A farmer stores grain near Eldridge, Iowa, on Sept. 28, 2024. (Photo by Kathie Obradovich/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
WASHINGTON — Sweeping legislation that would set food and farm policy for the next five years is in limbo, waiting for lawmakers to decide its fate after the election.
The latest deadline for the farm bill passed unceremoniously at midnight on Sept. 30, without a push from lawmakers to pass a new farm bill or an extension.
Congress will have to scramble in the lame-duck session set to begin Nov. 12 to come up with some agreement on the farm bill before benefits run out at the end of the year — which if allowed to happen eventually would have major consequences.
The law began 90 years ago with various payments to support farmers but 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 omnibus farm bill is more than a year behind schedule, as the bipartisan congressional coalition that has advanced farm bills for the last half century has been teetering on the edge of collapse.
Congress must approve a new federal farm bill every five years. The previous farm bill from 2018 expired a year ago. With no agreement in sight at the time, lawmakers extended the law to Sept. 30, 2024.
The delay creates further uncertainty for farmers, who are facing declining prices for many crops and rising costs for fertilizer and other inputs.
Lawmakers have some buffer before Americans feel the consequences of the expiration.
Most of the key programs have funding through the end of the calendar year, but once a new crop year comes into place in January, they would revert to “permanent law,” sending crop supports back to policy from the 1938 and 1949 farm bills.
Those policies are inconsistent with modern farming practices and international trade agreements and could cost the federal government billions, according to a recent analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
The stalemate between Democrats and Republicans over the farm bill has centered on how to pay for it and whether to place limits on nutrition and climate programs.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters in a press call on Saturday that the process “feels like Groundhog Day” — because he keeps having the same conversations about it. Vilsack said Republicans “just don’t have the votes” on the floor for legislation passed in the House Agriculture Committee, which is why it has sat dormant in the House for four months.
“If they want to pass the farm bill they’ve got to get practical, and they either have to lower their expectations or raise resources. And if they’re going to raise resources, they have to do it in a way where they don’t lose votes, where they actually gain votes,” Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, said.
The Republican-led committee approved its farm bill proposal largely on party lines at the end of May, amidst complaints from Democrats that the process had not been as bipartisan as in years past.
Partisan division is not uncommon in today’s Congress but is notable on the farm bill, which 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.
Lawmakers are on borrowed time with both the farm bill and the appropriations bills that fund the federal government.
The House and Senate both approved stopgap spending bills at the end of September to avoid a partial government shutdown. The short-term funding bill, sometimes referred to as a continuing resolution, or CR, will keep the federal government running through Dec. 20.
Some agriculture leaders had asked for the continuing resolution to not extend the farm bill, to help push the deadline for them to work on it when they return.
The day after they approved the CR and left the Capitol, 140 Republican House members sent a letter to congressional leadership asking to make the farm bill a priority in the waning weeks of 2024.
“Farmers and ranchers do not have the luxury of waiting until next Congress for the enactment of an effective farm bill,” the letter states, noting rising production costs and falling commodity prices that have put farmers in a tight spot.
House Democrats also say they want to pass a new farm bill this year.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, listed the farm bill as one of his top three priorities for the lame duck. Also on his list were appropriations and the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the Pentagon.
“It will be important to see if we can find a path forward and reauthorize the farm bill in order to make sure that we can meet the needs of farmers, meet the needs from a nutritional standpoint of everyday Americans and also continue the progress we have been able to make in terms of combating climate crisis,” Jeffries said in remarks to reporters Sept. 25.
Nearly 300 members of the National Farmers Union visited lawmakers in September to ask for passage of a new five-year farm bill before the end of 2024.
“Family farmers and ranchers can’t wait – they need the certainty of a new farm bill this year,” National Farmers Union President Rob Larew said in a statement after the meetings. “With net farm income projected at historic lows, growing concentration in the agriculture sector, high input costs and interest rates, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, Congress can’t miss this opportunity to pass a five-year farm bill.”
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.
