Corn sprouts in long rows in Wichita County, Kansas. With farm incomes on the decline, agricultural groups say a new federal Farm Bill is a must. (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector)

The cost of fertilizer is up; crop prices are down. Farmers have struggled through drought, and ranchers sold off huge swaths of their herd. 

To top it all off, Congress has yet to pass a new iteration of the Farm Bill, which expires in a matter of days. And it likely won’t take action on the wide-ranging legislation, which offers everything from nutritional assistance to farm disaster recovery aid, until late this year.

The slow action on the legislation isn’t unusual, but as farm income continues to slide, producers are struggling to make ends meet. Tim Gibbons, communications director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, noted it currently costs more to raise a bushel of corn than farmers make when they sell it.

The prices farmers receive for major grain crops such as corn and soybeans are down 20 to 40% from highs set in 2022 in the months after Russia invaded Ukraine, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. But that spike was an aberration, Gibbons said.

“We haven’t had really high prices for decades … that really support farmers over the long term,” Gibbons said, “so that not only can they stay on the farm, but pass that farm on to the next generations.” 

Researchers at the University of Missouri expect farm income to drop by 35% by next year, compared to a high in 2022. While they still expect income to remain above what farmers saw between 2015 and 2020, it’s a steep drop. 

“Farmers will have a tighter situation … than they experienced in the last three years, and they’ll have to be much more cognizant about having a very strategic marketing plan in order to make a good cash flow,” said Bob Maltsburger, a senior research economist at the Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the university. 

The “bleak” state of the farm economy — as U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, put it — has agricultural groups and heartland lawmakers clamoring for an updated Farm Bill. But partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., and tension over what programs to prioritize in the enormous bill have made it difficult for lawmakers to find common ground. 

“We need a Farm Bill in place,” Moran said on the Senate floor earlier this month, “even if it’s the current one, but the current one is insufficient to meet the needs of the disaster that is occurring in the incomes of farmers across the country.”

The Farm Bill, the primary vehicle for food and agriculture policy in the U.S., expires Monday. While some of its banner programs — including crop insurance and nutrition assistance — will continue even if the legislation lapses, lawmakers and farm groups have said it’s essential to get assistance to struggling farmers. Moran urged colleagues to extend the existing Farm Bill while a more thorough rewrite is still pending.

Competing for funds

The Farm Bill’s single largest chunk of spending — about 75% — supports a variety of programs to combat food insecurity, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as “food stamps.” Its other banner programs include crop insurance and support for farmers when crop prices are low. The legislation also provides funds to encourage conservation and more sustainable farming. 

Prominent in this year’s debate is how to permanently increase spending on conservation and climate-friendly practices. Congress previously provided $20 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2023, to help farmers plant cover crops and trees; alternate grazing and resting grassland and restore wetlands. 

Andrew Lentz, who leads agriculture policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that funding helped more farmers participate in historically underfunded conservation programs. He said his organization hopes Congress takes advantage of the “huge opportunity” to make those funding levels permanent. 

While Democrats want to ensure those funds are spent on practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, those requirements weren’t supported in the Republican-controlled U.S. House committee. 

“If Congress is able to do that,” Lentz said, “they’ll be able to maintain these elevated funding levels and also maintain the climate focus of those funds in order to address the root causes of climate change and…help farmers tap new markets for lower carbon agricultural goods.” 

But Jennifer Ifft, an associate professor at Kansas State University, said Congress can’t increase the federal deficit when it passes a new Farm Bill, creating tension between lawmakers over how to prioritize programs. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives supported increasing funding for the farm safety net, which supports farmers when crop prices are low.

That’s hard enough to do this year, Ifft said, but it will be even more difficult to pull off next year with crop prices projected to keep declining, increasing the cost of the safety net.

“It’s probably not going to get easier to compromise,” Ifft said.

The House Republican version of the bill also cuts $30 billion from nutrition assistance, a nonstarter with Democrats. 

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, called that bill and Senate Republicans’ “framework” for a Farm Bill “flawed,” noting it cuts the nutrition budget and “walks away from the progress we have made to address the climate crisis.”

Gibbons said the conversation is missing better options to help with crop prices. He argues managing supply and adjusting decisions to meet market needs is a lower-cost alternative to ensure farmers get a fair price for their crops. But that’s not part of the policy discussions, he said. 

“The fight,” Gibbons said, “is once again over, ‘How hard are we going to make it for hungry people in need to get food,’”

Hemp and marijuana are essentially terms the government uses to distinguish between the part of the cannabis plant that can get you high when smoked – that’s marijuana – and the part that can’t — that’s hemp (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has vowed to run intoxicating hemp products out of Missouri, banning their sale and threatening penalties to any business that makes or sells them.

In many ways, it’s the latest showdown between the marijuana industry — which has operated legally in Missouri since 2018 but is outlawed federally — and the hemp industry, whose products were legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill.

But at the end of the day, what’s the difference between intoxicating hemp products and intoxicating marijuana products?

Hemp and marijuana are essentially terms the government uses to distinguish between the part of the cannabis plant that can get you high when smoked – that’s marijuana – and the part that can’t — that’s hemp. 

It all boils down to their THC content, or their psychoactive component.

Any part of the plant containing 0.3% or less THC by dry weight is defined as hemp. That means if you were to smoke a joint of dried hemp, you shouldn’t get high. 

And that’s why in 2018 Congress removed hemp and hemp seeds from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) schedule of controlled substances as part of the Farm Bill.

However, there’s a big complicating factor with a definition based on dried weight. Today’s intoxicating edibles, pre-rolled joints and other products – using both marijuana or hemp – often incorporate extracts of highly concentrated THC, or distillates. 

Laboratories can take a large amount of hemp and extract enough THC to make intoxicating edibles and drinks with 5 to 20 mg of THC in them. Up until the governor’s Sept. 1 ban on these products, they were found in regular Missouri gas stations, stores and bars. 

When THC is extracted in this way, there’s no way for regulators to tell whether the THC came from hemp or marijuana. 

Hemp is full of CBD, a nonpyschoactive cannabinoid that helps people relax and often found in massage oils and sleep aids.

Some companies synthetically convert CBD to THC to make their products. CBD can be converted into delta-8 THC, as well as delta-9 THC, using a solvent, acid and heat to produce higher concentrations of THC than those found naturally in the plant.

Leaders of the Cannabis Regulator Association have asked Congress to close “the 0.3% loophole” in the pending Farm Bill to prevent intoxicating hemp products from going unregulated, according to the association’s statement last summer.

While the threshold of 0.3% delta-9 THC by weight is a small amount of THC in a hemp plant, when applied to things like chocolate bars or beverages that can weigh significantly more, 0.3% by weight can amount to hundreds of milligrams of THC, the association said.

For example, a 50-gram chocolate bar at 0.3% THC would have around 150 mg of THC — 30 times the standard 5 mg THC dose established by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A family sized pack of cookies weighing 20 oz can contain around 1,700 mg of THC using the 0.3% THC threshold.

Hemp industry leaders don’t want to see these intoxicating products banned. Instead, they’ve suggested the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau handle their regulation. That’s also been the case locally in Missouri. 

States have passed a patchwork of different laws to attempt to regulate the products until the new Farm Bill is passed. Many of the laws have been challenged by the hemp industry, and federal judges have differing opinions on whether states can legally regulate these hemp products without Congress changing current federal law. 

Parson signed an executive order on Aug. 1 banning intoxicating hemp products and threatening penalties to any establishment with a Missouri liquor license or that sells food products for selling them. It also bans companies from producing hemp-derived THC beverages in Missouri.

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association filed a lawsuit two days before the order took effect, asking for a state judge for a preliminary injunction. 

Missouri is currently shining a light on the THCA loophole. After more than 60,000 cannabis products were recalled last year, a company has revealed that it was importing THCA extracted from the hemp plant and putting it in marijuana products — arguing that THCA is not actually intoxicating until it is heated, so it doesn’t count as total THC. 

CANNRA told Congress that despite some states’ efforts to address this issue, many hemp businesses are selling “THCA hemp” flower that contains less than 0.3% delta-9 THC but has a total THC concentration of 15% to 20%. 

“This so-called ‘hemp’ is indistinguishable from marijuana flower,” the association stated.

A farmer bales a crop on an irrigated field in southwest Kansas (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

Congress couldn’t pass a new farm bill last year, so it punted. The extension of the old bill ends in less than a month, on Sept. 30. It will likely miss that deadline, too, an unprecedented two-year delay.

Farm state representatives predict doom without a new farm bill. They would have us believe we will go hungry and sit naked while parked in line to gas our cars. Scare tactics. Continuing the existing law might be the better option.

Instead of writing a new farm bill, working on policy instead of politics, the least productive House in generations spent 21 days flailing and replacing the speaker — internecine nonsense. It wasted time on bills with no prospect of becoming law, messaging bills: the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Save Our Gas Stoves Act. It also found time to rename a slew of post offices and other federal buildings, including the National Museum of Play. But it couldn’t pass a farm bill.

Then the House went on vacation for the summer, one week earlier than planned. It will be in session just 13 more days this year. More, maybe, if it convenes a post-election lame duck session. Its top priority will be avoiding a government shutdown — as well as funding its own pay, which it also failed to accomplish.

Even that is in jeopardy. House leadership seems intent on attaching another messaging bill to its government spending legislation. Congress will spend the few days remaining before the farm bill extension expires on a proposal restating existing voter eligibility requirements in every state, including Kansas.

The distinguishing feature of the proposed 2024 farm bill the House Agriculture Committee wrote is its stunning price tag. It will spend more than $1 trillion, $43 billion dollars more than the current law, but not because it changes policy. It simply adds money to existing programs, making them even more lucrative. The Senate agriculture committee has yet to produce anything.

Boosts in subsidies for individual crops — as much as 20% — account for most of the new spending. At the same time, the limit a single farm can earn will jump almost 25%. The bill carves new exemptions into the caps that restrict the largest, richest farmers from receiving payments. These two changes cost more than $1 billion dollars.

Supporters have not offered a compelling case for this bill. They argue that lower prices justify raising subsidy levels, but for some of the key crops, prices are 10-20% higher than when the current bill was written.

The rationale appears to be the mere fact that farm spending has not increased. This is a plainly stated version of the House committee’s justification for its bill: We haven’t increased spending in a long time so therefore we have to increase spending.

Not only are they peddling a mindboggling budget buster without a persuasive policy rationale but they are also failing farm bill politics 101.

Wheat farmers alone have never passed a farm bill. Corn growers and cotton ginners, the sugar boys, ag lenders, cowboys and dairy farmers, fruit and vegetable producers, and more must get on board. But they are only half the political equation.

Every senator has some agricultural constituency. Only about 75 members of the House represent purely rural districts. But every district includes voters who eat, and every farm bill has depended on support from metropolitan and suburban non-farm votes.

Instead of building a coalition, adding support, the House Agriculture Committee is subtracting. Non-farm, urban members who in the past voted for farm bills — because of the food assistance and nutrition provisions — are jumping ship. This bill would hurt their constituents in Philadelphia and Houston, as well as Kansans in Dodge City, Coffeyville and Liberal. Some of the highest participation rates in these programs are in rural Kansas.

The House bill proposes the largest cut in 30 years to food stamps — now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For every dollar it cuts from SNAP, it adds two dollars in new farm subsidies. It would eliminate 40 million recipients from the program, including 17 million children. In Kansas, for every farmer receiving more in subsidies, SNAP benefits for approximately four Kansans would fall.

The historic farm-food alliance is wildly out of balance in this bill.

The first sentence of the original food stamp act declares its purpose: “To strengthen the agricultural economy” and that “establishing and maintaining adequate national levels of nutrition will … strengthen our agricultural economy.”

They are no longer common along Kansas highways, though a few remain — the billboards proclaiming: “If you eat, thank a farmer.”

Maybe it’s time for some new ones: “If you’re a farmer, thank an eater and a taxpayer.”

This commentary was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The stalemate over the current farm bill may be solidifying a new era in farm politics as it joins the last three farm bills in a trend of delays and partisan division — a contrast from the legislation’s history of bipartisanship.

Every five years, Congress is tasked with drafting a new federal farm bill. The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as various kinds of payments to support farmers now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and provide the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.

The current farm bill process, already nearly a year behind schedule, is at an impasse as Democrats and Republicans clash over how to pay for the bill and whether to place limits on nutrition and climate programs. The previous farm bill expired in September 2023 and has been extended through the end of this September.

Historically, farm bills were completed within a few months of their expiration date. Ten of the 13 farm bills since 1965 were enacted by December 31 in the year of their expirations. But three of the four farm bills since 2008 went beyond that date.

The last three bills — including the 2018 bill, which is the one recent version that passed on time — each had partisan disagreements about spending.

The trend represents a change in how the once-bipartisan legislation is viewed.

“The last two farm bills were the anomaly,” said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of Agricultural Law and Policy at the University of Illinois who has written a history of the farm bill. “Now that it has been three in a row, I’m not sure that holds.”

A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that starting in 2008, farm bills have been subject to delays, vetoes and insufficient votes to pass on the floor.

The report concluded: “Over time, farm bills have tended to become more complicated and politically sensitive. As a result, the timeline for reauthorization has become less certain.”

Spending debate

That uncertainty is true of the current farm bill, as Republicans in the House and Senate push for spending limits that Democrats say are non-starters.

“I don’t think we’re close to getting a farm bill done until the folks who are negotiating the farm bill are realistic about what’s doable within a constrained resource environment,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview on the radio program AgriTalk June 21.

The Republican-led House Agriculture Committee approved its farm bill proposal largely on party lines at the end of May, after hours of debate and complaints from Democrats that the process had not been as bipartisan as in years past.

Four Democrats voted for the bill in committee, but they joined 20 other Democrats on the committee in a “dissenting views” letter expressing “genuine concern over the trajectory of the Majority’s partisan farm bill” — which they predicted would be stuck in delay and dysfunction without significant changes.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee have each put forward contrasting bills and expressed their frustration.

‘The most frustrating time’

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie  Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is retiring after this term, has called the process the “most frustrating” of her career and said she would not let the Republican approach for the farm bill be her legacy.

“I’ve actually been involved in six farm bills and led on three of them, and this has been the most frustrating time,” said Stabenow in an interview with Michigan Advance at the end of June. “Because it’s so much more partisan than usual and particularly around food assistance.”

Partisan division is not uncommon in today’s Congress but is notable on the farm bill, which had historically brought together lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Bipartisan support can be necessary for final passage because the size of the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it inevitably loses some votes from fiscal conservatives and others.

“If you don’t have a bipartisan bill, this is not going to happen, and that is no matter who’s in charge. The margins are too close to be able to get this done without bipartisan support,” said Collin Peterson, a former Democratic House member from Minnesota and Agriculture Committee Chairman.

The key dispute for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would place limits on the “Thrifty Food Plan” formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

Republicans are using the limits to offset other spending in the bill on crop subsidies. The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, said he wants to put “more farm in the farm bill.”

Peterson, who is now the head of an eponymous consulting firm, said in an interview with States Newsroom that Republicans would likely have to make changes to the nutrition title to get a bill to final passage.

“It is unrealistic to think they are going to get this done without significant changes in that part of the bill,” he said.

‘An uneasy alliance’ from the start

The nutrition program that is at the center of the impasse was added to the legislation 50 years ago to help build a coalition of wide-ranging bipartisan support.

Lawmakers added the nutrition title to the farm bill in 1973, a move that widened the vested interest in the bill in the House. Lawmakers who wanted to increase payments for cotton and wheat farmers in their districts were able to bring in support from representatives from districts whose citizens could benefit from food aid.

“That was the first coalition building between the two interests,” Coppess said. “But it was pretty intense. And it was an uneasy alliance from the start.”

Since then, the farm bill in many ways has become a food bill. Three-quarters of the mandatory spending in the bill falls under the nutrition title, which includes SNAP, the largest U.S. program that addresses hunger.

The program, formerly called food stamps, supplements food budgets for low-income households. Anti-hunger groups have joined the outside interests pushing for the bill every five years.

But with such a large funding line, the nutrition program has become a target for Republicans who want to cut it to offset other spending in the bill.

“The dispute is all the pay-fors,” Peterson said. “And that has been the issue for the last three farm bills and issue on this one as well.”

Peterson, who was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee for the 2008 farm bill and was the top Democrat on the committee for the 2013 and 2018 bills, said partisan division on the committee is not unfamiliar at this phase of the process.

The farm bills he worked on also had partisan votes in the House but eventually found support from both sides after conferencing with the Senate.

“At the end of the day, every one of those bills was partisan, until we got through the conference committee, and then at that point it was bipartisan, because the Senate brought some of that to the table,” Peterson said. “So, kind of, what’s going on here went on the last three farm bills.”

The most recent farm bill in 2018 was marked by contentious partisan debate centered on SNAP’s work requirements and other eligibility rules.

The House Agriculture Committee’s bill that year initially failed on the House floor and later squeaked through on a 213-211 vote. Twenty Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting against that bill.

After reconciling with the Senate bill and the removal of some of the contentious changes to SNAP, most Democrats flipped their votes in support and the House agreed to the final conference report in a bipartisan vote of 369-47. The dissenting votes included 44 Republicans and three Democrats.

A trend toward fracture

The partisan division over the nutrition title creates new fault lines for the farm bill.

Historically, farm bill alliances were more regional than partisan. They were built on a common ground of support for shared crops or producers: cotton in the South, corn in the Midwest and wheat in the Western Plains.

“What was our biggest issue back in the four farm bills that I wrote was not Republican versus Democrat. It was usually Midwest against the Southeast or the Northeast or the Southwest from a crop standpoint,” former Senator Saxby Chambliss said in an interview.

Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, was on the House Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2002 and the Senate Agriculture Committee 2005 to 2011, which included a stint as chairman and ranking member.

“There’s a different political dynamic that exists in the Senate today that did not exist when I was there,”  Chambliss said. “How much of that bleeds into the farm bill? I don’t know the answer to that, but obviously it’s a little more acrimonious than what I ever experienced.”

As partisan politics have become more entrenched in regions of the country, with the South becoming more closely aligned with the Republican Party, it has played out in farm-bill politics.

“You see a staunch realignment around where the regional and the partisan are now very similar,” said Coppess.

Country of Origin Labeling is a federal consumer labeling law that requires most grocery stores and supermarkets to identify the country of origin on certain foods (Lance Cheung/USDA).

Congress should stop hiding behind the unelected, bureaucratic, pro-corporate World Trade Organization and restore Country of Origin Labeling for meat in the 2024 Farm Bill.

The U.S. House of Representatives released their draft of the Farm Bill, the Senate distributed their Farm Bill framework and neither includes mandatory country of origin labeling for meat.

Country of origin labeling should absolutely be included in the Farm Bill. If you’re a farmer, consumer or taxpayer, here’s why it matters.

Country of origin labeling is tremendously popular with consumers and producers alike. Consumer support for country of origin labeling is overwhelmingly high, with 89 percent of consumers supporting country of origin labeling. It is one of the rare places in which we have widespread agreement from a vast majority of Americans, yet, somehow, it becomes “controversial” when it gets to our nation’s capital.

In the 2008 Farm Bill, Congress took a significant step forward by passing mandatory country of origin labeling for various products, including meat.This legislation empowered consumers with information about where their food came from and enabled American producers to compete fairly against foreign imports.

However, the corporate meat processing industry has opposed mandatory country of origin labeling; lobbying tirelessly to undermine its implementation. Despite their efforts, our country of origin labeling law stood firm until Canada and Mexico, doing the bidding for global meatpackers, challenged our country of origin labeling law before the WTO, which ruled against us. In 2015, following the WTO ruling, Congress repealed mandatory labeling for beef and pork, caving to pressure from multinational meatpacking companies and lobbyists.

The importance of country of origin labeling cannot be overstated. In a marketplace without labeling, multinational corporations maintain leverage over prices, often to the detriment of American farmers and consumers. Leveraging imports, they are able to raise consumer prices while lowering prices paid to U.S. farmers.  In 2023 alone, the U.S. imported 3.7 billion pounds of boxed beef and 2 million live cattle—and consumers cannot see where it came from!

The implementation of country of origin labeling led to an increase in the prices paid to American farmers, underscoring its positive impact on domestic agriculture. It turns out that consumers want to — and will — choose American products, supporting American farmers and economies. However, the resulting drop in prices paid to U.S. cattle farmers since country of origin labeling was rescinded has been no less drastic. Immediately after country of origin labeling was rescinded, the price of cattle plummeted and cow/calf producers’ profit dropped by 30%, the largest one-year drop in history.

When you look at the 2022 Census of Agriculture, the economic effects go even further. The 2022 Ag Census reports a shocking loss of cattle producers: from 2017-2022, the U.S. lost 150,569 cattle operations, and Missouri alone lost 9,954 cattle operations (which is 20% of MO cattle operations). This is wealth extracted from our communities and bound for distant shores.

This wealth is more than just dollars and cents, especially in Missouri’s rural communities, where family farmers are major economic drivers. Missouri is second only to Texas in the number of cattle operations. This wealth represents people’s livelihoods and a way of life, farms not passed down to the next generation, and businesses on Main Street shuttered because those dollars aren’t circulating locally. For multinational conglomerates, that’s just the cost of doing business.

But for people out here, working the livestock and the land 365 days a year, who have tied their fates to the seasons and to the knowledge, skill and land passed down for generations, that cost is simply too high.

Contrary to industry claims, implementing country of origin labeling does not necessitate an overhaul of existing infrastructure. Processors already possess the capability to provide such information, as evidenced by their tracking of marketing attributes and USDA grading. country of origin labeling simply requires the maintenance of information regarding the origin of imported meat and livestock.

The WTO’s ruling against mandatory country of origin labeling for meat represents a flawed decision that undermines our national sovereignty and consumer rights.

Repealing country of origin labeling in 2015 was not Congress’ only option. Negotiated settlements are commonplace in WTO disputes, allowing us to keep domestic policies without paying penalties. The U.S. could have engaged in discussions with Canada and Mexico to address broader trade disputes, essentially trading other issues to safeguard country of origin labeling. Or even simply paid the fine, as we do in other cases. Recent trade fights make it clear that the WTO’s era of retaliation is over. Congress can’t continue to hide behind the WTO on this.

It is imperative for Congress to reevaluate its stance on country of origin labeling. It’s frankly absurd to think that virtually every other product has an origin label, and yet meat is excluded. By prioritizing consumer rights and fair competition, Congress can reaffirm its commitment to American producers and consumers.

Letting a flawed decision from a now virtually defunct international trade panel dictate our domestic policy undermines the democratic process and erodes consumer trust. The Emperor is naked as a jaybird and everyone can see it. It’s time to bring transparency back to the meat industry and empower consumers with the information they deserve. It’s time to put mandatory country of origin labeling back in the Farm Bill.

Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas on met with reporters Tuesday to discuss the GOP farm bill. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)

WASHINGTON — Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on Tuesday released their framework for a new five-year farm bill that will set the policy and funding levels for key food, agriculture and conservation programs.

The top Republican on the committee, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, laid out GOP priorities with reporters during a Tuesday morning briefing prior to publication of the framework.

