The Debt Bill now under consideration by the Senate has implications for the outlook of the farm bill. Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees say the debt limit agreement should remove SNAP work requirements as a potential sticking point in the upcoming farm bill debate, but also said the deal takes away some potential funding.
Senate Agriculture Committee member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and a bipartisan group of House members are proposing to revive a $5-per-acre subsidy program for cover crops that USDA offered for two years using pandemic assistance funding.
As with the temporary program, the proposed payments would work as subsidies for crop insurance premiums.
President Joe Biden met with the four leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees Thursday to discuss a new farm bill. It was believed to be a general discussion on the size and timing of the farm bill reauthorization.
Senate Ag Chairwoman Deb Stabenow, D-Mich., told Agri-Pulse Wednesday that the late-afternoon gathering at the White House will be “a general meeting where he just wants to touch base with all of us and share his priorities and hear from us how it's going.” The Senate committee’s top Republican, John Boozman of Arkansas, told reporters that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack would also participate in the meeting. Politico first reported on plans for the meeting. Boozman said he looked forward to talking to Biden “about some of our things that we'd like to see in the farm bill, but probably more importantly, really get an idea of what he wants to see in the farm bill.”
Farmers and western conservation groups called for faster access to funding under the Regional Conservation Partnership Program at a Senate hearing Thursday, saying RCPP is important for farmers in drought-stricken areas.
Commodity groups face some critical farm bill decisions in coming weeks that hinge on factors out of their control, including an updated forecast of farm program costs and uncertainty about the ongoing debt ceiling standoff between the White House and House Republicans.
The National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) released policy recommendations for the 2023 Farm Bill. Over the last year, NACD’s Farm Bill Task Force has convened more than a dozen times to review USDA conservation programs and consider policies to strengthen support for voluntary, locally led conservation efforts. The recommendations were recently approved by NACD’s Board by Directors at NACD’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
I wrote in the last Legislative Landscape about the stated commitment of the new House majority to reduce federal spending and with the farm bill up for reauthorization, it will be a challenge to increase funding for critical farm bill programs.
AgriPulse recently ran an excellent article on the history of the farm bill – due to be reauthorized next year – by a Missouri farmer and greenhouse grower, Blake Hurst.
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 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.