It would keep SNAP payments at current levels but place a permanent freeze on the ability of future presidents to raise levels of food support. Democrats have characterized it as a sneaky cut to vital support for hungry Americans that makes the bill dead on arrival.
Republicans are using the limits as part of a funding calculation to offset other spending in the bill. The bill would raise price supports for some crops like cotton, peanuts and rice.
“They have to do one of two things,” Vilsack said of lawmakers. “They either have to recognize that they can’t afford all the things that they would like to be able to afford, if they want to stay within the resources that are in fact available … Or another alternative would be to find more money.”
Vilsack recommended finding other sources of funding outside the farm bill, like changes to the tax code.
“You close a loophole here or there in terms of the taxes or whatever, and you generate more revenue, and you have that revenue directly offset the increase in the farm bill. … That’s the correct way to do it. And that’s, frankly, the way Senator Stabenow is approaching the farm bill,” Vilsack said, referring to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has had no public markup or formal introduction of a bill. But leaders say committee staff have been meeting weekly to discuss a path forward. Stabenow has not publicly disclosed the offsets for the money she says is available to be moved into the bill.
]]>A combine being used to harvest the soybeans in a field at a farm on October 14, 2019, in Rippey, Iowa. The U.S. House Agriculture Committee approved a bill this week to renew farm and nutrition programs, the the measure faces a tough road to becoming law. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Republicans moved their long-awaited new farm bill through the U.S. House Agriculture Committee this week, despite opposition from most Democrats that could stall further advancement of the bill.
The massive $1.5 trillion legislation would set policy and funding levels for key food, agriculture and conservation programs for the next five years. After a marathon markup Thursday, the GOP-authored bill cleared the committee after midnight Friday, 33-21, with four Democratic votes.
The committee’s bill would increase farm “safety net” payments for some commodity crops, expand eligibility for disaster assistance and increase funding for speciality crops, organic farmers and dairy farmers.
It is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A title-by-title summary of the 942-page bill can be found here.
Democrats Don Davis of North Carolina, Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Yadira Caraveo of Colorado and Eric Sorenson of Illinois?joined all committee Republicans to vote to advance the bill.
After hours of heated debate and criticism from Democrats, support from the four lawmakers across the aisle seemed to surprise House Agriculture Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican who was the bill’s primary sponsor.
His microphone picked up his aside as the vote concluded: “That was bipartisan. I did not see that one coming.”
But the tepid Democratic support is likely not enough to see this version of the bill through to final passage in the House.
A handful of Republicans typically oppose farm bills over fiscal concerns. And even Democrats who voted for the bill in the House committee said it needs major changes before it could make it into law.
The measure does not have support of Democrats in the Senate or the White House.
“Everyone knows that this bill would never become law. The Senate won’t accept it and the administration won’t accept it,” Rep. David Scott of Georgia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said at the markup. “And while this bill is a giant misstep, it nevertheless begins our journey toward passing a farm bill.”
As the House committee debated the bill, Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in an interview Thursday that the House proposal has no chance in the Senate.
“It tears up the farm and food coalition and does not have the votes to pass on the House floor. And certainly not in the Senate,” Stabenow told States Newsroom.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said earlier this week that the farm bill draft 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 committee vote – which came eight months after the previous farm bill expired – was the first step in what is expected to continue to be a protracted dispute over food and farm policy.
Many farm commodity groups have come out in support of the bill, but it faces opposition from hunger advocacy groups as well as fiscal conservatives.
Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, along with Environmental Working Group, united this week to oppose the legislation, which they characterized as a government giveaway to favored special interests.
The groups, which span the ideological spectrum, contend the proposed legislation would spend tens of billions of dollars in subsidies that would overwhelmingly go to a relatively small number of farmers who grow certain commodity crops.
Historically, farm bills have brought together lawmakers across party lines, uniting on regional interests. The massive bill stitches together support for agriculture producers, energy and conservation programs on farmland and food and nutrition programs for families in need.