Those priorities include an increase in reference prices for all covered commodities; increased spending for conservation programs by pulling funds from climate legislation passed in 2022; “cost-neutral” updates to the formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP; increased crop insurance levels; and reporting requirements for foreign purchase and ownership of farmland.

“Hopefully, we can take all of these together and build on that so we can actually get a farm bill passed,” Boozman said.

The GOP measure also doubles funding for land grant universities for research on topics such as fertilizer application, pesticides and labor, Boozman said.

Boozman said the investment in research will help with “getting agriculture into this century.”

Boozman said the framework will also boost crop insurance by increasing support for the Supplemental Coverage Option to 80% and the coverage level to 90% for more than 55 specialty and row crops.

He added that the Senate’s framework is similar to the one House Republicans put forth.

“Following on the House Committee on Agriculture’s bipartisan passage of (a) farmer-focused farm bill, we are putting forth a framework that exhibits a shared common ground with our Democrat counterparts on several key priorities and offers a path forward in the places where we differ,” Boozman said.

House action

The House Committee on Agriculture passed its version of the farm bill out of committee in late May, and while four Democrats joined Republicans in approving the bill, nearly two dozen Democrats were against it.

The House version of the farm bill is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, but there is currently no cost estimate for the Senate GOP version. There is also no bill text for the Senate version.

The current farm bill expires on Sept. 30, and if Congress doesn’t pass a new one, an extension would be needed of policies enacted under the 2018 farm bill.

Boozman said he hopes Congress doesn’t have to pass an extension, but if so, he expects to get the farm bill done during the lame-duck session after the November elections.

Like the House GOP version, the Senate legislation would divert funds from climate-related legislation passed in 2022 for conservation projects that would remove some climate-smart guardrails, which has drawn objections from Democrats.

Boozman said taking off the guardrails would “make it more useful.”

Nutrition programs

The Senate Republican farm bill framework would not make any changes to benefits and eligibility for SNAP, but it curtails an update tool used by the Thrifty Food Plan.

“The Republican framework restores Congress’ constitutional spending authority by returning to a cost-neutral and transparent process for future five-year reevaluations of the (Thrifty Food Plan) based on the most up-to-date consumption data and dietary guidance, all while ensuring an annual inflationary adjustment,” according to the framework.

In 2018, the farm bill allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reevaluate the Thrifty Food plan and in 2021 the agency updated it to reflect the cost of living, which led to a 21% increase in SNAP benefits. About 12.8% of U.S. households were food-insecure in 2022, according to USDA. More than 41 million people use SNAP benefits.

The Senate’s version reverts to a “cost-neutral” model, Boozman said, which is similar to the House Republican version. Democrats have already opposed those changes.

The Democratic chair of the Senate committee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, released a section-by-section version of the Democrats’ farm bill in early May. That version would boost eligibility for SNAP benefits, but there is no legislative text for that bill either.

In a statement, Stabenow said the framework “follows the same flawed approach” as the House version from Republicans.

“It makes significant cuts to the family safety net that millions of Americans rely on and walks away from the progress we have made to address the climate crisis,” she said.

Foreign ownership of farmland

Limiting foreign ownership of U.S. farmland has garnered bipartisan support in Congress, as states have passed their own laws on the issue.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said the biggest foreign land ownership comes from Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but there is concern in Congress about ownership by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — which own less than 400,000 acres of land.

Lawmakers are pushing for federal reporting requirements in the Senate GOP farm bill under Title XII, the miscellaneous section.

“This modernization will help ensure compliance with reporting requirements and provides a clearer picture of the scope and scale of the issues foreign ownership of U.S. farmland poses to our country,” according to the framework.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack expressed frustration that work on the $1.5 trillion farm bill has been delayed by eight months (Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

WASHINGTON — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on a call with reporters Wednesday strongly criticized a farm bill draft written by U.S. House Republicans, saying it would damage the coalition that traditionally has united behind farm bills and “raises the real possibility of being unable to get a farm bill through the process.”

The massive five-year legislation governing farm, nutrition, commodity and conservation programs is scheduled for a markup beginning Thursday morning in the House Agriculture Committee, headed up by Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican.

It already has appeared headed for a clash with a proposal in the Democratic-controlled Senate amid disagreements over anti-hunger and conservation programs. In addition, the must-pass bill faces a House with a slim 217-213 GOP majority.

Vilsack expressed frustration that work on the $1.5 trillion measure has been delayed by eight months and said he has “deep concerns” about the proposed package released by Thompson last week. Lawmakers fighting over spending and the speaker post in the House last year passed an extension of the 2018 farm bill that expires Sept. 30.

“I appreciate the fact that folks are working hard. I appreciate the fact that they’ve listened to people out there in the countryside,” said Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa.

“But I’m afraid that what we have is a circumstance where the proposal being advanced by the House of Representatives, the Republican members of the Ag Committee, it really is designed not to create a route to passage … I think it’s designed, unfortunately, for a route to impasse, which will cause a further delay.”

Cuts to nutrition, disaster programs

Vilsack said he objects to provisions that would reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that delivers food assistance to more than 40 million low-income families.

By limiting future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for benefit levels, the bill’s reductions would amount to $30 billion over 10 years, the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated. Vilsack put the number at $27 billion.

“It’s been clear that there has been a coalition historically that is central to the passage of the farm bill, which understands the importance of addressing the nutrition programs and the farm programs,” Vilsack said. “It is essentially a crack in the coalition that is absolutely necessary to the passage of the farm bill … The fact that we’re crossing that red line raises the real possibility of being unable to get a farm bill through the process.”

He said he also has a problem with a section of the House bill dealing with the Commodity Credit Corporation, which carries out various farm programs.

The legislation would restrict the USDA’s authority to use the CCC’s Section 5, which Vilsack said would tie the agency’s hands in responding to natural disasters affecting farmers and force USDA to rely on Congress to enact disaster assistance.

“There’s no assurance that such bills get passed,” Vilsack said. “And secondly, oftentimes Congress underfunds those bills, as was the case so recently with the 2023 situation disasters.”

He said Thompson is proposing “essentially to eliminate the capacity of the secretary of Agriculture to utilize the CCC in the face of a natural disaster, for example, that distorts markets.” He also said he believes the bill overestimates the savings that would be obtained.

Vilsack said he prefers a farm bill proposal offered by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, describing it as “more practical” and “doable.” Stabenow, who has released a summary of her bill but not the text, would boost eligibility for nutrition programs such as SNAP, among other provisions.

Chair defends proposal

Thompson, in a statement after the call, pushed back on Vilsack’s comments and said his bill makes “historic investments” in agriculture.

“It’s clear from this eleventh hour push that the Secretary is determined to use every penny of the borrowing authority made available to him to circumvent Congress if left unchecked,” he said. “The Committee is reasserting Congress’ authority over the Commodity Credit Corporation, which will bring reckless administrative spending under control and provides funding for key bipartisan priorities in the farm bill.

“The sudden rancor on using the CCC as a pay-for is nothing more than the latest partisan attempt to divide our committee and slow down progress on passing a farm bill.”

The committee in a press release Wednesday also listed multiple statements of praise for the Thompson proposal, including the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and leaders of various commodity and trade groups.

(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Agriculture Committee Friday released the draft bill text of the long-awaited $1.5 trillion farm bill, which is likely to face opposition in the Senate from Democrats because of disagreements over federal anti-hunger programs and climate change requirements.

The chair of the committee, GOP Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania, said in a statement that the bill, which will set farm, nutrition, commodity and conservation policy for the next five years, is a “product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all Members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies.”

The legislation funds programs across 12 titles for five years.

It would boost rural farming, promote a new global market for farmers to sell their products abroad, require new reporting requirements for the foreign purchase of farmland, increase funding for specialty crops and expand eligibility for disaster assistance, among other initiatives.

“The markup is one step in a greater House process, that should not be compromised by misleading arguments, false narratives, or edicts from the Senate,” Thompson said.

The House Agriculture Committee plans to mark up the 942-page bill on Thursday. It is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A title-by-title summary can be found here.

In a statement, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. David Scott of Georgia, slammed the draft bill for “taking food out of the mouths of America’s hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis.”

Scott warned that the current draft bill is unlikely to pass the House. Although Republicans have a slim majority, any piece of legislation will have to be bipartisan in order to make it through the Senate, which Democrats control.

The current farm bill extension expires Sept. 30.

On the Senate side, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Committee on Agriculture, released Democrats’ own proposal in early May. Among other things, it would boost eligibility for nutrition programs for low-income people like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Stabenow made public a summary of the bill, but not legislative text.

Scott and Stabenow released a joint statement Tuesday following a meeting with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats on the House Agriculture committee. They advocated for Republicans to craft a bipartisan farm bill.

“House Republicans are undermining this goal by proposing policies that split the broad, bipartisan coalition that has always been the foundation of a successful farm bill,” they wrote.

“We need a farm bill that holds the coalition together and upholds the historic tradition of providing food assistance to our most vulnerable Americans while keeping our commitment to our farmers battling the effects of the climate crisis every day,” they continued.

The House bill has a few provisions that Democrats oppose.

One would remove climate-smart policy requirements for about $13 billion in conservation projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Another  would limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula that calculates benefits for SNAP. “The economic impact of the SNAP cuts alone would be staggering,” Scott said.

A freeze in the Thrifty Food Plan would result in a roughly $30 billion SNAP cut over the next decade, according to the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There are more than 41 million people who use SNAP benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

However, the House farm bill would remove the ban on low-income Americans who have a drug conviction felony from obtaining SNAP benefits.

Environmental groups are also opposing the draft of the farm bill, raising concerns about reallocating IRA money and including a bill relating to how states regulate animal practices.

A watchdog group that focuses on government and corporate accountability in water, food and corporate overreach, Food & Water Watch Managing Director of Policy and Litigation Mitch Jones said in a statement that the draft bill would gut important climate-smart provisions.

“Some of leadership’s more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture,” Jones said. “It’s time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts.”

The U.S. House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee held a hearing Thursday to review the administration’s request to boost Department of Agriculture funding (Joe Raedle/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A U.S. House appropriations panel reviewed the Biden administration’s request to increase the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget for fiscal 2025 Thursday, with Republicans asking pointed questions about a proposal to boost a popular low-income nutrition program.

The hearing came less than two weeks after Congress passed a months-delayed appropriations bill for the USDA for the current fiscal year. Lawmakers have yet to finish a multi-year farm bill that is also delayed.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack advocated for Congress to pass the farm bill – legislation to authorize federal farm and nutrition programs – this year, and highlighted the ways the department is working to prevent funding shortfalls for critical programs for low-income families.

“We create a meaningful economic opportunity in rural America by improving critical infrastructure, supporting a clean energy economy and investing in a higher quality of life for those who live, work, play and raise their families in rural America,” Vilsack said in his opening statement.

Republicans on the panel took issue with the $25.1 billion budget request, an increase of $2.2 billion from the recently enacted fiscal 2024 law.

Backfilling WIC

The budget requests a total of $7.73 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC. That number is $700 million above the recently enacted fiscal 2024 levels.

Subcommittee Chair Andy Harris of Maryland grilled Vilsack on the reason for the larger request for fiscal 2025.

Vilsack said the increase is needed because Congress took so long to pass fiscal 2024 funding, and only provided USDA with flat funding levels in short-term continuing resolutions, the agency had to transfer resources from other nutrition programs to avoid a $1 billion shortfall for WIC.

“Part of the reason why we have the request that we have is to refill those transfers,” Vilsack said.

WIC provides nutrition assistance to about 6.7 million infants, young children and pregnant and postpartum patients per month.

“There is a limited amount of resources for all of the programs funded by this bill,” Harris said. “I think it is reasonable, and quite frankly it is our job as appropriators, to ask questions about the estimates for all of the programs, including WIC.”

Democrats on the panel defended the increase to WIC, and advocated for protections to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is authorized by the farm bill.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia, said that the budget reflects a “growing demand for WIC funding as participation continues to rise.”

“We must rise to meet this critical funding need,” Bishop said of the WIC program.

The top Democrat on the full House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, said she was intrigued by USDA’s proposal to backstop WIC funding, “so we do not face (a) nutrition assistance cliffhanger like we just went through.”

Crawfish, oranges and shrimp

Some lawmakers did not question Vilsack about USDA’s budget request, but instead asked him specific questions about agriculture-related crises in their districts and whether the department could help them.

Louisiana GOP Rep. Julia Letlow said a major drought has put the “crawfish industry on life support.” She said the crawfish are a more-than-$300 million commodity in her state, and she asked Vilsack if USDA could provide economic assistance to affected producers.

Vilsack said that he was happy to work with her and would have to check that the department has that discretion.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida asked Vilsack about an update on the USDA’s research on citrus greening, which is one of the most severe citrus diseases. She said Florida citrus growers have been struggling with the crop loss due to the disease.

“The problem is the cost of it is fairly significant,” Vilsack said. “I think that’s the next hurdle, is how do we get the cost down so that it’s available to producers.”

Alabama GOP Rep. Jerry Carl asked Vislack about adding domestic shrimp to a USDA list of foods to be used in school lunches in order to create “a sustainable path forward” for the industry.

USDA allows schools to use USDA Foods entitlement dollars to buy domestically grown food through an approved list. 

Vilsack said that USDA would have to first see if there is a demand and availability for domestic shrimp and if it’s “something that school districts can afford.”

Iowa GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson said she was concerned with foreign entities – mainly China – buying U.S. farmland and the reliance on foreign entities for supplies relating to agriculture.

Congressional support for limiting foreign entities’ and individuals’ access to U.S. agricultural land has grown in recent years, with a focus on China. USDA records have shown that China owns fewer than 1% of U.S. farmland.

Vilsack said that USDA is updating its handbooks and process for how it collects data on land purchases and loans “to make sure we are doing the best job we can of identifying circumstances where land transactions occur.”

He added that there will always be challenges to that tracking system because there are more than 3,000 county offices across the country and tracking those purchases would require USDA to have a centralized database.

Vilsack also said that USDA is investing in fertilizer, because the U.S. was “over-reliant on Russia, Belarus, so we have to look at ways where we can be more self-reliant.”

He also noted that in Iowa, where Vilsack was governor from 1999 to 2007, China is the top purchaser of soybeans.

“So it’s a delicate conversation that we have with our No. 1 customer, at the same time, somebody who we’re deeply concerned about,” Vilsack said.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack talks trade at a Woodward farm on Aug. 18, 2022 (Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

Federal agricultural officials plan to spend up to $2.3 billion to promote farm exports and to send U.S. grain to countries that are suffering food shortages.

“This will complement existing trade promotion programs as we await Congress’s action on both the budget and the farm bill,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday.

The farm bill — which governs policy and spending for farm, food and conservation programs — is up for renewal, which typically happens every five years. Some of its provisions expired at the end of September, and more will expire at the end of the year.

It’s unclear when federal lawmakers will approve a new farm bill. The U.S. House of Representatives has been without a speaker for about three weeks and, consequently, unable to act on legislation.

A popular trade promotion program that was created in 2018 amid then-President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and other countries is also set to expire next year.

“We continue to look for ways in which we can increase trade opportunities for U.S. agriculture, especially because of the strength of the U.S. economy and the difficulties experienced in the global economy,” Vilsack said. “We now find ourselves with unusual trade deficits in agricultural products.”

The new federal funding — $1.3 billion for the Regional Agricultural Promotion Program and $1 billion to combat global hunger — will be paid out of the Commodity Credit Corporation, which the Biden administration has used for myriad new agriculture initiatives, including those that promote “climate smart” practices.

Some Republican lawmakers have criticized the use of CCC funds for those initiatives. The CCC was created decades ago to assist farmers with catastrophic crop losses, but the USDA has broad spending authority over it.

The latest announced spending was the result of an August request from the top Democrat and Republican of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

“We write to urge you to consider using your authorities with regard to the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act to support the creation of new and better market opportunities for our nation’s farmers by addressing two key needs: trade promotion, and in-kind international food assistance,” U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, wrote to the USDA.

They noted bipartisan support for the food assistance because “Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine continues to disrupt supply chains and perpetuate humanitarian crises in the region and around the world.”

Russia invaded Ukraine about 20 months ago. As the fighting continues, Russia has sought to block grain from being exported by Ukraine, especially through its Black Sea ports. Ukraine is a major producer of corn and wheat.

The USDA will use up to $1 billion to buy commodities and distribute them with the help of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the lead federal agency for international emergency food aid programs.

Vilsack said the USDA hopes to finalize the details of the Regional Agricultural Promotion Program funding in the coming months.

This story was originally published by the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Delta-8 THC products like this cherry seltzer can be sold in stores in Missouri because the intoxicating ingredient, THC, is derived from hemp, not marijuana which is a controlled substance (Rebecca Rivas/The Missouri Independent).

Hemp is often known for being the part of the cannabis plant that doesn’t get people high. 

It’s full of CBD, a nonpyschoactive cannabinoid that helps people relax and often found in massage oils and sleep aids.

But much has changed since hemp was taken off the controlled substance list in 2018 by the last U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act, more commonly known as the farm bill. 

Now state regulators can barely keep up with the constantly evolving ways that people have found to make intoxicating products from hemp. The market for things like Delta-8 drinks and edibles is one of the fastest growing markets in the country. 

In Missouri, the issue has taken center stage in a massive cannabis recall, where a company is accused of illegally importing marijuana but insists it actually brought legal, unregulated hemp into the state.

With the farm bill up for renewal, the debate on whether some hemp products need to be considered controlled substances is back on the table — though delays make it unclear if any changes will occur at all.

Hemp industry leaders, state marijuana regulators and members of Congress all seem to agree on one thing — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should regulate CBD. But the divides come with intoxicating hemp products, and the standoff is over criminalization and prohibition. 

Hemp industry leaders don’t want to see these intoxicating products banned and have suggested the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau handle their regulation. 

But state regulators believe Congress should “set the floor not the ceiling” on creating standards of hemp products.   

“…states should be able to enact regulations that extend beyond federal minimums to further protect their communities and consumers,”  said leaders of the Cannabis Regulator Association (CANNRA) in a statement provided to Congress.  

When the current farm bill passes, it will likely have guidance for the FDA to monitor the production and testing of CBD.

But it won’t likely have anything to help states regulate intoxicating hemp products, said Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a coalition of hemp industry leaders across the country.

“My guess is that the farm bill will not resolve that,” Miller said, “and that will be something that will be continued to be studied and handled in the states.”

Hemp industry leaders in Missouri have pushed back regulation coming under the Department of Health and Senior Services, the agency that oversees the cannabis program. The Missouri Hemp Trade Association told Congress that it would like a separate “regulatory regime” that would allow for the use of intoxicating hemp products while providing for consumer safety and product testing. 

“This approach has avoided the massive bureaucratic costs of enforcing outright prohibition, criminalizing and incarcerating responsible, law-abiding adults, and forcing consumers away from alternatives to opiates and other deadly drugs,” the association stated in a Congressional Request for Information on cannabinoid hemp regulation from the U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce and the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Small piece of the farm bill

The previous farm bill expired Sept. 30. Its renewal, a process that occurs every five years, remains in the drafting stage.

The expansive agricultural and food policy bill covers farmer safety net programs, conservation and sustainability incentives, international trade, rural area development, and food and nutrition programs for low-income Americans — the last of which by far accounts for the largest portion of the bill. 

A very small piece of the bill would be the hemp provisions.

“We’re one of the very rare industries out there that is asking Congress to regulate it,” Miller said. 

In its response to Congress, CANNRA suggested closing “loopholes” that have allowed for intoxicating hemp products to go unregulated, including the “0.3% loophole” and the “THCA loophole.” 

Delta-9 THC is the most common form of intoxicating cannabinoid. While the threshold of 0.3% delta-9 THC by weight is a small amount of THC in a hemp plant, when applied to things like chocolate bars or beverages that can weigh significantly more, 0.3% by weight can amount to hundreds of milligrams of THC. 

For example, a 50-gram chocolate bar at 0.3% THC would have around 150 mg of THC — 30 times the standard 5 mg THC dose established by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A family sized pack of cookies weighing 20 oz can contain around 1,700 mg of THC using the 0.3% THC threshold.

Instead, Miller and other hemp leaders suggest setting the intoxicating floor at 5 mg. 

Others believe it should be 2.5 mg.

Missouri is currently shining a light on the THCA loophole. After more than 60,000 cannabis products were recalled in August, a company has revealed that it was importing THCA extracted from the hemp plant and putting it in marijuana products — arguing that THCA is not actually intoxicating until it is heated, so it doesn’t count as total THC. 

CANNRA told Congress that despite some states’ efforts to address this issue, many hemp businesses are selling “THCA hemp” flower that contains less than 0.3% delta-9 THC but has a total THC concentration of 15% to 20%. 

“This so-called ‘hemp’ is indistinguishable from marijuana flower,” the association stated. 

Patchwork of state laws 

Right now states have passed a “patchwork of different laws,” including some that are being challenged in courts, Miller said. 

Miller is hoping that the current legal conflicts between recent court decisions and the DEA will push Congress to act.

On Sept. 8, a federal judge in Arkansas granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against the state, saying that hemp-derived cannabinoids, like THCA, are protected under the 2018 farm bill. 

But a few months before that, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reaffirmed its position that all these cannabinoids are illegal under federal law and not protected by the farm bill.

The federal judge indicated that Congress should be the one to decide how to regulate hemp-derived THC products. 

“If we don’t change the definition and the federal court in Arkansas is correct, then maybe you can’t put limits on these products other than .3% Delta-9 THC,” Miller said. “It’s possible that if there’s no action at the federal level that courts could say, ‘We are kind of in the wild west without federal action.’”

CAPTION: Rows of soybean plants grow in the fields at Seidenstricker Farms, owned by Robert and Cathy Seidenstricker, in De Valls Bluff, Arkansas, on June 25, 2019 (USDA photo by Lance Cheung).

WASHINGTON —  As Congress faces another pressing deadline to fund the government and the U.S. House grinds to a halt without a speaker, the reauthorization of the nation’s agriculture and hunger programs has taken a back seat.

But lawmakers tasked with shepherding the new version maintain their progress is “in good shape.”

The previous farm bill expired Sept. 30 and its renewal, a process that occurs every five years, remains “in the drafting stage,” said Sen. John Boozman, the Arkansas GOP lawmaker and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

“I know myself and Senator Stabenow, our teams are working together to try and get ideas in the text. And so we’re moving forward,” Boozman told reporters Wednesday.

Stabenow of Michigan chairs the committee.

“It’s been difficult because the appropriations process has kind of sucked all the wind out. But we’re in good shape. We don’t need an extension until the first of the year. If we do need an extension, I think we’ll be looking in the November time frame as we do the CR.”

The CR, or continuing resolution, is the funding compromise Congress struck last weekend just hours before a partial government shutdown. The temporary spending measure expires Nov. 17.

The farm bill and long-term government funding are completely different processes, but GOP House majority infighting over appropriations has stalled other priorities.

And, with the ouster of former House Speaker and California Republican Kevin McCarthy by a handful of far-right party members and all House Democrats, the lower chamber is frozen.

“As with every Farm Bill, there are forces and circumstances out of our control. What is always a complicated process has become a little more complicated, but our work continues to produce an effective Farm Bill,” Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, who chairs the House Committee on Agriculture, said in an emailed statement.

