend the first quarter focused, in a sense, in an audit so to speak, looking at what’s working, what’s not working,” Cloud said. “There’s a number of other priorities we’ve just outlined with our team and from our office’s perspective that we’ve been hearing about that we’ll be working to make sure to get attention throughout the process.”

Cloud is encouraged and is welcoming of the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee Glenn “GT” Thompson.

“He’s a hard worker. He’s very cognizant of the fact that we can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to ag,” he said. “He’s been to Texas a number of times just in the last year, has been to my district a couple times, and we’ve toured facilities together. We’ve toured farms together. So, he’s doing the good work of reaching out, making sure that we keep the whole country in mind.”

After his first term on the House of Agriculture Committee, Cloud hopes to remain on the committee and put emphasis on the importance of American and Texas agriculture.