But committee members are deeply divided over limits on nutrition and climate programs that are the funding mechanisms for the Republican bill.
“This, on the policy side, is a very good bill,” Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, said. “But on the payment side, how do you get to your math?”
The key dispute for Democrats is a funding calculation that would place limits on the formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, the food aid program formerly referred to as food stamps.
“One of the reasons it is so hard to negotiate the little items on this bill is because the big items and the funding mechanism are so fundamentally flawed,” Maine Democrat Chellie Pingree said.
The bill would limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula that calculates benefits for SNAP. This would result in a nearly $30 billion reduction in spending over ten years, based on the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers say.
“If we want a farm bill that is able to pass into law with the bipartisan levels that it requires to pass beyond this committee, it is necessary that we go back to the negotiating table and remove this provision,” Caraveo said.
Caraveo, who faces a tough re-election in a toss-up district, ultimately voted in favor of the bill.
Connecticut Democrat Jahana Hayes offered an amendment that would have struck the changes to the program. But after more than two hours of impassioned debate on the issue Thursday night, the amendment failed on a party-line vote, 25-29.
The farm bill has to remain budget neutral, so lawmakers must fit their proposals into a baseline projection of how much the government would spend over the next 10 years if the current farm bill was extended.
The House Republican bill would offset increases in payments for farmers by placing limits on SNAP and a discretionary account at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The committee-passed bill would put limits on USDA’s discretionary Commodity Credit Corporation account and would remove climate-smart policy requirements for about $13 billion in conservation projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Farmers agree that this is good money that has come to all of our states, and is critically important,” Pingree said. “So taking away this authority from one Agriculture secretary maybe because you don’t like one program is completely misguided. It’s not thinking into the future.”
On the Senate side, Stabenow released an outline of her own proposal for the farm bill in early May but said she is waiting for language from Republicans before they can move forward.
Among other things, Stabenow’s bill would boost eligibility for nutrition programs for low-income people like SNAP. Stabenow made public a summary of the bill, but not legislative text.
Arkansas Republican John Boozman, the Senate Agriculture Committee’s top Republican, said Thursday he supports the direction on the farm bill from the House Agriculture Committee but was not optimistic about swift movement in his chamber.
“We’ve got a lot of headwinds,” Boozman said in an interview with States Newsroom Thursday.
Boozman said he plans to release language in the coming weeks but indicated lawmakers might be headed toward another extension if they cannot make progress swiftly.
“When I visit with the farm groups, I think their attitude is that rather than just doing something, if it’s not meaningful, we’re better off waiting,” Boozman told States Newsroom. “This is a five-year commitment. And, again, if we’re not going to do meaningful changes, to improve the safety of the farmers, it’s probably not worth doing.”
The farm bill is generally considered “must-pass” legislation. Lawmakers must rewrite the sweeping legislation every five years to set mandatory funding levels and policy. The current farm bill expired at the end of September 2023 but most programs have continued through extensions.
The current extension lasts until the end of September, but it is not clear if lawmakers will make that deadline – especially as attention turns to election campaigns over the summer and fall.
The farm bill votes could be fuel in upcoming elections.
As the House committee debated the measure Thursday, the GOP candidate in the Michigan U.S. Senate race to replace Stabenow criticized Democratic candidate and committee member Elissa Slotkin for her stance on the bill. Republican Mike Rogers took to X (formerly Twitter) to say Slotkin had not focused enough on the bill.
While the House committee engaged in 13 hours of debate on the farm bill markup, both Democrats and Republicans acknowledged that there would need to be more negotiations on the bill before it could become law.
Rep. Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican and longtime committee member who chaired the panel from 2011 to 2015, characterized the committee vote as “the first step of a long journey.”
“Now, ultimately, ultimately, we must work with each other to advance a comprehensive committee product,” Lucas said.
“As we begin this process, I want to remind all my colleagues, the real struggle is not here in the Ag Committee, but on the floor of the United States House and in the conference committee. We will sort out our differences with the United States Senate.”