Worries over lack of progress 

Thompson and fellow lawmakers have spent thousands of hours over the past two years collecting feedback from constituents on what they want to see in the multi-year bill that is forecast to cost $1.5 trillion.

But some constituents say despite reassurance that the farm bill is progressing, they remain concerned about its delay, as well as funding for several of its programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

As a mandatory program, SNAP will continue as long as Congress approves either temporary or long-term government funding.

“The delay in considering important legislation, such as agriculture appropriations and the farm bill, creates a great deal of uncertainty for farmers and ranchers. The 2018 farm bill already expired,” Sam Kieffer, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement.

“All families, including those in rural America, face rising interest rates, high inflation and turbulence in the marketplace,” he continued. “The farm bill provides certainty to those who grow this nation’s food, fuel and fiber and is crucial to ensuring a safe and affordable food supply. Congress has always come through on a farm bill, and they must do it again. Every family in America is counting on it.”

The 2018 farm bill was not signed into law until Dec. 20 of that year.

The expansive agricultural and food policy bill covers farmer safety net programs, conservation and sustainability incentives, international trade, rural area development, and food and nutrition programs for low-income earners — the last of which by far accounts for the largest portion of the bill. The legislation is one of Congress’ omnibus packages, meaning it’s made up of numerous provisions from many lawmakers.

Katy Rogers, the farm manager at Teter Organic Farm and Retreat Center in Noblesville, Indiana, inspects produce growing in one of the high tunnels at the farm on June 21, 2022. Members of Congress are pushing to expand a USDA program aimed at organic farmers (NRCS/USDA photo by Brandon O’Connor).

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers are pushing a bill that would boost support for organic farmers amid rising demand for their products.

U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Angus King of Maine in the Senate, alongside U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree of Maine and Annie Kuster of New Hampshire in the House, introduced the Organic Market Development Act in late September. The bill would codify and increase funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Organic Market Development Grant program, which allows organic farmers and producers to apply for grants to help support their businesses.

The lawmakers are working to include this legislation in the upcoming farm bill.

The bill is also co-sponsored by Sens. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, and Kristen Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. Rep. Andrea Salinas, an Oregon Democrat, is also a co-sponsor.

Earlier this year, the OMDG program was provided a one-time $75 million allotment through the Commodity Credit Corporation. The program is currently only funded for the 2023 fiscal year, a spokesperson from Pingree’s office said in a written statement.

This bill would maintain that $75 million each year while also investing an additional recurring $25 million in appropriations beginning with the 2024 fiscal year.

“This bicameral bill would formally authorize the Organic Market Development Grant program by Congress to ensure it is a long-lasting, continued program versus a one-time round of funding,” a spokesperson from Pingree’s office said.

Demand for organic food

Organic agriculture sales reached $60 billion last year and are continuing to rise, according to a Baldwin press release.

“We know the demand for organic foods is growing dramatically right now, and so we want to equip our organic farmers with the tools they need to meet that demand,” Baldwin, a Democrat, told States Newsroom.

King, an independent, said the bill would help his state’s growing organic food movement, which he said is “an important part of our agricultural economy.”

“Anything I can do to help support the growth of that business is something I’m very interested in,” King said. “That’s why I introduced the bill. It’s a big deal.”

Potential aid to organic farmers

According to the Baldwin release, the Organic Market Development Grant program “aims to support the development of new and expanded organic markets by building and expanding capacity” for many aspects of the organic agriculture industry, including:

• Production
• Aggregation
• Processing
• Manufacturing
• Storing
• Transporting
• Wholesaling
• Distribution
• Development of consumer markets

Organic farmers and producers can use these funds to upgrade their equipment and facilities, according to the Baldwin release.

Baldwin said the legislation would “build on the success of the Organic Market Development Grant program and allow more producers to access these resources and tools to grow our agriculture economy and ensure Wisconsin remains a leader in the organic food industry.”

Wisconsin had the second-highest number of certified organic farms in the U.S. in 2021 with 1,455, according to a USDA report.

“Wisconsin’s organic farmers and businesses are stepping up to meet the growing demand for organic products, and I’m committed to delivering the support they need to grow their businesses and reach new markets,” Baldwin said in a press release.

Organic food in Maine

King said Maine’s organic farmers “face increasing challenges from changing global markets, climate change,” so they should receive continued support and resources to “evolve with the times.”

“The Organic Market Development Act would codify an existing, and highly in demand, grant program to ensure the continuance of grant funding to Maine’s organic farmers so that they can respond to these challenges and pave the way for the future of the organic food industry,” King said in a press release.

Pingree, a Maine Democrat who is a member of both the House Agriculture Committee and House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, is also a longtime organic farmer.

“As more farmers consider making the transition from conventional to organic farming, we must strengthen organic processing and storage and enhance market opportunities,” Pingree said in a press release.

Pingree is also a co-chair of the House Organic Caucus, and she worked on the previous farm bill.

“The bill also expands grants to cover cold storage, which there is a huge, unmet need for. In Maine, for example, a dairy farmer applied for an Organic Market Development Grant, but wasn’t eligible because it was for cold storage,” a spokesperson from Pingree’s office said. “This bill would ensure the program grants cover cold storage, which is an important aspect of successful, organic farming.”

The OMDG program received approximately 200 applications from across the U.S. While grants have not been awarded yet, Pingree’s spokesperson said it is anticipated that “all the current funds allocated will be used.”

Organic farmers and producers in Maine and across the country have been asking for these resources for years, Pingree’s spokesperson said, and cited a 2020 study that ranked Maine second in the nation for the availability of organic food.

“There’s a strong need in Maine and across the U.S. for more organic processing, storage and new marketing opportunities,” Pingree’s spokesperson said. “This bill would do just that.”

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association has shown support for the bill. MOFGA said the bill can help keep more money in Maine’s rural farming communities if producers can add value to their products before they are sold, according to Pingree’s spokesperson.

“MOFGA also noted this could especially benefit our organic dairy community by adding organic dairy processing and cold storage in the state, both of which are currently lacking,” Pingree’s spokesperson said.

Dairy Business Innovation model

Baldwin told States Newsroom that the model for this bill comes from the Dairy Business Innovation Act, which similarly seeks to increase funding for the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives.

These initiatives “support dairy businesses in the development, production, marketing and distribution” of their products, according to the USDA.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, introduced the Dairy Business Innovation Act in the House in July. Baldwin, alongside Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, introduced the Senate counterpart.

There is approximately $23 million available for Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives. The Dairy Business Innovation Act would allocate an additional $16 million each year to these projects.

“We kind of hope we can do the same in organics, and we’re very excited about it,” Baldwin said.

Will it be included in the farm bill?

King said the logical place for this legislation is in the next farm bill.

“That’s our target,” he said.

The previous farm bill expired at the end of September, and Congress is months away from passing a new one.

A spokesperson from Pingree’s office said the Organic Market Development Act has “strong champions in the House and Senate and we will be pushing for its inclusion in the Farm Bill.”

“Negotiations are ongoing,” a spokesperson from Pingree’s office said.

King said he spoke with Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and John Boozman of Arkansas, who are leading the creation of the next farm bill. He said “it’s hard to tell at this point” whether this legislation will make it in.

“We are hopeful this bicameral legislation can ultimately be realized in the next farm bill,” said Adam Warthesen, the senior director of government and industry affairs for Organic Valley, according to the Baldwin press release. Organic Valley is a brand and cooperative of organic farmers headquartered in La Farge, Wisconsin.

Mike Scully harvests soybeans at Scully Family Farms in Spencer, Indiana, on Sept. 29, 2022 (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service photo by Brandon O’Connor).

WASHINGTON — As the deadline for Congress to pass a new farm bill looms this weekend, staff members of the House and Senate Agriculture committees say it will be months – if not longer – until they reach agreement on a new bill.

Lawmakers must rewrite the sweeping farm bill every five years to set both policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs. The current farm bill expires at midnight Saturday, but Congress is nowhere near ready to consider a new farm bill.

“At this point, it will not be possible to pass a farm bill by Saturday,” Emily Pilscott, an economist for the Democratic staff of the House Agriculture Committee, said at a forum Tuesday with the Farm Foundation, a nonpartisan farm policy group.

The House and Senate Agriculture committees have been working over the past year to get input on the new farm bill, with dozens of hearings, field hearings, listening sessions and staff meetings in each chamber. But with a few days left before the current bill expires, lawmakers have not yet put forward legislation at the committee level and staff say they are still divided on some of the big-ticket items on the bill.

Republican and Democratic staff from both the House and Senate say both sides want to find a bill that will support farms and farmers, but there is still significant disagreement about major programs, including the “safety net” of payments to farmers, crop insurance and conservation programs.

They do not even have enough consensus on potential changes to ask for a “score” from the Congressional Budget Office – the process of seeing how much different proposals would cost over the course of the farm bill.

“We are all on the same page about wanting to help farmers, but there are definitely some disagreements about the best way to do that,” Pilscott said of House Agriculture Committee members.

Another key area of disagreement in the House is  the SNAP program, a huge spending portion of the farm bill that helps low-income families buy food.

Republicans want to place more limits on the funds – a move that Democrats have warned would doom the farm bill. Congress put some restrictions on SNAP as part of the debt limit legislation.

But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans said afterwards they want more work requirements for SNAP funds. Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee sent a letter to McCarthy in August that said further limits to SNAP could jeopardize the farm bill.

SNAP is considered a mandatory appropriation and would continue at current levels as long as there is an appropriations bill or a continuing resolution to keep the Agriculture Department running — another problem right now in Congress.

‘A terrible time to do a farm bill’

The massive five-year farm bill is usually one of the more bipartisan efforts of Congress, at least on the committee level. But farm policy experts say this year’s farm bill has particular challenges — both because of the partisan divide in Congress and because of the current state of the farm economy.

Jonathan Coppess, a professor of agriculture law and policy at  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the prospects for the farm bill are in “serious doubt,” given the far-right faction that is holding up legislation in the House.

“We have an incredibly difficult political hurdle in the House and on the House floor,” Coppess said.

“This is a terrible time to do a farm bill,” said Joe Outlaw, an agricultural economist and professor at Texas A&M University.

Outlaw’s concern is not only the political strife in the Capitol but the current farm economy. Relatively high crop prices have masked a tenuous economy for farmers.

“The farm safety net is all about the bad times, and frankly the bad times are coming, they just aren’t here right now,” Outlaw said.

On the Senate side, Democratic and Republican staff are meeting regularly, but there is still a divide on major issues like how to address the farm safety net.

Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, the top ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, has said his chief concern is to help farmers face rising input costs for things like fertilizer and fuel, along with the possibility of lower crop prices.

“Title One support does not reflect the reality on the ground today,” said John Newton, chief economist for the Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee, in remarks at the Farm Foundation Forum.

Title One is the section of the farm bill that provides crop subsidies. Newton said Republicans would like to see a “meaningful increase in reference prices,” the amount at which the government will step in and help farmers.

Meanwhile, the economist for the Democratic majority on the Senate Agriculture Committee said he is looking at how the Title One commodity programs and crop insurance work together.

“We are looking closely at program interactions, how programs work together or overlap. The farm safety net — that is where there are some really challenging interactions,” said Steven Wallander, senior economist for the Democratic staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

A lengthening deadline

Like many bills on Capitol Hill, the farm bill has some “discretionary” programs, which are set up in the bill but have to be funded through the annual appropriations process.

But the farm bill is unique in that most of its programs have “mandatory” spending. That funding is set in the farm bill itself and is paid out over the next five years, regardless of congressional appropriations. Those mandatory programs include crop subsidies, conservation programs, some forms of crop insurance and SNAP, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Most of the mandatory programs will continue without any action through the end of the calendar year — delaying some of the urgency for Congress. In recent history, lawmakers have not passed any farm bills before the Sept. 30 deadline.

The 2018 farm bill passed in December, three months after the prior bill expired. And the three farm bills before that each passed in the year following their original deadline.

But Outlaw predicts that if lawmakers do not finish the new farm bill by February, the election cycle will take over and it could be years before they return to the farm bill.

Wallander said he hopes the Senate committee is on a timeline similar to the 2018 farm bill, when lawmakers rolled out legislation in the fall and passed a bill by the end of the year.

Senate Democratic and Republican staff are meeting together regularly. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, and Boozman meet together weekly.

“There is strong bipartisan support for getting this done, we’ve seen that with the chairwoman and ranking member and their experiences working together. We think that strength is something we can leverage towards a finished product,” Wallander told the Farm Foundation Forum.

On the House side, Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, has said he will not bring a farm bill to the committee until there is scheduled time for debate on the House floor.

That could be a stretch this year, with the House placing a priority on spending bills to fund the government. There are only 28 voting days on the House calendar between now and the end of the calendar year.

Without a new farm bill or an extension of the current bill, crop support programs will continue through the end of the calendar year. The conservation programs are extended through 2031 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Government shutdown another complication

Another challenge for the farm bill is the debate over spending bills and the possibility of a government shutdown next week.

The conflict over spending has already slowed the farm bill process. If the government shuts down, committee staff will not be able to get technical assistance or new reports from the Agriculture Department.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a Monday White House briefing that it would be nearly impossible to enact a new farm bill if there are disruptions from a federal shutdown.

“It is pretty tough to do if there is a shutdown, you can’t do it,” Vilsack, former Iowa governor, said.

The White House released a state-by-state breakdown, estimating that nearly 7 million people who rely on a nutrition program for women, infants and children could be at risk of losing funds to purchase select food and receive vouchers for vegetables and fruit.

The House has passed only one of its 12 appropriations bills, which need to be in place by the end of the fiscal year on Saturday. A group of far-right Republicans are pushing for steeper cuts to nondefense federal spending, even if it means a partial government shutdown.

Lawmakers usually turn to a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government afloat for the weeks or months it takes to finish the annual spending bills. But lawmakers have not yet agreed to a CR this year, and some House Republicans have said they will block it.

(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

As food prices rose around the country, so did farmers’ take-home pay.

Net farm profits rose by 30% from 2021 to 2022, according to recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the same time, food prices inflated by more than 10%.

The USDA predicts farm incomes will drop by about 20% in 2023 to levels still above pre-pandemic averages — and interest groups are already using the expected drop in profits to lobby for more money as Congress works on the next Farm Bill.

Farm incomes vary widely based on commodities and local weather patterns, so experts warn against making sweeping industry-wide generalizations. The record-high incomes last year were largely driven by high prices and good yields for the country’s biggest cash crops — corn and soy — according to Pauline Van Nurden, extension economist at the Center for Farm Financial Management at the University of Minnesota.

Minnesota was fifth in the nation in farm income last year, bringing in $9.7 billion, mostly through corn, soy, hog, cattle and dairy production.

Most of the income growth is concentrated among the industry’s biggest farms, according to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

In the warehouse of a St. Paul food nonprofit on Aug. 28, Vilsack announced the record-high income levels to a crowd of agriculture leaders and media before visiting the Minnesota State Fair.

He made a show of stepping away from the podium, removing his jacket and walking over to the whiteboard, where he started writing numbers.

Less than 8% of the country’s farms brought in more than $500,000 last year. Those farms made up 89% of the record-breaking farm profits last year, he explained.

Overall, farmers took home $15 billion in direct government payments, most of which go to the biggest farms, according to the Environmental Working Group, which tracks subsidy data.

Vilsack pointed to the numbers representing large farms, and sent a strong signal the Biden administration has no interest in policies that would negatively affect the richest farmers.

“These folks are great people — good people, hard working people,” he said. “They have a lot of risk. They are providing food for our families and for the world’s families. I don’t think it’s a circumstance or a situation where you necessarily have to do something to this world.”

He pointed to the numbers representing the smaller farms that shared the remaining profits.

“But you sure as heck need to do something about these people,” he said.

Vilsack touted investments that would help create new revenue streams for farms, like paying them to use “climate-smart” farming techniques, opening up carbon markets and finding ways to get fresh produce directly into grocery stores and schools.

Farm groups across the political spectrum largely support voluntary programs that pay farmers for implementing climate-friendly practices.

Ahead of the Farm Bill, however, commodity groups have also prioritized protecting and expanding crop insurance, and lowering premiums.

Jonathan Coppess, director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois, said the projected drop in farm income — from extreme highs in 2022 to above-average in 2023 — is to be expected given the ag sector’s volatility.

“There’s a temptation, if not a strategic mindset, to proclaim this as something drastic and bad,” Coppess said, referring to the farm lobby using the expected drop in income to influence the Farm Bill debate.

It’s already happening.

In a May 2 Senate hearing, American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall presented a bleak picture of U.S. agriculture, leaning on the USDA data that showed a projected decrease in farm income.

“Much uncertainty remains related to the ability for farmers and ranchers to access supplies, to manage volatile markets and to deal with regulation and weather-related challenges,” Duvall said.

Republican U.S. Senate Agriculture committee staff recently published a blog headlined “USDA Forecasts Sharpest Decline in U.S. Farm Income in History,” urging lawmakers to fund strong crop insurance and risk management programs.

The current Farm Bill will expire at the end of the month.

This story was originally published by the Minnesota Reformer, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

CAPTION: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference following a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 6, 2023 in Washington, D.C. At left is U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House and Senate are both back in D.C. on Tuesday following a long summer recess, facing an overwhelming agenda of unfinished work — funding the federal government and reauthorizing major programs set to expire at the end of the month.

Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden have only a few weeks to broker a short-term spending deal that can gain votes from deeply divided members of Congress or spark a partial government shutdown before a Sept. 30 deadline. Far-right House Republicans already are insistent on big cuts in spending levels at odds with bipartisan Senate legislation.

On top of that, lawmakers must negotiate another vital short-term extension, that of the massive five-year farm bill that authorizes agricultural subsidies as well as nutritional programs that feed millions of low-income Americans.

Aid to Ukraine, a boost for natural disaster assistance, the annual defense policy bill, rail safety improvements and money for added border security will also be part of the complicated mix. At the same time, Congress will be roiled by the push by some GOP members for Biden’s impeachment and a blockage of quick Senate votes for top military positions led by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

The Senate returned last week, ahead of the House, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that he and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a “good conversation” about passing a spending bill by Sept. 30 that would last for just weeks or months, instead of a full year, buying more time for negotiations.

But Schumer raised concerns about whether the California Republican would stick to that plan, given the conflicts within the GOP conference.

“He’s going to have a rough time implementing it, but I hope he sticks to his guns,” Schumer said.

The New York Democrat on Monday urged the House to follow the Senate’s example and advance bipartisan bills.

“The Senate has shown that bipartisan compromise is entirely possible even in these divided times,” Schumer said.

If a partial government shutdown were to begin, it would affect a wider swath of the federal government than the longest funding lapse in history, which lasted 35 days under the Trump administration.

A short-term stopgap spending measure also likely needs to include temporary extensions of the farm bill and the Federal Aviation Administration, which sets safety guidelines for air travel, manages air traffic control and provides funding to airports.

The largest disputes at the moment and highest potential for a shutdown rest with House Republicans, who have drafted both spending and authorizing bills to appease a small coalition of far-right conservative members.

Their differences with the Senate will pose a major test of leadership for McCarthy, who may need to advance bipartisan Senate bills that many of his conservatives loathe.

If Congress and the White House can reach a short-term deal to fund the government and continue the authorizations for the farm bill and FAA, lawmakers will spend the last few months of the year working toward passing full-year bills.

Here’s a look at the top items confronting Congress:

Government funding 

The fiscal year for the federal government begins anew on Oct. 1. Congress must pass a short-term government funding bill before that date or begin a partial government shutdown; it is partial because essential functions will be spared, though federal employees who manage those operations will go without pay, as will the military.

The House Appropriations Committee has approved all dozen of its annual spending bills on party-line votes while the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved its version of the bills with strong bipartisan backing.

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, and ranking member Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, have both been lauded by party leadership for “spectacular” and “phenomenal” work.

Congress, however, has not begun moving forward with the conference process for full-year funding bills, making a stopgap spending bill crucial. That legislation, sometimes called a continuing resolution or CR, will likely last until December, though leadership has yet to set the date.

If there’s no new spending law in place by Oct. 1, then the federal government would begin a partial shutdown that would hit many more departments and agencies than during the Trump administration shutdown.

That funding lapse began after five of the dozen annual bills became law. That means big agencies that have dealings with many Americans, including Defense, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, weren’t affected. Members of Congress also didn’t suffer, having passed the funding bill for themselves and their staff.

The White House’s budget office is attempting to head off a shutdown by releasing 50 fact sheets this week detailing how a funding lapse would impact each state.

Ukraine, natural disasters and more

An additional $40 billion in funding for Ukraine, natural disaster recovery, wildland firefighter pay and border security must pass Congress, according to a request from the Biden administration.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, is pressing for additional aid to Ukraine, though he acknowledged last week that many in the GOP don’t feel the same way.

“I know there’s a difference of opinion in my party on this and I think the president has been too slow to keep the commitments that he’s made publicly. But at least he’s supporting the effort,” McConnell said. “I think he could have done it more skillfully, but he is supporting the effort and I intend to continue to support it. And I hope the majority of my colleagues feel the same way.”

Many Republicans have called for separating the $12 billion request for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund from the rest of the supplemental funding proposal so that money can move through Congress quickly. The fund is running low on money.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates rejected calls to separate out Ukraine aid from other spending priorities.

“Like Senate Republicans, Speaker McCarthy should keep his word about government funding,” Bates said in a written statement. “And he should do so in a way that acts on these pressing issues — including fentanyl, national security, and disaster response — rather than break his promise and cave to the most extreme members of his conference agitating for a baseless impeachment stunt and shutdown.”

Defense policy

Historically a bipartisan endeavor, negotiations over the National Defense Authorization Act could hit partisan roadblocks in the coming months if McCarthy and far-right conservatives fail to compromise.

The annual bill authorizes how much the government can spend on Department of Defense activities, including construction, procurement and military personnel, as well as nuclear weapons programs under the Department of Energy. Congress must pass a separate appropriations bill to unlock the money.

This year House Republicans have bucked the routine bipartisan process by approving several contentious amendments in their version of the bill, including blocking funding for a Pentagon policy that reimburses service members’ travel for an abortion.

The House version, mainly passed along party lines, would also prohibit military health care professionals from performing transition-related health care for transgender service members and eliminate Pentagon positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

The social policies are a nonstarter for Senate Democrats who hold the majority in the upper chamber. The Senate version overwhelmingly passed 86-11.

The House version would authorize $874.2 billion, while the Senate bill would authorize $876.8 billion — both meeting Biden’s defense funding requests for 2024.

Many programs authorized by the expansive legislation expire at the end of the fiscal year.

The House and Senate will begin reconciling their versions in mid- to-late September, with 25 members from each chamber forming a conference committee to reach an agreement.

Farm bill 

The farm bill is a package of legislation that is passed every five years, and the 2018 version of the bill is set to expire at the end of the month.

It’s a multi-billion-dollar item that covers agriculture and food policy such as farm safety net programs, crop insurance, conservation and sustainability incentives, though the bulk of the funding goes toward food and nutrition programs for low-income people.

Nutrition programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps and known as SNAP, for the 2018 farm bill comprised about 75% of spending; they are projected to account for about 84% of the 2023 farm bill.

The exact price tag of the upcoming farm bill is unknown, but because of higher food costs and subsidies, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that without any changes from 2018, this year’s version could — for the first time ever — push $1.5 trillion for fiscal years 2024 to 2033.

