by House Republicans and Democrats have released two dueling visions for the farm bill, the massive $1.5 trillion bus that underpins the US food system.
The contrasting proposals highlight the flaws in the two parties’ visions for American agriculture as it faces rising supply costs and climate change.
But despite these divisions, there are significant overlaps between the two proposals: Both support big spending on rural broadband and the high-tech “precision agriculture” it enables; emphasis on boosting trade of American products abroad; and include funding for research at American land-grant schools.
Now, with a large House minority of Republican hardliners willing to kill any bill that doesn’t include significant cuts to entitlements, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) faces a tough choice: try to pass a partisan farm bill and risk blowing the Freedom Caucus, or get a pass moderate enough to get Democrats on board.
Thompson told Agri-Pulse in March that he was shooting for the second option, and “putting bipartisan proposals into the legislation.”
But the contradictions between the parties — and the factions within them — prevented Congress from reaching a consensus on the farm bill last year, prompting lawmakers to pass a supplemental bill instead to avoid a sudden defunding of billions of dollars in programs run by the American food system. depending on.
Congress has until September 30 to close these loopholes and pass the bill. Here are the main takeaways from both proposals.
Fighting conservation funds
In their proposals, both Republicans and Democrats stress the importance of putting more money into the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) popular — and brutally oversubscribed — conservation programs.
Programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program help farmers pay for a wide variety of projects—from cover cropping and brush control to prescribed burns—that help maintain soil and water health.
Both parties’ plans would put more money into the programs, which currently turn away about two-thirds of worthy applicants due to lack of funds.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is already set to reverse those numbers, so that about two-thirds would receive funding — provided the projects provide some climate benefit.
But how to handle those IRA funds is a sticking point between the recommendations. Democrats argue that the money allocated by the legislation must remain focused on reducing the climate impact of agriculture – although they are willing to keep an existing, and controversial, provision that keeps 50 percent of non-IRA funds with for livestock operations.
In contrast, Republicans want to use IRA funds to cover all conservation programs — and to expand the category of programs that count as conservation. The GOP did not specify what new programs would be included under its proposal.
Such an expansion is popular with Senate Republicans, but unpopular with the public. It’s also a “red line” for Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), a spokeswoman told Michigan Farm News, and unpopular with House Democrats, who said in February they would not support a farm bill. which takes IRA conservation funding away from its intended purpose.”
Fight over food aid
Democrats have also drawn a distinct red line regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The program receives about 80 percent of the current farm bill spending and is the way to bind the fragile political agreement between urban and rural representatives that was necessary to run the bus.
As The Hill reported, Thompson insisted that the Republican caucus has no intention of cutting SNAP.
But he wants to reverse Biden-era reforms that increase food assistance to keep up with the rising cost of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables — and prevent future presidents from increasing SNAP payments for any reason other than inflation .
While this wouldn’t reduce any current benefits, it would put them into effect—effectively cutting $30 billion from SNAP over the next decade, and hampering USDA’s efforts to ensure that low-income people can eat healthy food yet, according to the Centre. on Budget and Policy Priorities.
House Republicans said in a statement that this would save $300 billion over the next several years, while correcting “excessive overreach by the Executive branch” and preventing “unelected bureaucrats from benefiting in the future Arbitrarily increase or decrease SNAP.”
But Senate Democrats panned the proposed actions. “We don’t take money out of the nutrition title to fund another part of the bill, which has never been done,” Stabenow told reporters.
Dealing with climate change through the back door
Due to the steady blow of extreme weather disasters – wind, hail, drought and floods – crop losses have been increasing dramatically over the past three years.
A 2023 report by the Environmental Working Group found that losses due to extreme weather increased by 500 percent just between 2021 and 2023. That increase in turn has led to record insurance payouts – on That’s one big reason why Thompson wants to beat SNAP. a new source of funding to stop the bleeding.