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
]]>A sign noting the acceptance of electronic benefit transfer cards that are used by state welfare departments to issue benefits is displayed at a grocery store on December 04, 2019, in Oakland, California. Changes to the formula that sets funding levels for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are a major point of disagreement in the 2024 farm bill proposed by U.S. House Republicans. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee clashed late into the evening Thursday over funding for food and nutrition programs as part of Republicans’ sweeping proposal for the new five-year farm bill.
The committee’s $1.5 trillion omnibus farm bill would set policy and funding levels for agriculture and conservation programs for the next five years, as well as for food and nutrition programs for families in need.
House Agriculture Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced the long-awaited bill last week and his panel undertook a marathon markup Thursday. The committee is expected to vote on a series of amendments and the bill around midnight Eastern.
The bill is tied up over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans on a funding calculation that would place limits on the formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, the food aid program formerly referred to as food stamps.
Democrats said Thursday it would lead to cuts in SNAP and kill any future of bipartisan support for the farm bill, which it would need to pass the Senate.
“There is absolutely no way you are going to get a farm bill unless we take care of this business, which is the heart of the matter,” Rep. David Scott of Georgia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said of the SNAP funding mechanism.
As the House committee debated the bill, Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow, the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in an interview Thursday that the legislation has no chance in the Senate.
“It tears up the farm and food coalition and does not have the votes to pass on the House floor. And certainly not in the Senate,” Stabenow told States Newsroom.?
Nutrition programs account for the majority of farm bill spending. There are more than 41 million people who use SNAP benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.?
Thompson’s bill would limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula that calculates benefits for SNAP. This would result in a nearly $30 billion reduction in spending over ten years, based on the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers say.
Democrats say that would significantly reduce food purchasing power for needy Americans.
“Any effort that takes the food off the table for hard-working families takes my vote off the table,” said Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico.
“If we want a farm bill that is able to pass into law with the bipartisan levels that it requires to pass beyond this committee, it is necessary that we go back to the negotiating table and remove this provision,” said Colorado Democrat Yadira Caraveo.
Connecticut Democrat Jahana Hayes offered an amendment that would have struck the changes to the program. But after more than two hours of impassioned debate on the issue Thursday night, the amendment failed on a party-line vote, 25-29.
“It is unfathomable that we are once again attacking the most vulnerable in this country, the hungry,” Hayes told the committee. “There are components of the bill that are promising, but that should not come at the expense of the most vulnerable.”
The underlying issue is cost projections for the farm bill over the next 10 years. The farm bill has to remain budget neutral, so lawmakers must fit their proposals into a baseline of how much the government would spend if the current farm bill was extended.
Republicans insist the SNAP changes are a cost calculation that would not actually reduce food support for needy families. The change would not kick in until 2027 and would not directly reduce current SNAP levels. Rather, it would freeze the list of products that families can buy with their benefits and the values allowed to purchase them, except for increases from inflation.
As such, the limits would make it more difficult for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to add new items to SNAP or offer more support for certain categories, like the Biden administration did in 2021 when it increased the benefit for fruits and vegetables.
New York Republican Mark Molinaro said it is “dishonest” to describe the changes as a cut to SNAP benefits and South Dakota Republican Dusty Johnson said the benefits on the electronic benefit cards for SNAP would not go down.
But Democrats pointed to the CBO cost estimates that project a reduction in federal spending for SNAP if the bill became law.
“Let’s not try to make believe that this is no big deal, it is a huge deal… we need to do better,” said Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jim McGovern.
California Democrat Salud Carbajal said Republicans were trying to “have it both ways.”
“If the committee’s considering it a paid-for then that is funding you are taking away from hungry families,” said Carbaja.
The farm bill funds programs across 12 titles for five years. The massive bill stitches together support for agriculture producers, energy and conservation programs on farmland and food and nutrition programs for families in need.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack raised concerns this week that the Republican proposal’s adjustment to SNAP benefits threatened that coalition.
