Analyst: Farm bill prospects nearly nonexistent this year

Except for the “lame duck long shot” of a post-election compromise, the slim chances that Congress will pass a new farm bill this year “have become nonexistent,” farm policy expert Jonathan Coppess said Thursday. The primary reason is the “long-unspecified demand” by Republicans for higher crop subsidy spending without providing details, wrote Coppess, a USDA official during the Obama era, at the farmdoc daily blog.

Progress on the farm bill was also mired in disagreements over SNAP cuts and climate funding. Congress is nearly 10 months late in replacing the 2018 farm law.

Earlier this week during a Politico interview, House Agriculture Committee chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) said it would be September before the farm bill is debated in the House. The senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, John Boozman of Arkansas, said, “If we can’t make a meaningful change” in the so-called reference prices that trigger subsidy payments, “I think we’re better off with an extension” of current law into 2025.

The already slim chances of farm bill reauthorization in 2024 “are wilting in the summer heat, facing a legislative calendar almost out of days,” Coppess said. He added that the farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee on May 24 “lacks a viable path with the budget and political problems facing it.”

The bill would increase crop subsidy and crop insurance outlays by one-third from current levels but offsets only part of the cost, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The bill also would cut SNAP spending. House Republicans unsuccessfully sought SNAP cuts in the 2014 and 2018 farm laws.

“All that remains is an outside chance” of agreement on a farm bill after the Nov. 5 general election —the “lame duck long shot,” Coppess said. “It is more likely that any lame duck session will merely extend the 2018 farm bill again.”

The farm bill is on the back burner in Congress, where annual government funding bills are at the top of the agenda. There has been little urgency in farm bill discussions.

Higher reference prices and an expansion of crop insurance are long-standing farm bill priorities for farm groups. Lawmakers from farm states have often said they want “more farm in the farm bill.” Months passed, however, without a public statement of how large an increase was wanted in reference prices or how to pay for it.

Boozman proposed a 15% increase in reference prices for row crops, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat, as part of a farm bill framework released in June. The Republican-written farm bill in the House also calls for a 15% increase. Republican staff workers on the Senate Agriculture Committee said the cost of higher reference prices could be offset through savings in the farm bill baseline of $1.4 billion over 10 years.

In an outline released in May, Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said the major row crops should be assured of a 5% increase in reference prices, and she said she had the $5 billion to cover the cost. In late June, she said an extension of the 2018 farm bill might be necessary because of inaction on the new farm bill.

“Republicans are breaking the farm and food coalition by falsely claiming that increased program cost for food security through SNAP has somehow taken resources away from farms or left farms out of the mix,” Stabenow said. “Such a framing is disingenuous and misleading.”