Lawmakers began hearings and listening sessions for the farm bill late last year.

Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who sits on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, said in a statement that negotiations are still ongoing and stressed the importance for Congress to reauthorize the bill by the end of the year.

“Our country’s food security depends on it,” she said.

Lawmakers in states with a heavy agriculture industry like Iowa are feeling the time crunch. Upon returning from August recess, Republican Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley said during their floor speeches that Congress needs to pass the farm bill by the end of the month to help farmers and ranchers.

If lawmakers don’t pass a 2023 farm bill, then they will likely enact program extensions at a funding baseline until final passage. In 2018, a stalled farm bill was signed into law in December.

Funding for SNAP is an inflection point for Republicans, who are looking to scale back or add more requirements for recipients. About 42 million Americans receive monthly SNAP benefits, or about 12.5% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. There’s a separate food nutrition program for Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Earlier this year, McCarthy made additional work requirements for SNAP part of the debt ceiling deal. That provision increases the work rules age ceiling from 49 to 55 for adults without dependents.

A separate agriculture appropriations process, which releases funds for farmers and SNAP, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, fell apart before lawmakers left for August recess. The sticking point for far-right conservatives came down to banning the availability of mifepristone, the abortion pill.

FAA reauthorization

Another deadline Congress faces by the end of the month is the authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration ­and the safety and airport funding programs it administers.

But the Senate appears unable to approve the measure ­— let alone reconcile differences with the House-passed version ­— this month.

The Senate’s version of the bill is held up at the committee level over a dispute on pilot training hours.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee indefinitely delayed a scheduled June 15 markup of the measure as Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema and South Dakota Republican John Thune planned to introduce an amendment to allow hours spent on flight simulators to count toward the 1,500 flight hours needed for pilot certification.

In an Aug. 15 op-ed in the Washington Examiner, the senators said the adjustment would still require U.S. pilots to spend more time in cockpits than counterparts in other countries. And, they said, state-of-the-art simulators can provide training for circumstances like engine failure that pilots in training are unlikely to experience in a real aircraft.

But the issue is non-negotiable for other key senators.

In a floor speech that day, Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth, who chairs the Aviation Safety Subcommittee, said a vote to change the 1,500-hour rule would “mean blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew.”

Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, acknowledged in a committee meeting at the end of July that the issue was holding up the bill.

“Unfortunately, the debate over 1,500-hour rules has stymied the legislation,” she said in response to a question from Kansas Republican Jerry Moran. “We’ve suggested many, many different avenues to try to move that forward. But Sens. Thune and Sinema still remain adamant. So until that issue is resolved, we’re not moving forward in the committee, unfortunately.”

After the meeting, she told reporters the holdup was threatening the Senate and House versions of the reauthorization bill, speculating that Congress may pass a short-term extension instead of a long-term bill.

“Right now, not being able to move forward unless we lower the safety standard is jeopardizing both bills,” Cantwell said, according to a transcript provided by her office. “Really, you’ll just get an extension. Sept. 30 comes pretty fast when you come back after Labor Day, and you have holidays in the middle.”

If that issue can be resolved, Cantwell is ready for a Senate markup, committee spokesperson Tricia Enright said last week.

As of early September, the sides appeared to remain at an impasse. And Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican and a former Commerce Committee chairman, accused Schumer of interfering in committee business.

“The conditions that Democrats are putting down for moving the FAA bill are, 1) you can’t offer your amendment in the committee and 2) you can’t offer it on the floor,” Thune told Politico last week. “Schumer’s telling people that he won’t bring the FAA bill to the floor to preclude me from offering an amendment, which as a senator is my right to do.”

Extensions for FAA authorization are not uncommon. Congress passed six extensions before approving the current authorization in 2018.

Pandemic preparedness reauthorization

Congress is set to reauthorize the Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act for the first time since a global pandemic killed more than 1 million Americans and upended major sectors of society, including health care and education.

The House and Senate have differing views on how to do this, with senators taking a mostly bipartisan approach and House lawmakers pressing forward with a bill that leans much more into Republican ideology.

The law, originally enacted in 2006 following Hurricane Katrina, has been reauthorized more than once since then, but this is the first time lawmakers are attempting to prepare the country for future public health crises after experiencing a global pandemic.

Rail safety 

Unlike some other items on this list, there is no firm deadline to pass a rail safety bill.

But advocates hope to make changes to strengthen safety requirements while the Norfolk Southern derailment that spilled toxic chemicals near East Palestine, Ohio, in February is still fresh in lawmakers’ minds.

The Senate appears poised to pass a rail safety measure, but a companion bill is stuck in the House, where Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, has urged patience as an investigation into the derailment unfolds.

Schumer has said a rail safety bill will also be a priority for the chamber this session.

The bill, introduced by Ohio U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, and Pennsylvania’s Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, both Democrats, is ready for a vote by the full Senate after winning Commerce Committee approval in May.

But it faces a roadblock in the House. Graves has said that the National Transportation Safety Board should complete its investigation of the East Palestine derailment and share its findings before Congress acts.

“The NTSB’s accident investigation continues, so instead of speculating about all the potential factors, I want to fully understand the facts involved,” Graves said in a statement earlier this year. “When we have the facts, Congress can consider what next steps may be necessary.”

The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rick Larsen of Washington, and the top Democrat on the rail subcommittee, Donald Payne Jr., of New Jersey, have called for hearings on rail safety legislation, but the committee has not held one.

NTSB investigations usually take 12 to 24 months, board spokesman Keith Holloway said. The full report on the East Palestine derailment could be finished by early 2024.

If Graves sticks to his timeline, that would preclude consideration of the bill this month.

Two bipartisan efforts have been introduced. One is led by Transportation and Infrastructure member Emilia Sykes, a Democrat, and Bill Johnson, a Republican, both from Ohio.

Democrat Chris Deluzio, whose Western Pennsylvania district borders East Palestine, is the lead sponsor of a similar rail safety bill.

In a Sept. 8 news conference, Deluzio blamed lobbying by railroads for the standstill. He called for action in the House, and said he was hopeful if the Senate passed a bill it could prompt movement in his chamber.

“Leadership should move this bill forward,” he said. “And certainly, I hope with momentum coming out of the Senate, when they get it passed, will help drive that.”

Tuberville and military nominees

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama shows no sign of ending his months-long blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations as he protests a Department of Defense policy that grants leave and travel allowances for non-covered reproductive care, including abortions.

The Biden administration policy was announced in the wake of the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. The decision triggered multiple states, many where military personnel are stationed, to severely restrict or ban the practice.

Tuberville, a Republican, refuses to participate in the Senate’s time-saving unanimous consent approval of large blocs of military promotions, which routinely occurs all in one floor action. As the months have gone by, more top leadership roles have gone unfilled, or some in cases placed in the hands of lower-ranking generals in an acting capacity.

Voting on each nominee, one-by-one, would take up hundreds of hours of floor time in the upper chamber.

Tuberville’s holds prompted the secretaries of the Air Force, Army and Navy to publish a joint op-ed in the Washington Post decrying the delay as “unfair to these military leaders and their families.”

“Each of us has seen the stress this hold is inflicting up and down the chain of command, whether in the halls of the Pentagon or at bases and outposts around the world,” secretaries Carlos Del Toro, Frank Kendall and Christine Wormuth wrote.

As of mid-September, 319 officers general and flag officer nominations have been held up in the Senate. If the holds don’t lift by the end of the year, nearly 650 of the more than 850 general and flag officer nominations will be affected, according to a Department of Defense official.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly warned that Tuberville’s blockade threatens national security.

The list of unfilled posts now includes the Marine Corps commandant, the Army chief of staff and chief of Naval operations.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley’s term expires at the end of this month.

“This is unprecedented. It is unnecessary. And it is unsafe,” Austin said on Aug. 14 at the retirement ceremony for Admiral Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations.

“This sweeping hold is undermining America’s military readiness,” Austin said. “It’s hindering our ability to retain our very best officers. And it’s upending the lives of far too many American military families.”

Nutrition initiatives were added to the farm bill in the early 1970s, expanding the scope of the legislation that previously focused on support for certain commodities, including corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, dairy and others (Larry Mayer/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The roundtables, listening sessions and appearances at farm shows have largely wrapped up and lawmakers tasked with reauthorizing the nation’s agriculture and nutrition programs are comparing notes and beginning to draft the massive, multi-year farm bill.

The 2018 version expires Sept. 30, just as many urgent priorities compete for floor time in Congress — namely the government funding bills that, if not passed by Oct. 1, could mean a partial government shutdown.

The expansive agricultural and food policy bill covers farmer safety net programs, conservation and sustainability incentives, international trade, rural area development, and food and nutrition programs for low-income earners — the last of which by far accounts for the largest portion of the bill. The legislation is one of Congress’ omnibus packages, meaning it’s made up of numerous provisions from many lawmakers.

Staff working on the respective House and Senate agriculture committees expect a roughly $1.5 trillion price tag over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office baseline scores for SNAP and mandatory farm programs.

Both parties have rallied around ways to make the government safety net more reliable for farmers facing rising production costs. Differences surface when discussing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, or food stamps, and how to spend conservation and climate dollars earmarked in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

While the outlook for when the farm bill reaches the floor is “murky,” committee leadership “has committed to bipartisanship,” said a Republican House aide knowledgeable about Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson’s negotiations. The aide did not want to be identified because of ongoing discussions.

Thompson, of Pennsylvania, chairs the House Committee on Agriculture.

Some worry that despite Thompson’s goal for bipartisanship, the omnibus to continue America’s farm and food programs will become another battleground for far-right lawmakers.

If Congress does not pass a final farm bill by the end of September, lawmakers will likely will enact program extensions as they have in the past. Aides say the situation becomes more worrisome if lawmakers cannot finish the omnibus by the end of the calendar year.

“Once it leaves his committee it’s at the mercy of the Rules Committee and right now the Freedom Caucus is — not just with the farm bill, and not just with the agriculture appropriations — but pretty much every bill going through, (they have) some of their unrealistic demands on required amendments,” said Chandler Goule, CEO of the National Association of Wheat Growers.

“I’m worried it’s going to not only stall the farm bill, but it’s also going to make the farm bill a partisan bill, which is not good for anyone in agriculture,” he said.

Food assistance

Nutrition initiatives were added to the farm bill in the early 1970s, expanding the scope of the legislation that previously focused on support for certain commodities, including corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, dairy and others.

Nutrition programs are projected to comprise 84% of the 2023 farm bill, compared to the 76% in the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, the official name of the most recent omnibus. The increase reflects pandemic-related spending and an adjustment to benefits meant to better reflect grocery store prices.

While the farm bill authorizes policy, a separate agriculture appropriations process greenlights the dollars for farmers and SNAP, as well as the Food and Drug Administration. Talks to advance the funding bill collapsed before lawmakers left for August recess as far-right conservatives pushed to ban the availability of mifepristone, the abortion pill.

Cutting SNAP funding in the agriculture appropriations bill is also a target for the GOP-led House.

Among the Republican proposals are “right-sizing” funding to reflect pre-pandemic levels and adjusting the administration’s Thrifty Food Plan, which increased benefits to match healthy food prices.

Another proposal Democrats are criticizing is limiting state waivers that allow certain adults to be exempt from work requirements because of labor market conditions. Currently 13 states, the District of Columbia and two territories have statewide waivers.

They include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Another 16 states have partial waivers in certain areas.

The GOP already moved the needle this year on SNAP work requirements when House Leader Kevin McCarthy of California won a provision in the debt ceiling deal to increase the work rules age ceiling from 49 to 55 for adults without dependents.

As for the farm bill debate, “Mr. Thompson has been clear: he is not interested in further debate of the age of someone participating in a work requirement,” the GOP aide said.

Democrats are warning McCarthy and GOP leadership that inserting the SNAP debate into the farm bill process could hamper progress.

“The continued threat of making additional changes to SNAP eligibility and benefits is not helpful and even undermines Chairman Thompson as he works with his Democratic and Republican membership to bring a bipartisan farm bill out of the Agriculture Committee,” wrote the committee’s ranking member, David Scott of Georgia, in an Aug. 7 letter co-signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues.

Aside from work rules, the GOP would like to see some policy changes in the farm bill’s SNAP title, including more resources directed toward fraud prevention and “health and wellbeing,” or restricting what people can buy with SNAP benefits, according to the Agriculture Committee.

The United Council on Welfare Fraud, a group representing state and county investigators, met with GOP lawmakers multiple times this year ahead of farm bill negotiations to push for more robust prevention of underground SNAP benefits trading and complex retail skimming schemes that strip benefits from recipients’ EBT cards.

“You have legitimate people who go to buy milk and groceries for their children and they have a zero balance on their card,” said Dawn Royal, the group’s director and past president.

“In recognizing that there are legitimate victims, the government decided to reissue benefits on those cards to the victims up to twice and that’s great, right. So now mom can buy milk for her children and that’s great, but they (the government) did nothing to prevent it,” she said.

The USDA spends less than 1% on fraud prevention and prosecution, according to the group.

Farmer safety net

Another major area of concern for the farm bill among GOP leaders is updating guidelines that trigger risk protection programs for several commodities, including wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, peanuts, sugar and dairy.

Farmers and lawmakers maintain the prices — referred to as reference prices — are outdated. Despite market fluctuations, severe drought or natural disasters, the protections aren’t set in motion until crop prices drop to a certain level.

“Everything we’re doing on the farm now costs a whole lot more money when it comes to planting the crop. But the reference prices for when some type of disaster program would kick in haven’t changed. So it’s much more costly to put a crop in and to protect that crop,” said Josh Gackle, a North Dakota soybean farmer and vice president of the American Soybean Association.

Prices have to dip to $8.50 per bushel before government coverage begins. Gackle says in North Dakota it costs him $12 per bushel to produce the crop.

“The data that was used (for reference prices) goes back to 2012. The world is very different now than it was in 2012,” Sen. John Boozman told Agri-Pulse in an April interview.

“So I can tell you, there is not going to be a farm bill that I vote for that doesn’t take care of the safety nets,” continued the Arkansas Republican who is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

Boozman is also eyeing “producer focused” policies in the trade title of the bill, said Patrick Creamer, the committee’s communications director for the minority.

The senator wants to focus on “things that really impact farmers, whether it’s market access overseas or research to help increase their crop yields,” Creamer said.

Democrats agree that farmer safety net programs are falling short. However, they want expanded protection for crops — like apples, for example — that are outside of the major commodities.

“Both program crops and specialty crops have to have some kind of safety net and access to whether it’s (for) conservation research, anything that will make those farmers profitable and able to stay in business,” said a Democratic House aide who did not want to be identified because of ongoing negotiations.

The Senate returns Sept. 5. The House returns Sept. 12.

The U.S. Capitol dome, photographed June 17, 2019 (Kathie Obradovich/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

WASHINGTON — The holiday weekend debt ceiling deal struck by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy preserves in part new work requirements for some food stamp recipients but now with exceptions for certain populations, including veterans.

The agreement released late Saturday night showed concessions from both sides — from GOP members, who wanted to tighten eligibility for not just food stamps but also low-income health care, and from the Democrats, who called such restrictions a nonstarter.

The Biden administration and the Republican House majority arrived at a compromise, titled the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the U.S. would default if a deal wasn’t brokered by June 5.

Work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and other government benefits were a sticking point during the months of stalemate leading right up to the edge of Treasury exhausting all reserves to pay the nation’s bills.

The House is expected to vote on the deal by late evening Wednesday, after which the bill will head to the Democratic-led Senate.

New work rules

The Fiscal Responsibility Act proposes additional work requirements, with a sunset date of 2030, for adults without dependents age 18 to 55, unless the recipient has veteran status, is a homeless person or is under 24 and aging out of the foster care system.

The House GOP majority maintains the new rules would “lift Americans out of poverty” and that the “consequential reforms” will “save taxpayer dollars, get Americans back to work, and grow the economy,” according to a document released Saturday by the office of GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota.

The move softens McCarthy’s original proposal that raised the work requirements for food assistance beneficiaries without dependents up to age 55 without exceptions for veterans,  homeless people or young adults exiting foster care.

As the law stands now, all recipients of federal nutrition aid ages 16 to 59 must either be looking for work, enrolled in a SNAP employment training program, or pulling in wages equivalent to 30 hours per week at the federal minimum wage.

Some exceptions exist, for example, for people who already have a job, are physically or mentally unable, or are caring for a child under 6.

Those considered able-bodied adults ages 18 to 49 are subject to additional rules and must work for pay, attend a training program or volunteer 80 hours a month — though some states can waive these requirements depending on unemployment figures and other factors.

Beneficiaries in that age range who don’t meet the current additional work requirements, and cannot secure an exemption, can only receive SNAP benefits, formerly called food stamps, for three months over a three-year period.

The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that raising the age to 55 would have put food assistance in jeopardy for roughly 1 million adults without dependents.

In a statement Sunday, the center’s president, Sharon Parrott, called the new proposal a “significant improvement over the radical House bill.”

But she continued: “It is not the deal the country deserves. There are a number of troubling elements, including the provision that will put at risk food assistance for very low-income older adults. This policy will increase hunger and poverty among that group, runs contrary to our nation’s values, and should be rejected. The nation must pay its bills — but that shouldn’t mean enacting legislation that leaves people who already struggle to afford the basics worse off.”

The most conservative wing of the GOP demanded McCarthy tie spending cuts to a debt ceiling increase in exchange for their support in securing McCarthy the speaker’s gavel.

The original debt ceiling proposal — the Limit, Save, Grow Act that was narrowly approved by the GOP House majority — included the expanded SNAP work rules along with new work requirements for Medicaid recipients, and for the poorest Americans who rely on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

Together those expanded welfare requirements would have cut $100 billion and $120 billion in government spending over the next ten years, according to respective analyses from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and Moody’s Analytics. But, as both analyses concluded, the Limit, Save, Grow Act’s clawback of new IRS funding, passed in 2022 to modernize tax collection, would have offset that savings by costing the government roughly $100 billion over the next decade.

“Oh, Republicans want to reduce the deficit? I’ve got an easy idea – tax the rich,” tweeted Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington congresswoman and head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is criticizing the White House for agreeing to any new SNAP work requirements.

Some limitations on TANF made it into Saturday’s agreement, but work requirements for Medicaid were dropped.

The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan body that calculates the cost and savings of legislation, has not yet released its score of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Shalanda Young, director of the U.S. Office Management and Budget, said Tuesday at the White House press briefing that the administration does not yet have an estimate for how many SNAP recipients will be subject to the new work requirements.

“Some people who have these requirements now will no longer if they’re homeless, if they’re veterans, if they’re foster youth aged out of the system up to 24. So the analysis is being finalized, but we believe those who are off of those requirements because of those exemptions, will be about the same number as those who are phased in on age,” said Young, who was among the negotiators for the new deal.

“And you have to remember this: This entire SNAP change (will) sunset in 2030 to give Congress a chance to see how the new exemptions work and how the new ages work,” she continued. “And (Congress) can opine on a future farm bill if these changes have made a difference in the SNAP program.”

Farm bill

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, analyzes the number of beneficiaries and any changes to the program. Nutrition programs make up the majority of the multi-year omnibus legislation referred to as the farm bill.

Congress is in the process of negotiating a new farm bill, which reauthorizes spending for food and agriculture programs.

The idea for expanding SNAP work requirements gained traction in March when Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, introduced the America Works Act, which proposed adjusting the work rules for recipients up to 65.

Johnson’s office did not respond to an inquiry on whether the congressman would push for the tightened rules under the farm bill.

A congressional aide for the GOP-led House Agriculture Committee said the effort is unlikely. Attempts to re-litigate work requirements for SNAP during the farm bill process would present an unnecessary hurdle in drafting and passing a timely, bipartisan farm bill, the aide said.

An aerial view from a drone shows a combine being used to harvest the soybeans in a field at the Bardole & Son's Ltd farm on Oct. 14, 2019 in Rippey, Iowa. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Rural bank executives and crop insurance agents testified at a Thursday Senate hearing in support of a modernized crop insurance market that helps upstart producers manage growing risks, and supports food security.

The witnesses told the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry that crop insurance represents one of the most important financial tools in the agricultural producer’s toolbox. They added that efforts to weaken it or tie it to climate provisions in the farm bill would undercut the economies of rural America that depend on it.

“I would submit that it’s the only viable risk management tool that our farmers have today,” said William Cole, chairman of the Crop Insurance Professionals Association. “It’s the underpinning of all of our rural communities, to a certain extent.”

The federal crop insurance program, contained in Title XI of the farm bill, helps make insurance coverage available to farmers from private sector insurers to mitigate potential financial consequences of adverse growing and market conditions.

The finance leaders argued that crop insurance premiums should be lowered to encourage greater participation, which would consequently decrease risk for all producers. They said that given farmers and ranchers are financially invested in the safety net, a strong crop insurance program is more economically efficient to American taxpayers than ad-hoc disaster relief.

The witnesses also testified in favor of increasing the payment limits and efficiency of the Department of Agriculture’s guaranteed loan programs to keep up with rising farm operating expenses. They said that with rising interest rates, tax exemptions and loan flexibility will be key for farmers to meet their financial obligations.

The program offers insurance coverage for most field crops, many specialty crops, certain livestock and animals, and grazing lands. Outlays are estimated to be close to $53.5 billion between 2018 and 2023 by the USDA Office of the Inspector General. This number does not account for the more than $90 billion in ad-hoc emergency aid the USDA delivered to farmers in that same five-year period, mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agency’s farm credit and guaranteed loan programs are located in Title V of the farm bill, and are designed to help farmers access the financial credit they need to grow and sustain their farming operations, via direct loans and loan guarantees.

The 2018 farm bill expires at the end of September 2023, was projected to cost $867 billion over 10 years when enacted, and has cost roughly $428 billion over the past five years. Baseline spending for the coming farm bill is projected at $1.5 trillion over the next 10 fiscal years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

Ag business leaders defend crop insurance

The agriculture business leaders on the panel unanimously agreed on the need to maintain a robust crop insurance program, so producers can obtain lines of credit to expand operations, and maintain a functional safety net amid outdated reference prices for Title I commodity programs.

“I think it’s extremely important to note that the coverage does not just help farmers recover after a natural disaster,” Cole said. “It means so much more than that.”

Gus Barker, a witness and the president and CEO of First Community Bank in Newell, Iowa, said that bank regulators insist borrowers have crop insurance to repay their loans, and it allows producers to qualify for operating loans with extremely tight margins and high risk.

James Korin, the president of NAU Country Insurance in Ramsey, Minnesota, said that it is more efficient for taxpayers to put money into the crop insurance program, where the farmer is shouldering some of the cost, than in ad-hoc aid.

Jason Meador, head of Rural Community Insurance Services, said that crop insurance is currently farmers’ “first line of defense” against climate change, and has a track record of delivering assistance in a predictable and timely fashion compared to ad-hoc aid.

Korin and Meador both said integration of climate-related practices in the program must be incentive-based, “actuarially sound,” and funded separately from the broader crop insurance program.

“It is important that the formula provides enough return to cover our costs, and a reasonable long-term rate of return on the billions of dollars of capital we invest,” Korin said.

Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota asked what would happen if Congress attempted to weaken crop insurance through cuts.

“Without the safety net for our farmers and ranchers, grocery shelves could quickly empty after a bad growing season across America’s heartland,” Korin said.

“It’s so important to our small rural communities, not just the farmers relying on it,” Cole said. “These vendors here rely on it heavily — the tractor dealerships, the seed and chemical dealerships.”

Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas asked the panelists about the importance of crop insurance for producers in the face of high interest rates and inflation.

Phillip D. Morgan, a witness and the CEO of Southern AgCredit, said that as producers see their balance sheets decline with high input costs, the safety net crop insurance provides is a guarantee that they will be able to keep farming into the future.

Democrats worry about ag economy

Democrats on the committee asked panelists for their perspectives on the state of the agricultural economy and its structures, amid recent external shocks like bank failures and the risk of a national default if the debt ceiling is not raised.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York asked if recent banking disruptions — fueled by three of the largest bank collapses in U.S. history — pose a risk to rural lenders and creditors.

Korin said that the change in the banking industry has “no doubt” affected the cost of capital for NAU Country Insurance, which has seen reinsurance costs go up 40%.

Jase Wagner, the president and CEO of Compeer Financial in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, said that financial risk to farmers from these bank failures is “not real acute right now.” Still, he said the aftershocks are something his company is monitoring with its district bank, AgriBank, to minimize risk for newer producers.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the chair of the committee, asked how the availability of credit and interest rates on farm loans would be affected if the country were to default on its debts.

Morgan said that the rapid hikes in interest rates from the Federal Reserve have farm operators looking at operating loan interest rates twice that of the previous year, and could worsen. He said that while producers will feel the impacts of those cost increases, NAU Country Insurance is “well-equipped” to weather potential adversity.

Wagner added that the risk-free rate, linked to the cost for a bank to borrow money, would be adversely impacted by a default. He said the impacts would compound across loans for inputs like fertilizer and seed, and make it harder for producers to pay them off.

Barker said that his organization is pushing a bill in Congress that would exempt taxes on the interest of all rural agricultural loans and real estate in towns of 2,500 people or fewer, which would lower already-high rates by a measure of 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points.

“So it’s safe to say that no one thinks that the U.S. defaulting is a good idea for farmers and ranchers,” Stabenow asked, eliciting nods and chuckles from the panelists.

Increasing loan limits 

The panelists also angled to increase loan payment limits on Farm Service Agency loans in Title V, noting that they have not kept pace with current prices.

Morgan cited that the cost of building a modern poultry house in Louisiana or Mississippi is up 37% from three years ago. He said that the Farm Credit Council supports an increase to a $3.5 million limit for a building loan, which is currently at just over $2 million, and a $3 million limit for an operating loan.

Wagner said that in some cases, younger producers may get help from outside parties on the land loan, but not the operating loan, and with the rising costs of input and land, “you hit that limit real quickly.”

Barker said that while his organization “could live with those numbers,” they would like to keep it indexed with inflation to keep up in the future.

A farmer plants corn into a cover crop of barley (Photo courtesy of U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service).

WASHINGTON — Farm and commodity trade association leaders lobbied for updating commodity programs and strengthening crop insurance programs at a Tuesday hearing of the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry committee.

The industry officials said federal crop insurance and the Department of Agriculture’s Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage programs are not serving as a “true safety net” for farmers, and that reference prices for crops must be increased to counter declining farm income and high input costs.

A reference price is the estimated cost of an agricultural product set in the farm bill, used for crop insurance and commodity risk management program reimbursement purposes. The last update to reference prices came in the 2014 farm bill.

The commodity assistance title of the farm bill, called Title I, contains the commodity insurance programs, federal crop insurance, certain disaster relief programs for products like sugar, and a fixed-rate loan program that uses commodity stocks as collateral.

Rob Larew, president of the National Farmers Union, said in the Tuesday hearing that while the 2018 farm bill provided a strong financial safety net for farmers, it is “being tested in new and unprecedented ways.”

“Whatever we can do to build on those successes in Title I, making sure that we update the price triggers and the reference prices, making sure that we broaden and strengthen the success of crop insurance, I think will go a long way towards providing that certainty,” he said.

Commodity risk management program payouts under the 2018 farm bill totaled $33 billion from 2018 to 2023, and crop insurance indemnities totaled roughly $27 billion over 2021 and 2022. These totals also do not account for the roughly $90 billion in ad-hoc disaster aid distributed over that same time period, mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2018 farm bill expires at the end of September 2023, was projected to cost $867 billion over 10 years when enacted, and has cost roughly $428 billion over the past five years.

Crop insurance 

Zippy Duvall, a witness and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, told the committee on Tuesday that what he hears most often from farmers about the farm bill is the need to strengthen and expand federal crop insurance programs.

Federal crop insurance plans can be purchased for both specialty and commodity crops by acres planted, and generally cover up to 85% of a given year’s market price for the good.

Caleb Ragland, a witness and row crop farmer from Kentucky, said federal crop insurance is one of the main tools he uses on his farm to stay viable. He said that protecting the programs from cuts and “harmful amendments” should be a top priority for legislators in the coming farm bill.

“Without crop insurance, the risks would be more than many farmers and lenders could handle,” he said. “It certainly would be for me and my family.”

Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman asked Duvall about the benefits of the flexibility of the current safety net, in light of talk in Congress of tying eligibility to climate practices, and mandatory payment limits.

“Our farmers go to those risk management products to be able to protect their farm, for enough revenue to be able to get to the next crop in the wake of a disaster,” he said. “Those are real threats. We need not dilute the program. We need to make it better, not more challenging.”

Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a Democrat, asked Larew and Duvall how to better provide crop insurance options for specialty crop farmers in the coming farm bill.

Duvall said that the most important thing is to make sure that the crop insurance program is funded correctly, and is easy for farmers to use.

Larew suggested more actively applying a provision of the Federal Crop Insurance Act to encourage adoption and continued use of climate-smart agricultural practices by developing new specialty crop insurance policies.

Reference price increases

All of the industry representatives on the panel spoke in favor of raising reference prices for the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs in the upcoming farm bill.

The Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs protect farmers from poor growing seasons and low prices, respectively. These federal programs, located in Title I of the farm bill, are intended to lessen the risk of farming for producers of major commodities like corn, wheat, soybeans and other crops.

“I know it takes a tremendous amount of money to get those where they need to be so we can keep calling them a safety net,” said Kody Carson, a past chairman of the National Sorghum Producers. “And I’m not sure if it’s two inches above the concrete that is doing the American farmer a lot of good.”

Brent Cheyne, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, said that cuts were made to crop insurance in previous farm bills in efforts to be fiscally conservative that caused the farm safety net to “come up short” in recent years.

He added that this lack of funds required the federal government to institute the existing ad-hoc disaster payment program, which has delivered relief too late to salvage growing seasons for producers.

Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota asked the panelists how they could improve the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs for farmers.

Larew suggested allowing producers to enroll in both programs at the same time in a given year, as oftentimes they do not know which program will better support their operation.

Harold Wolle, a vice president of the National Corn Growers Association, added that the ARC program could be improved if Congress removed the provision stating that county payment rates to farmers cannot exceed 10% of the county benchmark revenue. He said that this rule has limited the assistance provided to producers experiencing major disasters.

He added that strengthening the reference price escalator in the PLC program will allow for more responsive price protection. The provision for reimbursement is capped at 115% of the statutory reference price for corn, or $4.26 per bushel, which is far below market price.

Debt ceiling worries

Stabenow said that the ongoing threat of default on the nation’s economy has her concerned about funding cuts to the ARC and PLC programs in the farm bill.

She said that the last debt ceiling crisis in 2011 resulted in annual cuts of 5.7% to these mandatory programs year-over-year, and she worries about similar changes in the ongoing negotiations.

“If we do not have additional funding in the baseline, we’re going to need to focus on our top priorities, and need your best thinking on how we do this together to be able to target this,” she said.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa asked how Congress might bolster the farm safety net without costing the country more money.

“I think we’ve just got to make sure that we determine what’s going to keep our safety net strong, and determine what it’s gonna take to keep our farmers strong, so that we keep our national security strong,” Duvall said. “But to do it without any more money, I don’t have any suggestions.”

Grassley also asked Larew if commodity farmland owners should be eligible for safety net programs if they are not actively farming the land, given that the largest 10% of farms in the United States have received 70% of the payouts.

Larew said the National Farmers Union supports provisions that limit payments to those who are truly invested in management and labor, and would be willing to work with Congress to find ways to ensure that those rules are being met.

Baseline spending for the coming farm bill is projected at $1.5 trillion over the next 10 fiscal years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

The farm bill is a multiyear omnibus law which authorizes an array of agricultural and food programs, including federal crop insurance, food stamp benefits and farm resource conservation (Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Commodity trade group leaders at a U.S. House Agriculture subcommittee hearing this week advocated for bolstered risk management programs and maintaining foreign market access as tools to support farmers amid volatile times.

The industry representatives said supply chain disruptions and increased production costs have tightened margins for large-scale farmers, and decreased the effectiveness of commodity and crop insurance programs in supporting them amid disasters. Such federal programs are intended to lessen the risk of farming for producers of major commodities like corn, wheat, soybeans and other crops.

The commodity group leaders emphasized the need to avoid any cuts to crop insurance and commodity programs in the farm bill, especially with a decline in projected farm income. They are considered to be the “most important” tool among producers to respond to natural disasters and challenges with overseas markets.

The farm bill’s commodity insurance programs include the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs, which protect farmers from poor growing seasons and low prices, respectively.

“As the risk challenges of farming continue to mount, I think it is safe to say that if you’re not farming today, you’re likely not going to be farming tomorrow,” said Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, chairman of the House Agriculture General Farm Commodities, Risk Management, and Credit Subcommittee.

“As we deliberate we must make sure we’re doing everything we can to help all beginning young and small farmers and taking care of future generations.”

The existing plans reimburse farmers at a rate linked to a market average price set in the 2014 farm bill, and a farmer’s base acreage of a certain crop or harvested yields for previous years.

The programs are available to a range of commodity farmers, and insurance payouts under the 2018 farm bill totaled $33 billion from 2018 to 2023.

Hearing sought for minority, disadvantaged farmers

Democratic committee members agreed on the need for a robust safety net for all producers.

Still, party leaders highlighted issues of an imbalance in payouts from crop insurance programs between large-scale and historically underserved farmers found by the government watchdog Government Accountability Office, and the absence of diverse voices among the witnesses.

“Our nation’s strength in agriculture and as a people is our diversity,” said Rep. Shontel Brown, an Ohio Democrat and ranking member on the subcommittee. “Mr. Chairman, I hope it is easy for you to agree that a critical component of writing a farm bill that works for all is ensuring that everyone is invited to sit at the table.”

Brown submitted a request into the record that a hearing be held for “minority and disadvantaged farmers and stakeholders on farm bill issues relating to this subcommittee.”

The farm bill is a multiyear omnibus law which authorizes an array of agricultural and food programs, including federal crop insurance, food stamp benefits and farm resource conservation.

The 2018 farm bill expires at the end of September 2023, was projected to cost $867 billion over 10 years when enacted, and has cost roughly $428 billion over the past five years. Baseline spending for the coming farm bill is projected at $1.5 trillion over the next 10 fiscal years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

Increasing reference prices

Commodity group leaders angled for legislators to keep cuts to commodity insurance and crop insurance programs off the table, while increasing what are called reference prices.

Title I is the commodity assistance title of the farm bill, which contains the commodity insurance programs, certain disaster relief programs for crops like sugar, and a fixed-rate loan program that uses commodity stocks as collateral.

Reference prices are the set average commodity market prices for goods that factor into insurance reimbursement rates, along with the previous year’s planted acreage or harvested crop yields. Those reference prices haven’t increased since 2012.

Tom Haag, president of the National Corn Growers Association, said surveys among his producers ranked crop insurance as the most important program and title of the farm bill. He suggested finding ways to make crop insurance cheaper for growers, and increase county-level payments so they can exceed 10% of the county’s benchmark farm revenue.

Haag added that the current statutory reference price for insuring corn is $3.70 per bushel, “well below the current market price” of roughly $6 per bushel. That means farmers could receive insurance payouts far below the market price, a problem with input costs remaining high in recent months.

“We strongly oppose any efforts to restrict producers’ access to crop insurance products and oppose harmful program cuts that would negatively impact crop insurance products, their delivery or the sound structure of the program,” he said.

Aaron Flansburg, chairman of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council, said that crop insurance must be preserved as a “central risk management system for farmers,” and, further, enables growers to get a line of credit on their farms. He suggested making it easier to transition between the ARC and PLC programs year over year by reducing paperwork.

Kirk Satterfield, chairman of USA Rice, said that the PLC program presents a “true safety net” for rice farmers amid trade distortions which violate the World Trade Organization guidelines. He suggested upping reference prices across the PLC program to better counter international trade violations.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman and Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson asked the panelists about rumblings in Congress to “gut” insurance programs through adjusted gross income means testing and payment limits.

“That would mean a major disaster if something like that were to happen to us,” said Haag. “If we start having limitations, you might have less people involved in crop insurance. That’s going to make it more expensive for that younger farmer, then, to get going.”

Shawn Holladay, chairman of the National Cotton Council, said that his daughter is a full partner on his farm, and he would not have let that happen if he thought rules like those Thompson mentioned would be proposed.

“That is limiting something that we’re using as a true safety net, but it’s well below the cost,” he said.  “That’s how important it is to our family operation to not have those kinds of harmful things happen to insurance, because I don’t think they’re justifiable.”

Republican Rep. Brad Finstad of Minnesota asked Haag what he sees as the biggest challenge facing a corn grower right now.

“We have a lot of opposition that want to take a lot of the tools out of our toolbox,” Haag said. “Taking tools away from us would be our biggest hindrance.”

Fighting trade barriers 

Industry representatives also spoke to the need to better insulate domestic producers from harmful market manipulation occurring abroad.

Satterfield said that India, for example, has subsidized 90% of the cost of the rice production supply chain, and has flooded markets that U.S.-based exporters used to dominate.

“This is only one example of many predatory trade practices used by foreign competitors,” he said. “We continue to call for the U.S. to address these blatant WTO violations by India and others.”

Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas asked how rice and wheat market manipulation practices by India are affecting producers on the ground.

“We are growing a great product, but they are getting the rice so much cheaper because of the over-subsidization of fertilizer and everything down the line from India,” Satterfield said. “It’s a very unlevel playing field for us for sure.”

Flansburg suggested a renewed focus on free trade agreements to legislators, in light of an ongoing agricultural tariff battle with India. He described the impacts as “disastrous” for domestic chickpea growers, who saw returns decrease from 40 cents per pound to 13 cents per pound, which did not cover the cost of production.

“I feel we as American farmers can compete with anybody in the world, and deliver a superior product,” he said. “So having those trade agreements in place, and free trade, we’re all for it.”

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said that the 2018 farm bill was the first in which Native communities “had a meaningful seat at the table" (Larry Mayer/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A roundtable of Native American agricultural leaders at a recent U.S. Senate hearing lobbied for increased sovereignty and social justice in the coming farm bill by expanding tribes’ jurisdiction over U.S. Department of Agriculture programs.

It’s called “638” authority and refers to Public Law 93-638, which gives tribes the power to manage certain federal programs that benefit their communities. The authority is administered via contracts and compacts, and has been used to delegate control of health care and infrastructure services to Native peoples in past years.

It has more recently been applied to Native nutrition and wildfire management through two USDA pilot programs, created in the 2018 farm bill. 

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said that the 2018 farm bill was the first in which Native communities “had a meaningful seat at the table.”

Schatz said that the point of the March 22 hearing was to generate a set of consolidated, bipartisan recommendations to be submitted to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry by the end of March.

“The 2018 farm bill broke barriers, but more work needs to be done,” Schatz said. “The next farm bill is another opportunity for us to collaborate and build on this incredible progress, and to further advance federal agricultural policy that includes Native priorities.”

The Indigenous leaders also talked about investing in on-reservation USDA work training initiatives and regional meat processing, along with increasing access to credit and federal farm programs.

The farm bill is a multiyear omnibus spending law which authorizes an array of agricultural and food programs, including federal crop insurance, food stamp benefits and farm resource conservation.

The roughly $500 billion bill is renewed close to every five years, and includes mandatory spending that must be in line with previous farm bills.

Food program said to be effective

Senate committee members and speakers touted the effectiveness of the USDA’s Self Determination Demonstration Project, a 638 pilot program which allowed tribes to substitute parts of USDA nutrition plans for Native-procured foods. The project was set up through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations in the 2018 farm bill.

Participants in the first round of the program included eight tribes across Alaska, Michigan, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Washington and Wisconsin. Another round of funding for tribal nutrition projects is expected to be announced this summer. 

Mary Greene Trottier, president of the National Association of Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations, said the Self Determination Demonstration Project has been a “success story,” especially amid high demand for food during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She added that the program created training opportunities to teach Native seniors how to preserve their foods through “brutal” winters.

Madeline Soboleff Levy, general counsel for the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said that the program has helped the Tlingit and Haida tribes expand distribution of culturally significant foods, like Tlingit potatoes and seal.

Other panelists advocated for the expansion of 638 applicability to all USDA nutrition, forestry and food safety inspection programs.

Trenton Kissee, the director of agriculture and natural resources for Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma, said the Intertribal Agriculture Council hopes to see an expansion of 638 contracts to all USDA programs and offices. He emphasized the prospects of expanding these contracts to Food Safety and Inspection Services, given a lack of regional access to food inspectors.

In response to a question from Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Vincent Cowboy, the chief operations officer for the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry in New Mexico, said USDA inspectors have limited experience with Native crops like blue cornmeal and sumac berries.

Cowboy added that inspection fees and a lack of access to USDA employees have been a barrier for the Navajo tribe’s domestic sales over the past six years.

Ryan Lankford of Island Mountain Development Group in Montana said tribal colleges and the Federally-Recognized Tribes Extension Program represent great opportunities for integrating USDA work training programs, especially for food inspection and meat processing.

Kissee added that establishing a tribal self-governance office in the agency could help oversee a successful expansion of the 638 program, given a lack of clarity over what services can be contracted out.

“I think if there was a touch point there,” Kissee said, “that would go a long way in effecting that change.”

Limited access to credit, programs 

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota asked Lankford about Native access to lines of credit and risk management being complicated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, given that a lot of Native agricultural land is held in trust by the Department of the Interior.

Lankford said that given banks will not make loans using tribal operating land or equipment as collateral, a robust crop insurance program with high baseline subsidies remains a priority for Native farmers, as some banks will account for their insurance plans as a collateral asset on loans.

Dustin Schmidt, a South Dakota farmer and member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, added that there is limited tribal enrollment in risk management programs due to the cost of participating.

He added that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric drought monitor, which many programs base their payouts upon, is a “huge problem” for the functionality of these programs.

“We’ve been in a severe drought for two years, and we haven’t had any according to our drought monitor,” Schmidt said. “In order to enroll into those programs, we’ve got to get that fixed.”

Kelsey Scott, director of programs at the Intertribal Agriculture Council, said that it is important to note that banks can collateralize tribal land and equipment, but will not do so.

“I think that we could really reflect on the fact that the historical under-service and lack of access to USDA programs has helped to perpetuate that void of wealth in many of these communities,” Scott said.

She pointed to the “great job” that Native community development financial institutions are doing to fill this gap, and the need to develop Native-specific risk management infrastructure.

Lankford and other producers also spoke to the need to get Native producers on trade missions abroad.

“That’s key to being sovereign, is that we can expand and reach out for ourselves,” Lankford said.

Members of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture gathered in Washington for their annual winter meeting in mid-February. They urged Congress to provide a timely, fully funded farm bill to address a wide range of issues affecting agriculture, including technology, conservation and foreign trade (Larry Mayer/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON – State agriculture officials from across the country sought this month to remind a new crop of lawmakers in Congress of their states’ needs for a robust farm bill to address a host of food issues.

Members of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture gathered in Washington for their annual winter meeting in mid-February. They urged Congress to provide a timely, fully funded farm bill to address a wide range of issues affecting agriculture, including technology, conservation and foreign trade.

Throughout its two-day conference, members of the coalition stressed the bipartisan history of the bill and the importance of educating a new Congress on titles that support American food systems amid changing economic and environmental landscapes.

The state officials urged Congress to include nutrition programs in the farm bill, as past versions have done. They also advocated for bolstering crop insurance and allocating more money to research, animal safety, and conservation programs.

“It’s just a responsibility we have to make sure that all of our producers, our economies, our communities of every size have a forward-looking and fully funded farm bill,” NASDA president Doug Miyamoto, the director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, said in an interview.

“We’ve got to make sure that we do this correctly,” he added. “We can’t start splintering off programs and splintering off ideas in the farm bill, and then hoping that we’re going to be able to get a comprehensive farm bill that’s on time.”

Mike Naig, secretary of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and an elected Republican, said it’s important for lawmakers — especially those who weren’t in office when the 2018 bill was written — to remember that the measure is not just a farm bill, but a farm-and-food bill.

“There’s a lot of new members of Congress that have never had a chance to vote on a farm bill,” Naig said. “A lot of work has to be done to educate folks on that.”

Kate Greenberg, the commissioner of the Colorado Department of Agriculture who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, also advocated for considering nutrition and agricultural policy in the same bill to keep the “critical nexus point of production and consumers.”

She added members of Congress must put aside their differences to strengthen the “bread and butter of the American economy.”

“Let’s keep our heads down and focus on the impact of the policy and the appropriations on the American landscape in agriculture,” she said.

The five-year farm bill does not appropriate funding, which Congress does annually in  separate bills. But it does authorize dollar amounts for discretionary programs that set expectations for actual spending bills. Other programs authorize mandatory funding not subject to annual decisions by lawmakers.

Lloyd Knight, deputy director of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, encouraged Congress to provide certainty to farmers across the country by finishing the farm bill before the current authorizations expire Sept. 30.

Securing new technology, foreign markets, and the safety net

Mike Strain, the Republican commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, advocated for increasing funding for research and development of technology, especially as demand continues to outpace supply for U.S. agricultural goods.

Louisiana sugar production, for example, needs to be twice as efficient as it is today, he said.

Jeff Witte, director of the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, said research provisions would also be key for Western specialty crop farmers who need to address worker shortages. 

Farmers in the state have converted from vegetable crops to tree nuts because the labor was cheaper, he said. But that trend could lead to an unwanted imbalance in what food crops are available to consumers, he added.

“If we don’t start investing in technology that can do the harvesting of other produce crops, we’re going to get way too far behind,” he said.

Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industry Commissioner Rick Pate, a Republican, said developing foreign markets through the Foreign Agricultural Service should be a priority in the bill.

U.S. Under Secretary of Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Alexis Taylor said in a February 1 Senate hearing that for every dollar the U.S. invests in developing foreign markets, U.S. farmers see a $24 return in the value of their products.

“They think there’s a huge return on what travel we can do and the marketing program that they find through our organization,” Pate said. “So we just need to continue to take the farmer story to people.”

Naig added the new farm bill needs to modernize and reinforce the federal crop safety net.

“I just don’t want to see anything undermine the importance of the crop insurance program,” he said.