The Republican bill would increase farm “safety net” payments for some commodity crops, expand eligibility for disaster assistance and increase funding for speciality crops, organic farmers and dairy farmers.
It is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A title-by-title summary of the 942-page bill can be found here.
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
]]>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 afterward 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.
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.
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 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.
Another challenge for the farm bill is the debate over spending bills and the possibility of a government shutdown.
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.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding projects to create new markets and revenue streams for “climate-smart” practices in farming, including beef production. In this photo, cattle graze in a field outside of North English, Iowa, on Sept. 13, 2017. (USDA photo by Preston Keres)
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is spending more than $3 billion to cultivate more American farmers and forest landowners as partners to mitigate climate change — even while some Republicans on Capitol Hill try to stop the program entirely.
The administration launched a new farm program, Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities, this year. It is the USDA’s largest-ever investment in climate-smart agriculture and part of a larger effort to advance the administration’s priority of addressing climate change.
Agriculture Department officials say they hope the program will be transformational and help create markets that could eventually bring “climate-smart” products to grocery shelves.
The program disburses grants for pilot programs that will pay landowners to try new practices to improve the carbon footprint of their operations — with a special focus to recruit traditionally underserved landowners to participate.
Even more ambitiously, the Agriculture Department wants to use the program to help create new markets and revenue streams for “climate-smart” practices for those producing commodities like corn, soybeans, almonds, pork or beef. In total, 52 projects mention building or expanding markets and 26 mention some form of branding or certification process, according to an analysis from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
“Through these projects, our partners are working to create new markets for climate-smart commodities, while developing the tools needed to quantify impacts and help producers implement climate-smart practices on their land,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement announcing the implementation phase of the grants in April.
But Republican lawmakers have criticized the program — both for its emphasis on climate change and because of its funding source. Lawmakers have introduced bills to stop the program, and the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted to block spending for it next year.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has been moving forward steadily, approving grants and rolling out the $3.1 billion in projects, 141 of them in total, some of which have funding from other sources as well. USDA has finished negotiations with partners for most of the bigger budget grants and 60 projects across 53 states and territories are currently active.
The new initiative has won support from many agriculture, farm cooperative, forestry and research groups, including the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation. It has participants from major universities and farm corporations.
USDA estimates the program will reach more than 60,000 farms, encompassing more than 25 million acres of working lands. The agency’s preliminary estimates are that it will provide a reduction of over 50,000 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Climate activists say they hope the agency releases data as the projects roll out to show if those estimates become a reality.
Republican critics of the bill say the Biden administration overstepped its authority when it created the climate program and used the USDA’s financing institution, the Commodity Credit Corporation, known as the CCC, to pay for it.
The Commodity Credit Corporation began during the Great Depression as a bailout program for cotton farmers. Over the years, Congress and presidential administrations have directed CCC to fund an increasingly broad array of programs, including farm bill programs, export and commodity programs, conservation and disaster assistance.
For years there was little conflict over the Agriculture Department’s broad discretion for the account. But Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, also came under fire for his use of the fund in 2010, when he was head of the USDA under President Barack Obama.
At issue then was $600 million in disaster assistance for Arkansas farmers who had been hit by wet weather. Republicans saw that aid as an attempt to shore up more support for Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, who was the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee at the time and was in a tough reelection fight.
Her opponent, Republican John Boozman, criticized the bailout, later went on to win the election and now is the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The Republican Congress placed restrictions on the use of the CCC in its appropriations bills from 2012 to 2017.
It is important to remember that farmers are often trying to make sure that they stay financially solvent and are operating too often on really thin margins or in some cases negative margins,
– Rob Larew, president of the National Farmers Union
The House Appropriations Committee tried the same maneuver this year and included language in its 2024 agriculture spending bill that would bar the agriculture secretary from using the CCC for any discretionary programs — which would bring the climate program to a screeching halt.
The Appropriations Committee approved the bill but it has not yet made it to the House floor for a vote, one of several spending bills tied up in disputes over how much the government should spend and whether the bills should include far-right policy objectives.
