When U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Springfield) looks at her sprawling central and southern Illinois district, it’s all about agriculture.

“I have almost 3,000 farms within the district. We have some of the best soil in the country,” she told a Chicago audience Monday. And in addition to Downstate’s supremacy in corn and soybean farming, she added, “We are the horseradish capital of the world – in Collinsville.”

Budzinski, in a panel discussion on the Farm Bill, shared the dais with U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Chicago). To him, it’s about improving access to nutrition and health care.

“If the average American today weighed what the average American weighed in 1970,” said Jackson, we would save $1 trillion dollars in health care costs.

“When I think of health care, I start thinking about reducing obesity, reducing diabetes, reducing all the chronic illnesses.”

And even before the House ground to an indefinite halt with no speaker, the last Farm Bill expired.