Building conservation and food safety programs

Naig said farmers had broad interest in market-based environmental incentives in the coming farm bill. Concepts like soil health and carbon sequestration have entered the mainstream of agribusiness, but farmers are still wary about their costs.

“What has to be acknowledged is that there’s costs associated with implementing some of these practices,” Naig said. “So if you want to see significant adoption, how do you help them achieve a return on that investment? If you do that well and do that correctly, you will get implementation at a scale that you couldn’t otherwise.”

Jordan Seger, deputy director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, said he hopes to see federal encouragement of public-private conservation partnerships. He touted Indiana’s work with the Nature Conservancy and Enterprise Rent-a-Car to regrow wetlands and forests in the state.

“With about one dollar, we can get about seven or more dollars from the federal government, put that all toward private lands, and leverage each other’s resources and expertise to get things done quickly,” Seger said.

Randy Romanski, who was appointed secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, said Congress should use the farm bill to get a better handle on animal health, noting outbreaks of avian influenza that have plagued the country since 2015. 

Congress could create a national warning network for emerging animal diseases, like avian flu and African swine fever, he said.

“Clearly, this is something that crosses state boundaries,” Romanski said. “We need to have systems in place to track, respond to and eradicate diseases when they show up.”

Setting terms for state and federal collaboration

The coalition members said Congress should offer clear guidance and resources so states can make choices that suit their constituents.

The federal government should avoid placing mandates on conservation practices, Seger said. Increased collaboration between USDA agencies would also reduce paperwork for states, he added.

Knight, of Idaho, added that Congress must ensure federal programs are fully staffed. Clear guidelines on implementation that are flexible enough to accommodate the diverse needs of farmers throughout the country would also be key, he said.

“It’s a big country with a lot of issues and a lot of resources,” Knight said.

Colorado’s Greenberg said the bill also presents an opportunity to reinforce climate-related policies.

“The thing about climate change is that we’re all impacted, and our farmers and ranchers are on the frontlines,” Greenberg said. “They’re the ones who are feeling and experiencing the changes in the environment, and they know it. So how do we address that, not just state-by-state, but as a nation?”

Timeline in question

Members of the group predicted Congress would finish either by its fall 2023 deadline or next year.

Strain said he believed negotiations would likely bleed into 2024.

Regardless of the timeline, the bill must be funded appropriately, without an overemphasis on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s score, Strain said.

“You know, it always runs over, or we get to the threat of having to revert to the previous farm bill,” he said. “But the other thing is that when we pass it, we can’t pass it in such a manner as to just try to get a low CBO score.”

Others in the state agriculture delegation expressed cautious optimism over the prospects of a farm bill in 2023, noting that there would be consequences for U.S. farmers if a new bill is not passed on time.

“I’m really encouraged by what (U.S. House Speaker) Kevin McCarthy said this week, that they’re going to get it done,” Pate said. “People need to understand the impact of that kind of stuff. Just like a government shutdown, these things have consequences when they don’t get them done.”

Federal nutrition assistance programs support 1 in 4 Americans, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center (Scott Heins/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON – Members of the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee split along party lines on Thursday as they tussled over financial accountability in farm bill nutrition programs.

The main point of contention was the Department of Agriculture’s 2021 changes to the Thrifty Food Plan, one of four food plans the USDA develops to estimate the cost of a healthy diet.

The Thrifty Food Plan is tied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The program provides financial and commodity assistance to low-income households.

Members also debated the associated rise in the cost of food aid in the coming decade.

Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat of Michigan, emphasized that the “critical” nutrition programs in the farm bill help people afford groceries, make healthier choices, and support the food economy.

“They lift millions of American families out of poverty,” Stabenow said. “These are our friends, neighbors, and relatives who deserve to be able to put food on the table even when they are going through a hard time.”

But several Republicans balked at the ongoing cost of the 2021 update, which they said was made without congressional approval.

“Our people’s confidence in SNAP is undermined when this administration usurps Congress’ power of the purse, and unilaterally increases the program’s cost by hundreds of billions of dollars without any concern to the fiscal impact, and the impact on inflation,” U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.

Federal nutrition assistance programs support 1 in 4 Americans, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The nutrition title is the largest set of mandatory expenditures in the farm bill, accounting for close to 76% of the baseline budget. 

The bulk of the food assistance programs included in the farm bill nutrition title consists of SNAP benefits.

The programs cost $233 billion overall in 2021 and 2022, while serving more than 41 million people nationwide, according to the USDA.

Maximum SNAP benefit allotments are calculated based on the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan. The Thrifty Food Plan represents the minimum monthly budget for “a nutritious, cost-effective diet” prepared at home for a  “reference family” of two adults and two children, according to the USDA.

The USDA’s Food Nutrition and Consumer Services Commission updated the Thrifty Food Plan in 2021, after Congress authorized a reassessment in the 2018 farm bill.

The change brought daily benefits up by roughly $2 per enrollee, marking the first food-price- related benefits hike since 1975. The decision also hiked nutrition spending by roughly $35 billion from fiscal years 2020 to 2021. 

Republicans battle with USDA

Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, the committee’s ranking member, led a chorus of his fellow Republicans in denouncing the USDA’s update to the Thrifty Food Plan.

Boozman cited a Government Accountability Office report saying that from 2023 to 2031, changes in the plan will add approximately $250 billion in costs, an expense incurred without consultation with Congress.

“I cannot overstate how damaging FNCS’ conduct has been,” Boozman said. “I’m deeply disappointed in its leadership.”

USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Stacy Dean defended the department’s efforts to increase benefit accessibility and spending power amid budget concerns.

Dean noted the department updated the Thrifty Food Plan based on four criteria for the model: inflation, population, dietary guidelines, and food availability. She noted that the update was a “conservative effort” that resulted in a “modest” increase of 40 cents per meal for each enrollee.

“You mentioned the four criteria, cost is not a part of this,” Boozman responded. “You go to the CBO score: Zero. Congressional intent: Zero. The USDA’s help in regards to what was going on: Zero. And yet, you’ve increased it another $250 billion without any congressional interaction whatsoever.”

Grassley also noted the Congressional Budget Office projects the update would result in $1.2 trillion in spending over the next decade.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, asked if the Congressional Budget Office signed off on the update to the Thrifty Food Plan.

“I don’t know if ‘signed off’ is a technical term,” Dean replied. “But absolutely, we were collaborating with them throughout the process.”

Democrats advocate for SNAP access

Stabenow said that SNAP assistance is one of the most effective tools Congress has to stimulate the economy, and that the Thrifty Food Plan update will help lift 2.4 million Americans out of poverty. 

Stabenow said that when the Biden administration took on the update in 2021, it had been left incomplete for three years under the Trump administration.

“The reality is that we put in place a policy to do a thorough update that hadn’t been done since 1975,” Stabenow said.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said that SNAP benefits prior to the pandemic were never sufficient to cover household food expenses, and adjustments made during the crisis were necessary to ensure access to food security.

“The increases in SNAP benefits from 2021 through the Thrifty Food Plan update were long overdue,” Gillibrand said. “Let’s make the case that these changes are important for this committee to look at holistically, not just an example as to what we used to spend, and what we’re spending today.”

Legislators of both parties emphasized their support at a Thursday hearing for better funding programs that protect underserved producers, and accounting for future natural disasters in crop insurance negotiations (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Members of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee quibbled Thursday over spending on crop insurance and ad-hoc disaster relief, previewing potential fights in the 2023 farm bill.

Legislators of both parties emphasized their support at a Thursday hearing for better funding programs that protect underserved producers, and accounting for future natural disasters in crop insurance negotiations.

“Farming remains one of the riskiest businesses, and farmers still need these tools,” said Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the committee. “We need to work together to create a farm safety net that is responsive to the needs of all of our farmers.”

But Republican members of the committee raised concerns about the amount of recent spending on emergency aid. The committee’s ranking member, John Boozman of Arkansas, said authorized farm bill programs formed a better safety net than ad-hoc aid.

“We owe it to all Americans to ensure the bottom does not fall out of agriculture,” Boozman said. “We cannot only focus on certain programs and not others when all farm bill programs are necessary to achieve economic sustainability for our farmers, ranchers and rural communities.”

The federal farm “safety net” is a collection of policies that provide billions of dollars worth of annual risk protection and income support to American farmers. The programs protect producers from the financial impacts of poor growing seasons, low market prices and disaster relief.

From 2018 through 2021, average annual expenditures included $8.9 billion for the federal crop insurance program, $660 million for the standing disaster assistance programs, and $5.7 billion for the commodity support programs.

If continued into the next farm bill, the Congressional Research Service estimates combined spending on the federal crop insurance, agricultural commodity support and agricultural disaster programs would be $13.4 billion annually over the next 9 years.

The USDA also administered more than $65 billion in ad-hoc farm aid from 2019 through 2023, to help farmers navigate trade wars, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assessing the net’s impacts

USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie, Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux, and Risk Management Agency Administrator Marcia Bunger briefed the panel on the current state of farm aid programs.

Bonnie said the FSA has processed over 350,000 applications totaling over $8 billion in payments to livestock and crop producers to help offset losses from 2020 and 2021.

He added that the omnibus spending bill passed last year will allow for close to $10 billion annually of USDA ad-hoc relief in 2023, similar to recent years.

Bonnie said that crop insurance still remains a “vital tool” for producers, and the department has made efforts to expand crop insurance options in a greater range of options.

Bunger spoke to the necessity of expanding high-quality crop insurance policies to specialty and organic crop producers, along with smaller operations.

“My husband and I have been farming together for the last 40 years, and in the last 27 years, crop insurance has been a cornerstone of our operation,” Bunger said. “It’s a passion of mine that all of these growers, whether they are beginning farmers, whether they are veterans, that they have the same kind of policy my husband and I have used.”

Increasing equity, access to protection

Stabenow asked Bunger about how the Risk Management Agency plans to bolster options for specialty crop producers.

Bunger responded that the agency has been hosting stakeholder meetings across the country, and has worked to ease the application process and lower requirements for insurance plans for small-scale farms.

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota asked how the farm bill could improve access to credit and insurance programs for farmers of color.

Ducheneaux replied that a culture shift must take place within the agency, adjusting tests of credit, using Inflation Adjustment Act resources to make loan modifications and lowering barriers like excessive paperwork.

“We should look to be the lender of first opportunity, as opposed to the lender of last resort,” Ducheneaux said.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico, expressed concern over a lack of eligibility for some drought-stressed New Mexico farmers to receive prevented plant payments due to the Trump administration’s “one-in-four” rule. This rule states that agricultural land must be planted, insured, and harvested in one of the past four years to receive prevented plant compensation.

“We have come to hear from groups stakeholders that we maybe didn’t have all of the conversations that we needed to have,” Bunger replied. “One in four is very regionalized in a lot of cases. And so for this coming year, we’ve made an exception for several Western states to step outside of that one-in-four.”

Bunger noted New Mexico will be receiving one of these waivers.

Planning for disaster in the farm bill

A number of senators spoke to the imbalance of farmer aid resources between the farm bill and ad-hoc programs, voicing concerns over inequity and wasteful spending. Ad-hoc farm payments to farmers have dwarfed crop insurance payments, $70 billion to $3 billion, over the last 6 years.

“The reality suggests the existing safety nets need to be enhanced, and that we must find a better way to more quickly deliver relief to producers,” Boozman said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, noted that the crop insurance title of the farm bill is one of the most heavily funded. He asked if there is any way to better set up crop insurance to mitigate the need for ad-hoc funding.

Bonnie noted that reducing paperwork is key to ensuring that existing disaster programs in the farm bill get rolled out quickly, along with expanding access to crop insurance and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.

Still, Bonnie noted that while the USDA structures their ad-hoc programs to recruit enrollees into the crop insurance and disaster assistance programs, there is growing interest in the ad-hoc programs among producers.

“I think our job on the implementation side is to get those out as efficiently and quickly as we can to help our producers,” Bonnie said. “We’re open to discussion.”

Addressing foreign ownership

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa asked, in light of the recent Chinese suspected spy balloon incident, if Congress can use the farm bill to modernize the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act.

Bonnie said that monitoring and disclosing of foreign agriculture investments to the USDA is a “paper-based process,” and the department lacks enforcement tools to enforce oversight of that paperwork.

Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana asked if the USDA would commit to blocking purchases of land from countries like China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.

Bonnie said that he would not commit to blocking purchases, but offered technical assistance on drafting the legislation.

The Farm Bill provides funding for federal crop insurance, SNAP benefits, international food aid, and farm resource conservation, among other programs. The bill is renewed about every five years, and includes mandatory spending that must be in line with previous farm bills (Getty Images).

WASHINGTON – In its first meeting of the new congressional session, the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry gathered Wednesday for a hearing on the trade and horticulture titles in the upcoming farm bill.

The legislators prioritized enforcing the nation’s agricultural trade agreements, expanding access to international markets and supporting underserved producers.

“The success of our agricultural economy requires continued investments in markets and opportunities for farmers,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and chairwoman of the committee. “The farm bill helps farmers put food on tables here and around the world.”

The farm bill is an “omnibus, multiyear law that governs an array of agricultural and food programs,” according to the Congressional Research Service. 

The legislation provides funding for federal crop insurance, SNAP benefits, international food aid, and farm resource conservation, among other programs. The bill is renewed about every five years, and includes mandatory spending that must be in line with previous farm bills.

The current baseline expenditures for the 2023 farm bill are at roughly $648 billion over the next five years.

In the last farm bill, projected spending under the horticulture title was roughly $1 billion over five years, and projected spending under the trade title was roughly $1.375 billion over five years.

Stabenow credited the programs under both titles in helping to generate a record $191 billion in U.S. agricultural exports in 2022, amid a war in Ukraine and supply chain challenges.

“These titles represent the breadth of American agriculture,” Stabenow said. “Supporting our specialty crop and organic farmers, strengthening our local food systems, building new markets abroad for all of our commodities and products, and delivering critical food aid across the globe.”

Mixed picture on trade

The Senate committee received a mixed update on the state of U.S. agricultural trade from Department of Agriculture officials.

Under Secretary of Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Alexis Taylor spoke to the economic activity driven by last year’s record-high agricultural exports, which represented a 14% increase from the previous year. She said that 1 million jobs were supported last year by the agricultural export industry.

Yet despite these sizable numbers and record farm income, USDA Under Secretary of Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt pointed out 89% of American farmers are supplementing their income with off-farm jobs.

“Over the past few years, we have seen the challenges that farmers and ranchers face, particularly in accessing markets to capture their fair share of the food dollar,” Moffitt said.

The under secretary added that strengthening local food systems remains an ongoing priority for the farm bill and broader USDA.

She highlighted the work of Eastern Market in Detroit and an Alabama farm-to-school initiative in combining state and federal funding to build local food systems.

“Leveraging resources in support of better and more competitive markets for us farmers, ranchers and consumers is in the best interest of our nation’s economy, our nation’s food system and the environment,” Moffitt said.

Eliminating trade barriers

During the hearing, a bipartisan group of senators highlighted problems with uncontested barriers to trade, including Mexico’s potential blockade of genetically modified corn.

In December 2020, the president of Mexico issued a decree calling for GMO corn to be phased out of human consumption nationwide by 2024.

Ninety percent of U.S. corn is grown with GMO seeds, and Mexico is the largest importer of American corn, comprising 27% of all U.S. exports.

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa, Roger Marshall of Kansas, John Thune of South Dakota, and Deb Fischer of Nebraska voiced concerns over the ban. They asked that the USDA commit to rejecting Mexico’s position, and file for legal remedies via the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

“Our farmers feel like that this administration is putting Mexican assembly workers ahead of farmers,” Marshall said. “What are we waiting for, to trigger this mechanism? I’m tired of talking about it. We think there’s time for action.”

In response, Taylor said that the USDA is “urgently negotiating” with Mexico, and that the department will assert its “science-based rights” to GMO corn exports.

Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota spoke to the challenge of geo-indicators that put barriers on dairy exports to the European Union.

A geo-indicator on food is a name that reflects place of origin, like Asiago or Parmesan cheese. U.S. farmers can’t label an exported product as “Parmesan cheese,” for example, since it is not from Parma, Italy.

Taylor committed to fighting for the rights of U.S. dairy producers in the face of these restrictions. She said the Department is negotiating with the World Trade Organization, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperative Forum, and European Union to reduce stringency for the dairy industry.

“I have yet to see feta on a map,” Taylor said. “We are engaging to make sure that intellectual property rights are being respected, but that these generic names that we use do not become a barrier for our trade.”

Diversifying international markets

Several committee members articulated national security interests in developing new markets for U.S. agricultural goods, especially given international competition and disagreements over biotechnology.

“I’m concerned about this administration’s lack of attention to expanding market access for US agricultural products,” said Thune.

Taylor said that the USDA believes Southeast Asia is a target sector for exports, noting that the region has the highest rate of economic growth globally. She added that Vietnam will have more than five million middle-class households in the next five years.

“We have an opportunity today and early on to create consumers, lifelong consumers of American agricultural products,” Taylor said. She added that ongoing work in the Indo-Pacific Economic Agreement will be key to maximizing opportunities.

Taylor also pointed to Africa as a developing market for American agricultural goods, noting that Kenya is an “exciting market,” and continued U.S. technical support in the African Continental Free Trade Act.

Helping small farmers

Other committee members also pointed to challenges for small and underrepresented farmers to take advantage of USDA programs in the last farm bill.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said that the USDA and legislators needed to fix the Local Agriculture Market Program.

“I’ve heard concerns from organizations in Ohio about the application process,” Brown said. “The program can be too difficult to access for lower-resourced and underserved communities. I know we can fix that.”

The horticulture title of the 2018 farm bill created the program, which combined and expanded existing USDA farmers’ market, local food marketing, and value-added processing grant programs. It was allocated $50 million in annual mandatory spending in the 2018 law.

Taylor responded that in 2023, the application process will be more streamlined. She added that the USDA has worked with universities and producers to create guidebooks to help communities access the resources.

Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, asked Moffitt about the status of the burgeoning hemp industry, and steps being taken to guide farmers through the process of starting up an operation.

“Farmers in Colorado were eager to plant and grow it,” Bennett said. “Unfortunately burdensome testing requirements and lack of processing facilities have stunted the potential for this versatile crop that people all over the country are interested in growing.”

Moffitt responded that the USDA has taken steps to streamline and simplify the regulatory process for upstart hemp producers, and released the first National Hemp Report last week to provide market information to producers.

The federal government paid more than $478 billion from 2015 to 2021 in farm support for crop insurance, disasters, conservation payments and subsidies for certain crops like corn and soybeans(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The top 10% of recipients of federal farm payments raked in more than 79% of total subsidies over the last 25 years — producing billions of dollars for a relatively small group of U.S. producers, according to a new analysis of federal data from an environmental group.

In total, the federal government paid more than $478 billion from 2015 to 2021 in farm support for crop insurance, disasters, conservation payments and subsidies for certain crops like corn and soybeans, according to the analysis of federal data the Environmental Working Group released Wednesday.

The U.S. Agriculture Department programs support hundreds of thousands of producers across the country. But a select group of super collectors is bringing in an outsized portion of farm subsidies.

The top 1% collected 27% of total subsidies between 1995 and 2021, according to the report.

Some of the farm payments are more opaque. The government does not release information on all of the individuals who receive support for crop insurance. And the Trump administration changed how it reported some farm subsidies, so it lists them by banks instead of individuals, making it harder to see who received some of the payments from 2019 to 2021.

More than half of farm subsidies over the last 25 years were commodity payments to crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice, according to the EWG database.

“Based on what we do know, we can still see the most successful farm businesses are still collecting the lion’s share of subsidies … while the vast majority of farmers are getting little or nothing,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an independent nonprofit that conducts extensive research.

The biggest of those were corn subsidies.

Federal spending on crop insurance has grown in recent farm bills, and crop insurance payments now make up a quarter of all subsidy payments.

In Iowa, the family farm that is managed by the son of Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a farm policy leader, received more than $1.4 million from 1995 to 2021, the report shows. The payments included disaster, corn, soybean and oat commodity subsidies.

The payments are listed for Robin Grassley, the family farm manager. Chuck Grassley and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa both sit on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Pat Grassley, a state representative in Iowa and the senator’s grandson, collected $55,500 in federal payments since 2005. Most of those were relatively small commodity payments from $700 to $2,000 a year — with the exception of 2020, when he received $20,000.

The database compiles data collected from federal reporting and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Harvesting federal support

The distribution of farm subsidies does not necessarily follow the amount of agricultural production in a state.

For instance, California is the most agriculture-producing state, according to the USDA, but is 11th on the list for subsidy payments.

North Carolina is in the top 10 for agriculture production but ranks 20th for farm subsidy receipts. Instead, more money goes to Texas, Iowa and Illinois, where large farms grow subsidized commodity crops, like corn and soybeans.

The top 15 states with the most total farm subsidies distributed from 1995 to 2021, ranked by payments, were:

1. Texas ($44.5 billion)
2. Iowa ($39. 6 billion)
3. Illinois ($32.7 billion)
4. Minnesota ($28.1 billion)
5. Kansas ($27.7 billion)
6. Nebraska ($27 billion)
7. North Dakota ($26.6 billion)
8. South Dakota ($21 billion)
9. Missouri ($17.4 billion)
10. Indiana ($16.5 billion)
11. California ($16.3 billion)
12. Arkansas ($15.9 billion)
13. Ohio ($12.8 billion)
14. Wisconsin ($11.7 billion)
15. Oklahoma ($11.5 billion).

Pennsylvania, a major agricultural state, is 29th on the list with $3.4 billion from 1995-2021. The biggest subsidy programs in the state are for dairy farmers.

But 80% of Pennsylvania’s producers do not receive federal farm subsidies, according to the report.

Producers in House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson’s congressional district in Pennsylvania received nearly $35 million in commodity payment support from 1995 to 2021, according to the database. The largest of those went to Long Acres Potato Farms in Tionesta, which collected more than $1.5 million over that time period.

Farm bill debate launches

The report comes as Congress kicks off its rewrite of the sweeping federal farm bill, which will set both policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs for the next five years. The Senate Agriculture Committee held its first farm bill hearing of the year Wednesday. The current farm bill expires at the end of September.

Originally a product of the New Deal, the first farm bill in 1933 focused on commodity price support to provide relief for farmers and ensure a steady domestic food supply for Americans during the Great Depression.

Since then, lawmakers have passed 18 farm bills and greatly expanded the reach of the legislation.

For example, Congress added a conservation section to the farm bill in 1985 with payments for farmers who conserve soil, idle land for wildlife habitat or employ certain conservation practices.

But the biggest spending in recent farm bills is not on farms at all but in the nutrition title, which includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

The politically fraught process of authoring a new farm bill faces extra challenges this year from a divided Congress, a looming debate over the federal debt ceiling and the potential for extended amendments in the House.

The leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees, Thompson and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, have each said they will aim to finish a new farm bill on time but acknowledged it will be a challenge this year.

“We know because of the timeline and all of the complexity of everything going on and the challenges in the House that it may take a little bit longer, but we’re committed to getting it done,” Stabenow said in a January interview on the web broadcast Agri-Pulse newsmakers.

Crop subsidies could face attacks

Crop subsidies come under fire in every farm bill debate — both from environmental groups that would like to see the money invested elsewhere and budget hawks who want to trim federal spending.