On the Senate side, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved a bill in June that would not limit USDA’s discretionary use of CCC. But Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) also introduced a bill in July that would limit the disbursal of funds through the CCC to only those authorized by Congress.
“I’m concerned that the CCC is at risk of becoming a slush fund for politically-driven pet projects,” Grassley said in a statement announcing the bill.
But Senate Democrats, who hold a thin majority in that chamber, are unlikely to agree to a bill that would limit the department’s use of the fund. The chair of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA, New Mexico Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich, also has his own proposal, the Agriculture Resilience Act, that would fund regenerative agriculture projects. It has 12 cosponsors.
The Biden administration’s climate program is unique, but the dispute over the Commodity Credit Corporation to advance pet projects for a presidential administration is not new.
Indeed, the account itself was first created in an act of executive authority, during the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the CCC in 1933 through an executive order he issued while Congress was out of session.
Creating a separate account for farm support gave the government more leeway to deal with the variable nature of farm payments. Congress appropriated $3 million to capitalize it and stock was acquired to raise it to $100 million.
In its early years, the CCC gave millions of dollars in non-recourse loans to struggling cotton farmers. It later added corn, wheat, tobacco and other crops. In 1939, Roosevelt signed another executive order that transferred ownership and management of the CCC to the secretary of agriculture.
The possibilities opened further when the Truman administration reconfigured the CCC in 1948 and gave the secretary of agriculture even more discretion to use the funds for a variety of purposes. Under that charter, USDA can use it to make loans, purchases or payments to help agriculture producers, support the sale of commodities to other agencies and assist in the development of new markets for agricultural commodities. A board of directors oversees the corporation.
Since then, the CCC has essentially become USDA’s bank and served as the primary financing source for many farm bill programs, including commodity supports and conservation programs.
What we are delighted by through this opportunity is seeing USDA step up in a big way to incentivize this and say really both people and the planet matter.
– Beth Riley, director of public climate finance and philanthropy at American Forest Foundation.
The broad mandate and borrowing authority allow USDA to carry out “almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U.S. agriculture,” according to an analysis from the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research group within the Library of Congress.
President Donald J. Trump’s administration took that to a new level in response to the administration’s trade war with China, using the CCC in dollar amounts that exceeded other administrations before or since.
“The Trump administration’s use of it was beyond creative, it was completely unprecedented,” said Ferd Hoefner, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on farm and food policy. “It has been used frequently throughout history for all sorts of things, but they tended to be much lower-dollar amounts.”
The Trump administration directed $28 billion in aid to farmers in 2018-2019, when U.S. exports of agricultural goods dropped significantly in response to tariff increases.
USDA spent another $20 billion from the CCC in 2020 for producers who had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, the Trump administration authorized over $51 billion from the CCC between 2018 and 2020, according to an analysis by the current USDA.
While some Republicans dislike the Biden administration’s use of the fund, the requests to participate in the Climate Smart Agriculture Program demonstrate the idea has some traction.
Initially USDA announced it would invest $1 billion in the partnerships but tripled its commitment because of the overwhelming requests for funding. USDA officials say they received more than 1,000 proposals from more than 500 groups — which would have totaled over $20 billion if they had funded them all.
They settled on $3.1 billion in grants to universities, agribusiness groups and nonprofits that will run climate projects. Many of the programs will help connect farmers or landowners with consultants or land managers that can help them make environmental plans and pay them to implement practices like cover crops, no-till farming or planting trees.
The voluntary nature of the program and the incentives to participate will be key to getting farmers on board, according to Rob Larew, president of the National Farmers Union.
“It is important to remember that farmers are often trying to make sure that they stay financially solvent and are operating too often on really thin margins or in some cases negative margins,” said Larew.? “If someone is trying to tell you to improve your soil health with a cover crop, if you are not currently doing that and operating on such thin margins, it is a huge leap of faith and a real financial risk in order to make that move.”