Both parties’ plans seek to strengthen crop insurance programs, largely to get the United States out of a cycle of having to repeatedly receive unplanned multi-billion dollar disaster supplements. But they differ on how to do this.
Republicans want taxpayers to pay more of the cost of coverage while building out the private insurance markets.
This proposed action has drawn some criticism, as some experts have argued that crop insurance programs disproportionately subsidize the largest and wealthiest landowners — and mitigate against any need to meaningfully adapt their operations to accommodate a changing climate.
A November 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended that the taxpayer share should be reduced for the highest income farmers – a small minority of the highest income farmers whose operations bring in more than $900,000 per year.
Those 1,341 high-income farmers received far more from federally backed crop insurance programs than they paid in, according to the report – about $2.19 in taxpayer support for every dollar they spent on premiums.
The GAO suggested in the report that while a 15 percent reduction in such farmers’ benefits would still leave them getting back more than they put in — $1.59 for every dollar — it would significantly increase the stability of crop insurance programs.
In December, Thompson blasted the “one-sided report,” which he said was “not worth the paper it’s printed on,” and said the report was “completely ignored.[s] the benefits of Federal crop insurance, which is one of the most successful examples of public-private partnership there is.”
Democrats, for their part, want to make crop insurance more accessible to small farmers and producers who are typically left out of federal crop insurance programs.
They also want to order USDA to create “index plans” that would provide automatic payment for climate disasters – for example, when hail falls over a field of corn or a wildfire burns near a vineyard, which could spoil the taste and marketability of the crop — without it. forcing producers to go through a contested claims process.
Offer new support for fruit and vegetables
Support for fruits and vegetables – clearly called “specialty crops” in the USDA dictionary – represents one significant point of agreement between the parties, although the Democrats’ plan would offer more support than the Republicans’.
This category of crops, including those most likely to fill America’s grocery carts and refrigerators, is largely left out of USDA crop insurance plans.
Farmers who grow produce such as onions, apples, broccoli or carrots do not have access to the same financial tools for disaster mitigation as those who grow shelf-stable commodities such as corn, wheat, rice, soy or peanuts.
This prudent financial policy has significant impacts on the American food system, and is one reason why processed foods in the US are much cheaper than whole foods, despite being less healthy.
The Democrats’ plan directs the USDA to create new crop insurance options for specialty crops — as well as diversified farms, whose ever-changing crop mix is making them more resilient and harder for traditional insurance providers to cover.
Although the Republican policy platform is less overt, it also directs the USDA to research new insurance policies through “strong engagement with specialty crop producers.”
Shout over the forests of America
The bipartisan proposals highlighted the role America’s forests play in the country’s conservation goals.
US public and private forest lands cover 78,000 square miles—about the size of Kansas—and do invaluable work to reduce carbon, provide habitat for wildlife and clean the water that cities depend on.
But nearly a century of mismanagement and overfeeding of natural wildfires – particularly in the American West – has left the country with a devastating fire problem that has reached apocalyptic levels in many areas, leaving the entire insurable communities in some cases.
Democrats and Republicans agree on the need to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health, and some of the steps to do so. Both parties want to increase the size and scope of the Good Neighbor Authority, which allows federal managers to contract with counties and tribes to thin publicly owned forests. And both are trying to carve out new markets for novel American-made wood products, like the mass-timber technology used to build skyscrapers.
But the policy documents reflect a wider philosophical divide over what America’s forests are, and should be.
The Republican vision hinges on the idea of a privately run “working forest” — a relatively homogeneous plantation where trees like pines are grown and cared for like any other crop.
The GOP seeks to increase the health of these lands by reducing forest fire risk through increased logging — something that would be encouraged under the Republican plan by cutting environmental regulations and contracting out private companies to work on public land.
In contrast, the Senate Democrats’ plan focuses on the role of forests in the public sector, rather than private ones — and the role those landscapes can play in improving water quality and slowing climate change.
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