The Republican Study Committee, whose members make up 80% of all Republican members of Congress, proposed drastic cuts for the farm bill and limits on some farm subsidies in the draft budget it released last summer as a “Blueprint to Save America.”

But Agriculture Committee leaders have not indicated they intend to undertake any massive overhaul in this farm bill.

Thompson has said he does not want to dismantle farm supports, which he and other farm state lawmakers see as a safety net critical for producers and rural communities.

Democrats on his committee have not shown enthusiasm for an overhaul of farm subsidies, either.

In a recent list of farm bill priorities, Georgia Rep. David Scott, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, did not include changes for farm subsidies other than extending programs for livestock producers and  small farmers.

Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott, who will chair the subcommittee that oversees farm commodities, said at a farm bill listening session last month that he wants to look at the reference prices that trigger payments for row crops but has not expressed interest in a massive subsidy overhaul.

Those who qualify for SNAP have an income level less than or equal to the federal poverty level, and the amount of benefits is different in each state (Scott Heins/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The new Republican chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee and a top Democrat on the panel on Wednesday laid out anti-hunger initiatives Congress could tackle in the upcoming farm bill.

During a panel discussion, Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania, the new head of the Agriculture Committee, said he believes members of Congress can find common ground in the upcoming farm bill when it comes to nutrition health and food deserts across America. He said he wants to focus on making nutritious food available, and affordable.

Thompson said he plans to have an emphasis on science, technology and innovation in the bill, which is a multiyear law that creates policy for agriculture and food programs. It is on track to be reauthorized this year.

“Food security provides a pathway to financial security,” Thompson said.

Concern about SNAP cuts

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a top Democrat on the committee, said he was concerned about potential cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides benefits for low-income families to purchase food.

As the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Nutrition, Oversight and Department Operations Subcommittee, McGovern said he is against rolling back any benefits to SNAP and his goal is to protect any cuts to the program.

“My priority on the nutrition section is to make sure that no one screws around with SNAP,” he said.

Those who qualify for SNAP have an income level less than or equal to the federal poverty level, and the amount of benefits is different in each state.

As part of the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed, it gave states the flexibility to temporarily increase SNAP benefits and waved some requirements for signing up for the program.

Thompson said he believes there’s common ground that can be found in SNAP Employment and Training, which aims to help those in the program become more financially stable by helping with transportation issues and childcare.

McGovern said that the reality is that more working families have had to join the program, and that it’s a policy failure that millions of children and families are struggling to feed themselves.

Congress temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit in 2021, which provided refunds to families and lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Without the extension of the tax credit, there were 3.7 million more children in poverty in January 2022, according to a study by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

The expanded credit was not renewed by Congress last year.

Food prices on the rise

With inflation, prices of food have continued to rise, according to data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures the consumer price index.

Both lawmakers noted that the mayors at the event were vital to tackling hunger in their communities, as they already have lines of communication with schools, community centers and understand where food deserts are located in their communities. Members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors are meeting in the nation’s capital this week.

Some of the mayors in attendance included John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, Acquanetta Warren of Fontana, California, Levar Stoney of Richmond, Virginia, and Eric Adams of New York.

USDA data estimates that about 6% of the U.S. population, or 19 million people, live in food deserts.

The mayor-president of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Sharon Weston Broome, said in her community alone, 1 in 4 children are affected by childhood hunger.

“There’s a correlation with poverty,” she said, adding that poverty in her state remains too high.

Louisiana has a poverty rate of 19.6 percent.

“In the wake of the pandemic, many families are struggling to keep food on the table,”

Laura Carroll, the White House policy advisor for agriculture and rural policy, told lawmakers and the mayors in attendance.

She detailed how the White House is working to incorporate health policy into food and nutrition programs, such as investing in transportation to combat the issue of food deserts and investing in more parks, and safety so that Americans have access to exercise and green space.

The event was hosted by the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger and facilitated by Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, which is a national organization that aims to end child hunger and poverty in the U.S.

An Iowa meatpacking plant had plastic dividers installed separating workers on the production line (Photo provided by Tyson Fresh Meats).

In the last two decades, hundreds of thousands of U.S. cattle producers have gone out of business, and we are currently losing 40 operations per day by some estimates. Just in the last two years, around 1,700 small feedlots run by independent family farmers were put out of business because of corporate consolidation.

This has led to an even more centralized production system as the dominant meatpackers favor a single-source system — getting cattle from large operations, run by them for their benefit only.

In 1980, the major meatpackers controlled 36% of the beef supply. Starting in that decade, we saw deregulation and a disappearance of antitrust enforcement that were designed to curb consolidation in industries, including meat production.

By the time the ‘80s came to an end, the top four meatpackers controlled 70% of the beef supply, and their power has only grown. Today, the top four meatpackers control around 85% of the beef supply.

What are the results? In 1980, beef producers made 62 cents of every dollar consumers spent on beef. Compare that to today, where only 37 cents of the beef dollar goes to the producer. The price of beef in the last decade has risen from $4.67 a pound to $7.36 per pound — a 60% increase for consumers. But cattle producers’ profit dropped from $518 per calf in 2014 to last year’s $125 per calf.

Profit for producers in 2014 was helped by mandatory COOL — country-of-origin labeling, which was required by the 2008 farm bill. However, corporate agriculture groups such as the North American Meat Institute and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association successfully lobbied Congress to repeal COOL in 2015, which led to the largest one-year price drop in cattle prices. Today, producers receive $300 less per calf than we did in 2014.

Meatpackers have also increased their use of so-called alternative marketing arrangements or AMAs, which are complicated strategies to avoid having to buy cattle on the open market. Meatpackers procure 80% of their supply through AMAs for a price to be named later based on the future cash market. And meatpackers manipulate the cash market through their control of the cattle supplies to drive down the price of cattle, resulting in less for the farmer and more profit for corporate meatpackers. The result is that consumers get gouged while producers are ripped off.

The use of AMAs increased from around 40% in 2005 to 80% in 2019. According to a study done by Georgetown and Ohio State University, for every 1% increase in AMAs, there is a 5% decrease in cash market prices. These kinds of pricing schemes have roughly doubled the meatpackers’ profitability, while cattlemen and small independent feedlots have suffered from higher input cost and lack of access to the marketplace.

There have been attempts to fix this corporate-controlled system by increasing competition for beef by supporting the building of packing plants not associated with the Big Four. However, in order to ensure independent processing plants succeed, we need to strengthen and enforce antitrust laws and fix the marketplace so these new plants can compete on a more level playing field.

For example, Congress needs to pass the American Beef Labeling Act to restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture needs to close a loophole in voluntary labeling rules so that only beef born, raised and harvested in the United States can bear the label “Product of the USA.”

Another bipartisan bill, proposed by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Jon Tester, is the 50/14 Bill, which would require that meatpackers purchase 50% of their supply on the cash market and cannot own the cattle for more than 14 days before harvest.

The 50/14 Bill is such a threat to the meatpackers’ profits that they went immediately to work lobbying Congress, and convinced legislators to introduce a weaker compromise bill, the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act, which would leave the meatpackers in charge for years while the USDA studies the issue.

That leaves a few questions: First, how many producers and small feedlots are going to go out of business before our elected representatives do something? Second, why did Congress rescind COOL when 90% of Americans want truth in labeling? Why did Congress bow to the World Trade Organization and the big meatpackers?

We should call our representatives and senators to demand they support and pass the American Beef Labeling Act and the 50/14 Bill. Furthermore, they should break up the enormous meatpackers for the betterment of both the consumer and the producer.

A farmer harvests corn near Slater, Iowa. on Oct. 17, 2020 (Perry Beeman/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

WASHINGTON — Republicans who may be taking control of Congress in next week’s midterm elections have not been very specific about many policy goals—but the farm bill is an exception.

Members of the GOP in the U.S. House and Senate are sending strong signals they want to strip climate funding from the massive legislation in 2023 if they take control. That would thwart farmland conservation advocates, who had hoped to make it one of the most significant investments ever made for climate-smart practices on American farmland.

Both House and Senate GOP members of the agriculture panels sent letters to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in late October asking for justification for the administration’s recent investment in “climate-smart agriculture,” and protesting what they said was a lack of consultation with Congress.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had announced in September $2.8 billion for research and pilot projects to support climate-friendly food production. The agency plans to announce a second group of “climate-smart commodities” projects later this year.

Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, asked Vilsack on Oct. 27 for a report on the department’s rationale for its spending.

And a group of House Republicans said Congress should have been consulted before launching the climate program “in this difficult farm economy when so many are struggling with rising input costs, drought, and an ongoing supply chain crisis.”

“We are dismayed at the lack of transparency and congressional consultation throughout the development of this process,” Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., wrote in an Oct. 28 letter along with eight other Republicans from the Congressional Western Caucus, a group of lawmakers that purports to be a “voice for rural America.”

Every five years

Lawmakers must rewrite the sweeping farm bill every five years to set both policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs. The next farm bill needs to be authorized by September 2023.

Both agriculture and environmental advocacy groups have geared up for this next farm bill to potentially have a significant section for “climate-smart” farm practices, such as funding for farmers to plant trees and cover crops, use less water or leave soil un-tilled.

If so, it could be the first farm bill in more than 30 years to explicitly address climate change. The Biden administration has come out in support of such practices—notably using a general fund designated for farm support to finance new research on farmland climate mitigation.

Agriculture Committee members tout the bipartisan process they use to write the farm bill, but the question of how much focus to put on climate change is one that clearly already is dividing on party lines.

The Republican Study Committee, whose members make up 80 percent of all Republican members of Congress, proposed drastic cuts for the farm bill in the draft budget it released as a “Blueprint to Save America.” It rejects investment in a “radical climate agenda’ and outlines a plan to defund farm bill conservation programs that pay farmers to retire environmentally sensitive croplands.

And a major dispute centers around the Inflation Reduction Act that Congress passed in August. It has a slate of programs to address climate change, including more than $20 billion for climate investments on farmland. Congress could fold that into the next farm bill for unprecedented farmland conservation spending.

The Inflation Reduction Act would provide about a 47 percent increase over previous farm bill levels, according to an analysis from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

But the top Republicans on both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have said they may forego additional investment in climate provisions.

Boozman categorized the funding for agriculture climate programs as “misplaced priorities” and has said it could undermine the farm bill process.

“It unilaterally creates a multi-billion-dollar slush fund for farm bill priorities shared by the president and his allies,” Boozman said in remarks on the Senate floor in August.

“We have a storied history of working together at the Agriculture Committee… unfortunately with this decision the majority has changed that dynamic…they have undermined one of the last successful bipartisan processes remaining in the Senate,” Boozman said.

Similarly, on the House side, Pennsylvania Republican Glenn Thompson, the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, said at a hearing last month that the IRA funding “endangered the bipartisan support” for the farm bill conservation title. Thompson could take over as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee if Republicans win a majority in the House.

“I will not sit idly by as we let decades of real bipartisan progress be turned on its head to satisfy people that at their core think agriculture is a blight on the landscape,” Thompson told other members of the committee. “I have been leaning into the climate discussion, but I will not have us suddenly incorporate buzzwords like regenerative agriculture into the Farm Bill or overemphasize climate.”

“I don’t feel bound by the amount of funding or the specific program allocation passed in the partisan IRA bill. I am especially worried about earmarking all the new money just for climate, rather than letting the locally led process work,” Thompson said.

‘Climate-smart’ agriculture

The pushback from Republicans comes as support for “climate-smart” practices has gained unprecedented momentum in the agriculture community.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for making the next farm bill into a climate farm bill. There’s a lot of momentum,” said Anne Schechinger, Midwest director for the Environmental Working Group.

A group of over 150 progressive, agriculture and environmental groups are pushing for the next farm bill to invest in research, technical assistance and financial incentives to help farmers and ranchers reduce emissions. In a letter to President Joe Biden in September they called on the administration to “meet the climate crisis head on” in the next farm bill.

Supporters include state farm cooperatives, community farm groups and environmental groups, including Environmental Working Group.

But it’s not only environmental groups that are pushing for new research and investment in climate-smart practices.

Major farm groups have also come out in support of investment in voluntary climate initiatives for farmers—part of a gradual shift over the years. In previous farm bill or climate debates, some farming and agribusiness groups resisted climate programs for fear it would lead to too many regulations on farmland.

But in the past two years, major farm groups formed a “food and agriculture climate alliance” to make recommendations for climate policy.

It includes the National Farmers Union, American Farm Bureau Federation, Environmental Defense Fund and trade groups representing sugar, cotton, corn and rice growers.

The National Farmers Union included climate change programs in its “days of advocacy” last year, when farmers came to Washington, D.C. to ask lawmakers for support. And the more conservative American Farm Bureau Federation has come full force behind climate-smart solutions for farmers.

Because of this momentum, some experts think the next farm bill will move toward more investment in climate programs regardless of the party with the gavel—they just might not do so as explicitly if Republicans take control.

“Who knows what phrase the farm bill might ultimately decide to use, but I think it is inevitable, regardless of who is in charge, that this farm bill will tackle climate change more directly,” said Ferd Hoefner,  a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on farm and food policy who has worked on nine previous farm bills.

1990 farm bill

The only farm bill to previously explicitly fund “climate change” was the 1990 farm bill, which had a “Global Climate Change” title drafted in response to the devastating 1988 droughts.

While other farm bills have not mentioned climate change, the conservation title includes billions of dollars for programs that pay farmers to rest sensitive acreage, preserve wildlife habitat or make environmental improvements to working lands.

“We might not necessarily see the word ‘climate’ show up as much in the farm bill if Republicans do take over, but a lot of these conservation programs are really supported by both parties,” said Schechinger.

But Schechinger says USDA needs to do a better job of investing conservation money in practices that are good for the climate. Some programs, like cover crops, have a beneficial effect.

But other practices that the farm bill pays for, like lagoons for animal manure, can actually increase carbon emissions from farms. Nationwide, USDA spent $174 million on animal waste storage facilities since 2017, as part of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, according to EWG’s analysis of federal data.

“We are spending millions of dollars on some of these practices that are actually bad for climate change, that actually increase emissions,” said Schechinger.

The group wants the next farm bill to increase cost share and prioritization for climate-smart practices to encourage more farmers to take on practices that reduce emissions.

An aerial view from a drone shows a combine being used to harvest the soybeans in a field at the Bardole & Son's Ltd farm on Oct. 14, 2019 in Rippey, Iowa. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —   As lawmakers begin envisioning the next farm bill, some U.S. House Republicans are wary of making climate change a priority for farmers and ranchers.

The pushback from Republicans at a Tuesday hearing came as the Biden administration has tried to make significant new investments in climate change mitigation on farmland, last week announcing 70 pilot projects to support climate-friendly food production.

Lawmakers must rewrite the sweeping farm bill every five years to set policy and funding for agriculture, conservation and nutrition programs. The next farm bill is due in 2023, and some environmental groups are eyeing it as a potential boon for fighting climate change.

It’s also unclear which party will control the U.S. House and Senate following November’s midterm elections.

The farm bill includes massive funding for conservation programs—the previous legislation budgeted nearly $30 billion over five years.

More than 140 million acres of farmland in the U.S. are currently receiving conservation-related financial and technical assistance from the federal government, according to an analysis from the Farm Bureau. By comparison, the national park system has more than 85 million acres, according to the National Park Service.

The farmland conservation programs have received bipartisan support in the past, but some Republicans on Tuesday expressed concern about a growing interest in climate mitigation on farmland.

“Congress must be mindful of this massive amount of funding before amending programs or making policy changes that reorient programs toward climate. No one natural resource concern should be prioritized over others,” California Republican Rep. Douglas LaMalfa said at a hearing in a panel of the House Agriculture Committee.

LaMalfa is currently the top ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry.

New money at hand

At issue is both how to shape the conservation programs in the next farm bill and how to manage an extra funding infusion from the recently approved  Inflation Reduction Act.

That bill, which the House and Senate passed in August, has a slate of programs to address climate change, including more than $20 billion for climate investments on farmland. Those include support for no-till agriculture, cover crops or other programs that affect the soil’s ability to hold carbon.

It will provide about a 47 percent increase over previous farm bill levels, according to an analysis from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

But for his part, the top Republican on the full committee indicated he would prefer to go his own way in directing the funding.

“I don’t feel bound by the amount of funding or the specific program allocation passed in the partisan IRA bill. I am especially worried about earmarking of all the new money just for climate, rather than letting the locally led process work,” Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told colleagues at the hearing.

Republicans were critical of the new USDA initiative.

“We got the White House combined with my colleagues who are a real threat to the family farm today, in the name of this climate god, this new world religion,” said Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican.

Climate-smart commodities 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last week that the administration would invest $2.8 billion in pilot projects.

The program, Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, will fund programs for greenhouse gas reductions on dairy farms, and projects to build markets for climate-smart beef, grains and fruits and vegetables.

“There is strong and growing interest in the private sector and among consumers for food that is grown in a climate-friendly way,” Vilsack said in a statement announcing the new programs.

The Agriculture Department plans a second round of funding for more pilot projects later this year.

Applicants submitted more than 450 project proposals for this first funding pool, according to USDA. The money comes from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a government corporation created in 1933 that has traditionally funded foreign market development projects, price support, domestic farm income and conservation programs.

Vilsack and other Democrats see farmers as key stakeholders in addressing climate change. Agriculture was responsible for just over 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to the EPA.

Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger, the chairwoman of the conservation subcommittee, said that she hopes to partner with farmers on climate programs.

“We are looking to find on-farm efficiencies and boost the bottom line for producers and make sure we are combating the climate crisis with the first conservationists, who are our nation’s farmers and producers,” Spanberger said at the conclusion of the hearing.

The hearing is one in a series to prepare for the 2023 farm bill.

 High demand

The farm bill’s conservation programs pay farmers to make environmental improvements on working land or to replace crops on highly erodible and environmentally sensitive land.

Despite the funding increases in recent farm bills, demand from producers for the programs still outpaces the availability from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the agency within the Agriculture Department that oversees most of the conservation programs.

“NRCS continues to be oversubscribed,” said Nicole Berg, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.

Since the 2018 farm bill, wheat farmers have entered 7,500 contracts in conservation programs, but another 5,000 valid applications from wheat growers did not receive funding, according to Berg.

“Noticing that a significant number of producers on the ground want to participate and can’t is a good call to action for us in the future,” Spanberger said.

Other producers complained that the application process is lengthy, and it can take months to get a response—which can be particularly problematic if producers want to address a pressing issue on their land.

“We were in a drought, and we needed some new water infrastructure, it was our biggest dilemma. I applied to NRCS, and we waited and waited but finally had to bite the bullet and do the project ourselves,” Shayne Wiese, a rancher from Manning, Iowa, told the committee—noting that new farmers and ranchers might not be able to finance a project on their own.

Lawmakers agreed they would like to support staffing for NRCS and a simpler application process for producers.

“I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here. What we need are common sense adjustments to ensure that programs are serving their producers and their land well,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat.

A Soil and Water Conservation District technician consults with a farmer in a cover crop field of rye grass. Cover crops are used to restore soil nutrients and prevent erosion (Photo by Edwin Remsberg and USDA-SARE).

WASHINGTON — Farmers and academics at a Wednesday hearing stressed the need for members of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee to support regenerative agriculture farming practices in the upcoming farm bill in order to protect topsoil.

U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chair David Scott said he held the hearing to discuss ways policymakers and the Department of Agriculture could help farmers incorporate regenerative agriculture practices. That investment in soil health would curb climate change and prevent a food shortage, the Georgia Democrat said.

Regenerative agriculture occurs in farming and grazing practices that focus on rebuilding organic matter in topsoil, restoring degraded soil biodiversity and improving the water cycle. All of these mitigate climate change by growing plants that capture carbon dioxide and move it into the soil.

“Conventional agriculture models are degrading American soil,” Jeff Moyer, the chief executive officer of Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, said. Rodale was a pioneer in organic farming.

About 95% of food is grown from topsoil, which is the most important component to food systems. If soil cannot filter water and adsorb carbon, it will hinder farmers’ ability to grow food to feed people, creating a food crisis. Around the world, soil is eroding 10 to 40 times faster than it can be replaced. 

Moyer said that a third of the world’s soil has already degraded and if “the current rate of soil degradation continues, all of the world’s topsoil could be lost within 60 years.”

“The very start of our food supply chain is the Earth, and we are losing the viable component of carbon,” Scott said, adding that it’s important to get carbon back into the soil. Carbon is the primary energy source for plants.

A study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst in February found that “the Midwest has lost approximately 57.6 billion metric tons of topsoil since farmers began tilling the soil, 160 years ago.”

“The historical erosion rates exceed predictions of present-day erosion rates from national soil erosion assessments and levels considered tolerable by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” according to the report.

USDA project funding

The Biden administration has funneled as much as $3 billion to projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in agriculture. On Wednesday, USDA announced an expansion of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program to fund conservation programs.

Scott said a documentary, titled “Kiss the Ground,” helped open his eyes to the need to invest in regenerative agriculture.

“That is the way that we make sure that we have food security,” he said.

Republicans on the committee stressed that USDA programs based around regenerative agriculture should not become mandatory, and the top GOP lawmaker, Glenn Thompson, of Pennsylvania, argued that “tying food policy to climate policy is harmful.”

“Small farmers can’t always take on the risks that large farms can when adopting new practices, and I certainly don’t want to be the person that walks on to one of their farms and tells them the federal government mandates that they uphold your economic viability of their operations and livelihoods for the sake of climate change,” Thompson said.

He added that inflation was also more of an issue to farmers and that many farmers in his state already practice regenerative agriculture such as cover crops, which help prevent soil erosion and keep nutrients in the soil.

Rep. Jim Baird, an Indiana Republican, also questioned whether organic food was more nutritious than that produced by standard farming practices.

Rebecca Larson, the vice president of the Western Sugar Cooperative in Denver, Colorado, said there’s no substantial research that organic food has more nutrients and much of that rhetoric is “fear-based marketing.”

A study from 2019 has found that organic production can boost some key nutrients in foods, but most of those increases are moderate.

Rebuilding soil health

Rick Clark, a farmer from Williamsport, Indiana, said he adopted regenerative farming practices for his 7,000-acre cattle farm to rebuild the soil health over the past decade.

“We need to preserve our soil, cause that is going to be the future of our farming,” he said.

Rep. Shontel Brown, an Ohio Democrat, asked Clark how Congress can support regenerative farming efforts.

Clark, a representative from Regenerate America, urged lawmakers to consider bolstering education and technical assistance to farmers wanting to start using those practices, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program from USDA. Regenerate America is a coalition of farmers and business partners that lobby for regenerative farming practices in the upcoming farm bill.

“Teaching and a support group is so critical here,” he said.

Clark said that he believes these programs should remain voluntary, but that the government should consider giving farmers who implement these practices the biggest share of federal subsidiary benefits. He also urged lawmakers to bolster crop insurance to help reduce the risk farmers have when implementing regenerative farming practices.

“This means bolstering crop insurance by removing outdated barriers and creating incentives that recognize the risk-reduction benefits of soil health and conservation practices and reward farmers implementing those practices—like a ‘good driver’ discount on your car insurance,” he said.