Programs across the country will enroll farmers and collect data. For instance, an alliance led by Virginia Tech will enroll over 4,000 producers in Arkansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and Virginia for practices that include a pilot program to test new feed design and additives for livestock. Their project also plans to prototype a climate-smart certificate that can be sold in the private market.
Blue Diamond almond growers will offer no-cost seed and payments to farmers to put in conservation cover crops on their land.
The Climate Smart Partnerships are not a carbon bank or certification process — at least not yet. But many of them are working on ways to market climate-smart products.
For instance, the food processing giant Archer-Daniels Midland Company (ADM) received a $90 million grant to expand climate-smart corn, soybeans, wheat and peanut markets in 22 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin).
ADM will offer incentive payments to producers for climate-savvy improvements. They plan to develop climate-smart products with partners including Costco and Keurig-Dr. Pepper.
American Forest Foundation received $35 million to help create forest management plans with landowners of private forests in 13 states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia). The group also plans to develop a new tracking system for third-party verification of climate benefits with wood products that come from participating properties.
“What we are delighted by through this opportunity is seeing USDA step up in a big way to incentivize this and say really both people and the planet matter,” said Beth Riley, director of public climate finance and philanthropy at American Forest Foundation.
Private landowners are responsible for 39% of the nation’s forests but fewer than 13% of them have a land management plan, according to the American Forest Foundation.
Click here to see USDA’s database that shows climate-smart projects in each state.
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Wildfire smoke clouds the skyline on June 28, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — In a summer of drought, smoke and haze, wildfires could flare up in unusual locations in the United States over the next few months — including New England and the Midwest, according to federal forecasters.
“The predominant threat looks to be the Northeast, which is not normal,” said Jim Karels, the fire director for the National Interagency Fire Center, the federal center in Boise, Idaho that coordinates the national response to wildland fires. “This year it looks like there is potential for elevated fire conditions all the way into August, from Minnesota to Maine and down along the Eastern Seaboard.”
As wildfires continued in Canada, Chicago, Detroit and other parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes experienced poor air quality in late June, and by the last days of June it had encompassed some East Coast cities as well.
The Fire Center’s recent summer outlook forecasts atypical wildfire activity also for the northern tier of the United States, but a reprieve across much of the West, which has in recent years been scorched by above-average fire activity. That’s thanks, in part, to an unusually wet winter and record snowpack.
In a standard year, the lush green days of midsummer would be a quiet season for wildfires in the Midwest and Northeast. The regular wildfire seasons for these regions are early spring and early fall, before new growth has started in the spring and after the summer heat has dried out grasses and leaves that can fuel a fire.
The elevated fire danger this summer is due to the dry spring and forecasts for more hot, dry weather this summer.
“It is unusually dry for early June in the Great Lakes and there are above-normal temperatures. That is what is exacerbating the situation,” said Steve Marien, a meteorologist and the Eastern Area Fire Weather Program Manager for the National Park Service. “There is quite a bit of drought either in development or in place … especially in the northeastern quarter of the US. It’s abnormal for this early in the summer.”
A June 22 update from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows a map blotted in drought warnings from Virginia to Vermont and over much of the Midwest. The East Coast has “abnormally dry” to “moderate drought” conditions. Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan’s lower peninsula are in moderate drought. And Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska have large areas of extreme drought.
That’s highly unusual for this time of year, but Marien says conditions can change. Further drought could develop in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, or with some luck, rain could restore the region over the coming months.
But recent rains that cooled the mid-Atlantic around the days of the summer solstice were not enough to bring the region out of moderate drought.
Fire analysts use data and forecasts from the National Forest Service and National Weather Service to make the wildfire forecast, which they update monthly to help direct firefighting resources.
The unusual fire patterns could place a strain on some federal firefighting resources, which are usually centered in the West over the summer. The National Interagency Fire Center helps coordinate where to strategically place air tankers, helicopters and other resources.
“It evolves around fire threats — weekly and daily we are looking at what resources we have and what is available,” said Karels, the fire director from NIFC.
Already, unexpected blazes have ravaged parts of the East Coast and Midwest.
A campfire in Grayling, Michigan, on June 3 sparked a fire that burned for four days. It consumed 2,400 acres and prompted evacuations before it was contained.
Nationwide, as of June 22 there were 12 large fires in four states: New Mexico, Washington, Arizona and North Carolina, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In North Carolina, a prescribed burn June 13 raged out of control, burning tens of thousands of acres and growing big enough to be seen from space. The air pollution from the fire caused red alert air quality warnings.
A prescribed or controlled burn is a tactic that forest managers use to try to mimic natural wildfire patterns in a controlled setting — letting fire burn some debris in a forest and then putting out the blaze. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission conducted the prescribed burn, and the N.C. Forest Service responded to assume command of the fire. It is now 100 percent contained.
The National Weather Service issued warnings in June for critical fire risk in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the East Coast states have seen multiple air quality alerts due to hazy skies, increased ground level ozone and particulate dust.
The smoke lifted from some of the record-breaking bad air quality days that New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago experienced earlier this summer, when particulates from wildfires in Canada brought gray and orange skies reminiscent of the Star Wars planet of Tatooine. But by the last days of June, it had returned.
With parts of Canada and the United States at risk for an unusually active fire season this summer, the Midwest and Eastern United States could be in for more unusual fire activity and the air pollution that comes with it.
“There will be more air pollution days because of wildfires, no doubt about that,” said Andy Hoell, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. “Where they start, where they burn and also the weather patterns will determine how bad it will be in certain areas.”
There are three main ingredients that create a wildfire: fuel (grasses, plants, leaves, trees, and anything that burns), ignitions (from humans or lightning), and dry conditions.
Wildfire smoke contains fine particles of smoke and soot. The particles naturally move on air currents, and the heat of wildfires can push smoke higher into the atmosphere, helping it to travel longer distances. Weather patterns like wind, pressure systems and rain can affect where the smoke from a wildfire travels.
Wildfire is a natural part of forest ecology. But the size and number of recent wildfires is not the norm.
As climate change brings hotter, drier weather, wildfire seasons are getting longer and more intense. And some of the fires are burning hotter and longer because there is so much dry fuel available to feed the flames.
“By generally any metric we look at around the world, wildfires are getting worse, burning larger areas more severely at higher elevations, and burning over longer periods of the year.” said Kristina Dahl, the principal climate scientist for the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
It is not a linear trend, since some years are better than others. But the area burned by wildfires has doubled in Canada since the 1970s and quadrupled in the Western United States in that same time. Longer, drier summers have erased the concept of a “fire season” and turned it into a “fire year” in some parts of the arid West.
“In the case of any one particular year it can be hard to say because there is a lot of variability from year to year, but we know that the increase in heat extremes, for example, that the Midwest has seen, are linked to human-caused climate change,” said Dahl.
Worsening fires have created a climate-fire feedback, as carbon dioxide from the fires spews into the atmosphere.
A study published in the journal Science Advances found that wildfires in the North American boreal forests — like those aflame in Canada this month — have the potential to play an outsized role in future fire-related emissions. Boreal forests contain roughly two-thirds of stored global forest carbon.
Wildfires in these forests could contribute 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere over the next three decades, according to peer-reviewed research from scientists at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Woodwell Climate Research Center and Tufts University. That amount is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.6 billion fossil fuel-powered cars.
In another study, researchers determined emissions from the 2020 wildfires in California could have wiped out the gains the state had made in greenhouse gas reductions since 2003.
“In order to prevent wildfires from growing worse in the future, one of the most important things we can do is reduce carbon emissions and wean ourselves from fossil fuels” said Dahl. “The more we emit going forward, the more we can expect wildfires to continue to worsen, big picture and long terms.”
Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated which agency in North Carolina conducted a prescribed burn.
]]>Planting corn near Dwight, Ill. (Photo by 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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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