Moyer also pushed for lawmakers to reform crop insurance because current policies “create disincentives for American farmers seeking to transition and operate under a regenerative organic model.”

Clark added that USDA should consider defining what regenerative agriculture means and those practices should be added to labels for consumers. Clark added that many of the practices used in regenerative farming originated from Indigenous farming practices, and said those voices need to be heard by the committee.

Economic benefits

Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democrat, asked one of the witnesses, Steve Nygren from Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, how regenerative agriculture can help build local economies.

Nygren is the founder and chief executive officer of Serenbe, which is an urban village within the city limits of Chattahoochee Hills that he and his wife created with the vision of a sustainable community.

“Soil health leads to economic vitality,” he said.

He said the shrinking of family farms has an economic impact on the local community. Industrial agriculture is not going to support the local economy the way local farmers do, he said.

“Think of soil health as a way to bring small towns back to life,” Nygren said.

He pointed to his state as an example. In 1950, nearly half of Georgia’s food came from the state, and today that number is nearly a quarter. In Serenbe, 70 percent of the 40,000 acres is reserved for agriculture and each week 75 families pay $34 for their weekly produce.

“If we bring small farms back into rural communities across the United States we’ll not only have a local food system that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels to get it to the shelf, but it can go directly from the farms to the consumer … it will really stimulate the local economy,” he said.

In recent hearings on the 2023 farm bill, lawmakers in the U.S. House have discussed expanding crop insurance and trying to address the mounting challenges from drought, severe weather and climate change to the legislation (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Over the course of the next year, lawmakers on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees will draft a new federal farm bill that will shape food, farm, conservation and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years.

The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as crop supports now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and run the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.

“Any number of economic policies that we establish in farm bills impact everybody’s daily lives,” said former U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee during the 2008 farm bill. The Georgia lawmaker now works at the global law firm DLA Piper.

Chambliss said farm bills affect food prices and availability, global trade and renewable fuels.

But he said the debate going into the legislation is often overshadowed by crop subsidies — the farm bill’s longstanding support system for producers of farm commodities. The payments are intended to provide economic stability for farmers but are usually a target for those who would like to invest the money elsewhere.

“The farm bills have evolved into a political football for all the wrong reasons,” Chambliss said in an interview with States Newsroom.

The current farm bill expires in September 2023. But given the size and implications of the programs, it is already farm bill season for lawmakers and the groups with a stake in the bill.

Advocacy groups are pulling together their farm bill platforms. And the House and Senate Agriculture committees have each started hosting farm bill hearings in Washington, D.C., and in some members’ home districts.

At the Senate Agriculture Committee’s first field hearing in Michigan in April, Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, listed climate change, conservation programs and expanding opportunities for midsized and local producers among her concerns for the new farm bill.

On the House side, Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, has said he wants to support beginning and underserved farmers and ranchers and expand opportunities for conservation and energy programs.

“My goals are to protect the farm bill coalition that has provided a safety net for those struggling to feed their families as well as for those who help to produce that food,” Scott said in an email to States Newsroom.

“We also know that many of our programs are oversubscribed, and our available funding has not kept up with the demand in the conservation and energy titles,” Scott said.

What does the farm bill cover?

Originally a product of the New Deal, the first farm bill in 1933 focused on commodity price support to provide relief for farmers and ensure a steady domestic food supply for Americans during the Great Depression.

Since then, lawmakers have passed 18 farm bills and greatly expanded the reach of the legislation. For example, Congress added a conservation section to the farm bill in 1985 and an energy title in 2002.

The most recent farm bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, has 12 titles and includes programs for commodity crops, nutrition, trade, crop insurance, forestry and rural development.

The farm bill’s conservation programs pay farmers to make environmental improvements on working land or to replace crops on highly erodible and environmentally sensitive land.

One year of outlays for farm bill conservation programs exceeds the annual budget for the National Park Service.

More than 140 million acres of farmland in the U.S. are currently receiving conservation-related financial and technical assistance from the federal government, according to an analysis from the Farm Bureau. The national park system has more than 85 million acres, according to the Park Service.

But the largest spending in the farm bill — three-fourths of the funding — goes to nutrition programs, particularly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

“Most of the farm bill affects eaters, not farmers,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at Environmental Working Group, one of the advocacy groups that tracks farm bill spending.

How much money is at stake?

Like many bills on Capitol Hill, the farm bill has some “discretionary” programs, which are set up in the bill but have to be funded through the annual appropriations process.

But most of the farm bill programs are “mandatory” spending. That funding is set in the farm bill itself and goes out over the next five years, regardless of congressional appropriations. Those mandatory programs include crop subsidies, conservation programs, some forms of crop insurance and SNAP.

The 2018 farm bill was projected to spend $428 billion over five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  When crafting a new farm bill, lawmakers must keep the total within the baseline estimates for the previous farm bill or find another new funding source. The current baseline for farm bill programs for the next five years is $648 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s May 2022 estimates. A new estimate in spring 2023 will set the budget for the new farm bill.

“The difficult issue that we have every time we head into a farm bill is the budget,” said Chambliss.

Advocacy groups and lawmakers usually propose shifts in funding levels to try to direct more money to their favorite programs.

“The biggest problem is that there is only a certain amount of money we can have, so if we want more money we have to rob from Peter to pay for Paul,” Tom Haag, a vice president of the National Corn Growers Association, said at a recent panel discussion on the farm bill.

But conservation and other climate-related programs will receive another funding infusion this year from the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives a boost of more than $20 billion for climate investments on farmland. The bill is up for a vote before the U.S. House.

That will provide about a 47 percent increase over previous farm bill levels, according to an analysis from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

But folding that budget authority into the farm bill may not be a straightforward process, as Agriculture Committee members look for ways to direct it to their interests.

“Everyone is going to want a piece of that climate money,” said Ferd Hoefner, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on farm and food policy who has worked on nine previous farm bills.

What crops are most affected?

Most farm bill crop subsidies go to the major commodity crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice.

The big three of corn, soybean and wheat farmers receive more than 70 percent of farm subsidies, according to an analysis from the Cato Institute.

Some other producers are eligible for the federal safety net through crop insurance, intended to help farmers manage for risk of loss from severe weather or market disruptions. Lawmakers have expanded the crop insurance program in recent farm bills, and its total spending now slightly exceeds that of crop subsidies.

The federal government provides policies for more than 100 crops, according to the USDA. But some small farmers with varied crops have said it is still hard for them to get crop insurance, since policies are regional and limited to certain “insurable commodities.”

The farm bill has smaller programs for organic agriculture and “specialty crops,” fruits, vegetables and nuts. It includes a cost-share program for organic certification, market development grants and research programs on citrus disease.

What states are most affected?

Agriculture subsidies, crop insurance and conservation programs have participants nationwide but tend to center on the Midwest, Great Plains and Texas.

Overall, Texas landowners get the most federal farm bill subsidies, according to an analysis of federal data from 1995-2020 from the Environmental Working Group. The analysis added commodity, conservation, disaster and crop insurance payments combined.

The rest of the top 10 states for farm subsidies are: Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and Indiana.

The farm bill’s nutrition programs are nationwide, distributed based on household income in both rural areas and cities. The percent of residents receiving SNAP benefits in 2019 ranged from 19.8 percent in New Mexico to 4.2 percent in Wyoming, according to USDA.

Who are the players?

The farm bill is unique on Capitol Hill because it creates regional alliances around issues, rather than splitting along party lines. House and Senate Agriculture Committee members often tout their bipartisan approach.

“The issues in a farm bill are not between Republicans and Democrats — the difference primarily is regional,” said Chambliss.

Scott and Stabenow currently lead the House and Senate committees, but if Republicans take control of the House or Senate after the midterm elections, the leadership would shift to Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania in the House and John Boozman of Arkansas in the Senate.

Thompson represents rural central Pennsylvania and comes from a long line of dairy farmers. Boozman won the “golden plow” award from the American Farm Bureau in July for his support for farmers.

The presidential administration usually offers policy advice and program recommendations for the farm bill. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, is no stranger to the process, having also been at the helm of the USDA from 2009 to 2017 during the Obama administration.

A presidential veto of the farm bill is rare but not unprecedented. Since 1965, only the 2008 farm bill was vetoed as a standalone measure, according to the Congressional Research Service. President George W. Bush vetoed that bill twice in an effort to get more of his priorities in the bill. Congress overrode his vetos.

As the farm bill’s scope has expanded, more and more lobbyists and advocacy groups have joined the fray each year to try to influence the process.

Agribusiness groups, environmental organizations, climate change experts, poverty and hunger groups and religious organizations will all weigh in on the farm bill. Many of those groups are working with their members to create farm bill policy platforms that they will release in the coming months.

When will it get done?

The current farm bill’s mandatory programs expire at the end of September 2023, which creates a deadline for Congress to reauthorize a new bill before then.

Staff from the House and Senate Agriculture committees said they plan to hold more hearings on each title of the bill in the coming months, with the hopes of voting on a final bill well in advance of the deadline.

But in practice, in the last several farm bill cycles Congress has not met those deadlines and usually passed temporary extensions to keep programs running while they continued to negotiate until the end of the calendar year.

What might change this year?

The extra funding from the Inflation Reduction Act could lay the groundwork for a push for new climate policies in farm bill conservation programs.

In recent hearings, House lawmakers have also discussed expanding crop insurance and trying to address the mounting challenges from drought, severe weather and climate change.

At a farm bill hearing in July, Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican, urged his fellow lawmakers to tread carefully, given how chaotic the past few years have been for agriculture and the economy.

“We should not make major changes unless we are able to fully evaluate the consequences of those changes,” Allen said.

Lawmakers will likely include some pilot programs to test new ideas. Those could lay the groundwork for major changes in the future.

For example, former Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, championed a pilot program to give schoolchildren fresh fruits and vegetables as a snack. In 2005, it was scaled up to cover the entire country.

Farm bills traditionally have not included much for livestock producers, but some agriculture experts expect that to change this year, in response to the turmoil the sector faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

House Agriculture Chairman Scott introduced a small farmer or rancher relief act in July, indicating his interest in the issue. His proposal would provide targeted insurance to small ranchers with fewer than 100 cattle and a grant program for producers that sell direct to consumers.

How can I have input into what’s in the bill?

The House and Senate Agriculture Committees are both collecting ideas and feedback. The Senate Agriculture Committee has an online form for input on the farm bill. And House Agriculture is collecting feedback through a form on their website.

Every five years, Congress sets programs and mandatory funding levels for crop subsidies, crop insurance, farmland conservation programs and energy programs in the farm bill (file photo).

Major U.S. agricultural production groups are pulling together their requests for the next farm bill — the massive legislation that Congress rewrites every five years to set farm and food policy — with crop insurance and disaster assistance on the top of their lists.

A panel of executives from farm groups detailed some of their concerns and requests for the next farm bill Tuesday at the Minnesota FarmFest, an agribusiness fair organized by the American Farm Bureau.

The panel brought together major agriculture groups representing pork, cattle, corn, soybean and other growers. The groups all have a vested interest in supporting agriculture but some different priorities for where Congress should invest in farm policy.

Every five years, Congress sets programs and mandatory funding levels for crop subsidies, crop insurance, farmland conservation programs and energy programs in the farm bill. The farm bill also includes nationwide food and nutrition programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, and assistance programs for low-income parents and children.

The current farm bill expires in September 2023. But given the size and implications of the programs, it is already farm bill season for the groups with a stake in the bill.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, one of the large groups that represents a variety of farm producers, has a farm bill task force with representatives in each state.

They will coalesce by the end of the year around a set of official recommendations. Other large agriculture groups have a similar process.

But even as the groups work on their specific recommendations, they shared some early priorities – including funding, crop insurance and a forward-looking view for the next farm bill.

Money, money, money

The farm bill includes both mandatory and discretionary spending. Congress can change discretionary spending in the annual spending bills.

But most farm bill programs are mandatory spending, including crop subsidies, farm bill conservation programs and some forms of crop insurance. For those programs, the farm bill will set the funding structure for the next five years.

Given that structure, spending levels are always a huge debate in the farm bill.

“Some of the priorities that we have certainly would be to hold the funding together from the last farm bills,” Scott VanderWal, vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, told producers at FarmFest.

VanderWal said he knows some groups will ask for more money, but it will likely be a challenge to get any. The proposed Senate budget reconciliation bill in its section on climate change also includes major funding boosts for farm bill conservation programs.

But that is not stopping the American Soybean Association, which wants to push for more money for both nutrition programs like SNAP and the crop subsidies that fall under “Title One” of the farm bill.

“We really want to increase the funding for the farm bill. We think right now is the right time to ask for more funding, which will increase funding for the nutritional side and also for the Title One side,” said George Goblish, a representative of the executive board of the American Soybean Association

Insurance against disaster 

The 2018 farm bill did not make major changes to food and agriculture programs.

But one change it did include was an expansion of the crop insurance program, which gives farmers the opportunity to purchase insurance against losses from weather or market conditions.

Crop insurance was once a sliver of the farm safety net but now exceeds the traditional farm subsidy programs in size and spending. Crop insurance is available for more than 120 crops and to farmers of all sizes and in all 50 states.

Farm groups say it is a top priority for their growers to preserve the crop insurance programs.

“Crop insurance is our best safety net, and we can go from there,” said Tom Haag, first vice president of the National Corn Growers Association.

VanderWal of the Farm Bureau agreed that one of the top requests he has heard from their members is to preserve crop insurance or expand it to even more crops.

For animal producers, representatives from the pork and cattle industry said they are concerned about animal diseases from overseas and want support for potential catastrophe if diseases make it into American animal populations.

For instance, the African swine virus has been identified in the Dominican Republic, the closest it has ever been.

“The pork industry does not have a lot of asks, but our main asks are around supporting labs, vaccine banks and insurance for catastrophic loss,” said Terry Wolters, immediate past president of the National Pork Producers Council.

Don Schiefelbein of the National Cattleman’s Beef Association said his producers do not want the government to interfere in their business but do need assistance if there is a disaster like foot-and-mouth disease, a viral infection.

“Where we need them (government) is in a disaster type situation where we need a big brother helping out. If we look worldwide, there is a lot of foreign disease risk,” said Schiefelbein.

Looking ahead

The farm bill comes at a challenging time for U.S. producers, who are struggling with rising costs for fertilizer, fuel, seeds and chemicals — due in part to the war in Ukraine, strains on the global supply system, inflation and severe weather.

But Rob Larew, vice president of the National Farmers Union, said farm bill authors need to be sure to craft legislation that can support farmers regardless of circumstances.

“One of the chief mistakes that I think we all want to make sure that we learn from is that we don’t write a farm bill for the current date, or today’s conditions,” said Larew. He noted the flaws of past programs that assumed prices for certain crops might remain high.

“We don’t know yet what those challenges are going to be tomorrow — let’s make sure we have a farm bill that’s prepared,” Larew said.

Farmers told members of the U.S. House agriculture panel they are struggling with rising costs for fuel, fertilizer and other inputs (Kathie Obradovich/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

WASHINGTON —   Members of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee are considering how to help farmers struggling with rising costs for fertilizer, fuel, seeds and chemicals — the unfortunate harvest of the war in Ukraine, strains on the global supply system, inflation and severe weather.

A panel of the committee heard from agricultural economists Thursday, as lawmakers debate how to structure the federal  safety net in the next farm bill, due when current programs expire in 2023.

The debate comes as traditional corn, soy and wheat farmers straddle both sides of inflation and the economic effects from the war in Ukraine. They’re seeing both huge increases in prices for their crops and soaring costs for everything they have to purchase to plant them.

“Since 2018, when the last farm bill was written, farmers have experienced the economic impacts of a trade war with China, marketing and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic,  historic weather events and now extreme volatility in commodity and input markets,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat and the chairwoman of the subcommittee that oversees farm commodities.

“This all has implications for the next farm bill,” Bustos added.

Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he wants to pay special consideration to the margins for farmers as members work on the next farm bill. Thompson is the top Republican on the Agriculture Committee and could helm the farm bill process if Republicans take control of the House.

“The bottom line is that agriculture is a business, and at the end of the day, it is not what you bring in but the margin you are left with,” said Thompson. “I have tremendous concerns with where we are headed right now.”

Holes in the safety net

The farm bill includes long-standing safety net programs that offer some risk protection and financial support to American farmers.

That includes crop insurance and farm commodity programs, which pay farmers if crop prices drop. But the programs don’t account for the current challenge for farmers of rising costs for fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, and seeds.

Economists suggested lawmakers consider pilot programs geared to aid farmers struggling in those margins.

“Input costs are increasing and with inflation, you’re going to have intense pressure where that safety net will be weakened,” said Ronald Rainey, director of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

The big commodity crops, especially corn and wheat, are seeing high prices — due in part to disruption of a global market that usually has Ukraine and Russia as important players.

Anticipated prices for the 2022 U.S. wheat crop are 50 percent higher than they were in January, according to Joseph Janzen, an agricultural economist at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Futures prices for corn and soybean prices are also on the rise: 30 percent for corn and 20 percent higher for soybeans.

But agricultural economists told lawmakers that the sky-high prices may give a false impression, since farmers are also paying more than ever for fertilizer and fuel. The benchmark prices on crude oil and U.S. fertilizer prices approximately tripled between January 2021 and March 2022.

Russia and Belarus are also major fertilizer producers and exporters. Those input prices are expected to stay high for the next few years.

“What we know is going to happen, is prices are going to decline but input prices are going to stay up for a while, they always do. And that is going to leave people in a cost-price squeeze,” said Joe Outlaw, co-director of the Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University.

The high fertilizer and energy prices have both short and long-term effects for agriculture. If farmers respond by planting less and using less fertilizer, they will have a smaller harvest — bringing in less income for their farms and potentially exacerbating rising food costs.

Farm bill process

Every five years lawmakers have to reauthorize the farm bill — a laborious process to re-examine the policy and funding structure for federal agriculture and food assistance programs.

The farm bill is unique in that it provides “mandatory” funding for many of the programs it authorizes, so the programs do not have to go through the congressional appropriations process every year. As such, farm bill authorization is a complex and contentious process, as lawmakers debate how and where to spend more money.

Most lawmakers at the subcommittee hearing Thursday did not call for a major overhaul of the longstanding safety net for farm commodities.

“Our main approach to writing a new farm bill should be a cautious one,” said Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican, noting how chaotic the past few years have been for agriculture and the economy. “We should not make major changes unless we are able to fully evaluate the consequences of those changes.”

But some said they should consider more flexibility and innovation in farm programs to try to address  mounting challenges from drought, severe weather and climate change. For instance, more than half of Arizona is in severe drought and an additional 10 percent is enduring extreme drought.

“I have never seen conditions like this with no relief in sight. We have something that has to be overcome, and we can’t do it by half measures,” said Rep. Tom O’ Halleran, an Arizona Democrat.

In addition to the commodity programs, the farm bill includes crop insurance, conservation programs and food assistance programs. The bulk of farm bill spending goes to food programs, like the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) for low-income individuals and families.

The current farm bill was last renewed in 2018 and partially expires next year. It’s a wide-ranging law that was expected to cost about $428 billion over the course of five years (Getty Images).

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the need for federal assistance to develop high-speed internet connectivity in all parts of the country, members of a U.S. House subcommittee agreed this week as they reviewed provisions that are likely to be included in the next farm bill.

“I represent a largely rural district in north-central, northeast Florida, and we have children who do their homework in a Hardee’s parking lot,” said U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican.

Students around the country scrambled to find internet access to participate in virtual learning when the pandemic limited in-person classes. It was a reminder that federal funds should be focused on providing broadband access to as many Americans as possible, Cammack said, rather than increasing the speeds of existing service.

Several members of the House’s Commodity Exchanges, Energy and Credit subcommittee echoed those concerns about so-called “overbuilding” of existing infrastructure during a Tuesday hearing that sought to review the rural development component of the next farm bill, which could be approved next year.

The current farm bill was last renewed in 2018 and partially expires next year. It’s a wide-ranging law that was expected to cost about $428 billion over the course of five years. About three-fourths of that money is devoted to food assistance for low-income residents, and most of the rest goes to crop insurance, commodity support and land conservation.

Previous farm bills provided loans to develop internet infrastructure, but for the first time in 2018, lawmakers also established grants for the projects and raised the minimum speed thresholds that define whether an area has sufficiently fast access, according to the Congressional Research Service. The previous download speed considered sufficient was 4 megabits per second, which was increased to 25.

Xochitl Torres Small, undersecretary for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said establishing broadband access for as many rural residents as possible is a paramount priority that must be balanced with other projects that will allow for speed upgrades.

“We certainly saw in the midst of COVID, with your kids who are sitting in the Hardee’s parking lot, that 25 (megabits per second) isn’t enough for them to be able to listen to their teacher and learn from home,” Torres Small said.

Lawmakers also created the ReConnect Program in 2018 that is separate from the farm bill’s Rural Broadband Program but has similar goals, and states have implemented their own programs.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has made expanded rural broadband a priority of his administration, proposing in his State of the State address this year $400 million for broadband access, with $250 million to reach approximately 75,000 households without access to even moderately fast internet connections.

The Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to set aside their land from agricultural production to boost soil quality, sequester carbon and prevent fertilizer runoff, among other environmental benefits (Sam Gellman Photography/Getty Images).

Congressional Democrats on Wednesday touted conservation programs for farmers and ranchers as key tools for limiting agriculture’s impact on the global climate as they took initial steps to create the next farm bill.

One Republican’s response: So what?

“We’ve talked primarily about climate change, and I gotta to be honest with you,” U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, said in a Wednesday subcommittee meeting of the House Agriculture Committee. “When I’m in my district, I don’t hear anything about climate change.”

He said people are more concerned right now about the cost and availability of fuel and food, and that “the reason for our farm bill is to ensure that we have adequate food supply for this country and that it be efficient and safe.”

The conservation and forestry subcommittee met to review federal conservation programs that are governed by the farm bill, which was last renewed in 2018 and partially expires next year.

The projected cost of the wide-ranging law was about $428 billion over five years, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most of that money — 76% — goes to low-income residents to buy food, but the rest helps mitigate the risks for farmers of low commodity prices and weather-related disasters and funds voluntary conservation programs.

Chief among them is the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to set aside their land from agricultural production to boost soil quality, sequester carbon and prevent fertilizer runoff, among other environmental benefits.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced new incentives last year to bolster the program and exceeded its goal of enrolling 4 million new acres across the country.

“It’s the biggest working lands conservation program that we have, and it’s very successful,” said Terry Cosby, chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Cosby conceded under questioning from lawmakers Wednesday that those efforts have been stymied because the program and others like it can be difficult for farmers to navigate and the NRCS has had trouble fully staffing its field offices that help facilitate the program.

He said the NRCS has hired about 3,000 employees in the past two years but is about 700 shy of its maximum of more than 11,000.

The economic benefits of those programs for farmers is two-fold: They receive up-front payments for setting aside land and later reap the benefits of better soil quality, said Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, which oversees the Conservation Reserve Program.

“Conservation equals soil health; soil health equals improved production,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Virginia, who heads the subcommittee that met Wednesday, has supported legislation that would allow farmers to earn carbon credits they can sell by sequestering carbon or reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“While we call them conservation programs, they have climate value,” she said of the USDA programs. “They also have economic value to our rural communities and our producers.”