Progress continues on a new Farm Bill but still faces challenges and an uncertain timeline.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-PA) held a mark-up of the "Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024"–the Farm Bill–in the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday, May 25. The bill advanced out of committee by a vote of 33 to 21. All Republicans and four Democrats on the committee voted in favor of the bill, making it bipartisan. There are, however, still deep divides that may cause challenges to pass it through the full House of Representatives.
Next steps
Chairman Thompson said the bill probably will not get House consideration until September due to other legislative priorities, namely 2025 Appropriations bills, and the summer legislative schedule. In the meantime, the Chairman will continue to meet and lobby both Republicans and Democrats to build more support for the bill.
It is expected that Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member John Boozman (R-AR) will release a Senate Republican Farm Bill framework in early June. It is believed this framework may closely match the House bill. As we reported in our last update, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) introduced her Farm Bill outline on May 1. She has not scheduled consideration of the bill in the Committee.
Why does timing matter?
The House Agriculture Committee started mark-up at 11 am EDT and continued a marathon session, covering all 11 titles, before bringing the bill to a final vote, approval, and adjournment around 12:30 am EDT. The Chairman felt it was important to move the House bill through the committee before Memorial Day to preserve resources that would otherwise be restricted or limited when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases an updated baseline in June.
Deep Dive:
Key elements of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024:
• Includes many priorities of both Democrats and Republican members
• Increases statutory reference prices 10% to 20% for all covered commodities
• By increasing statutory reference price, the maximum effective reference price is also increased
• Increases Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) guarantee to 90% of the benchmark revenue
• Provides a one-time opportunity to establish base acres for producers who currently do not have base acres or whose average farm acres exceed the current base acres
• Provides an opportunity to update production history on Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC)
• Increases Farm Service Agency (FSA) loan limits on Direct, Guaranteed, and Down-Payment programs (Farm Credit priority)
• Clarifies that Farm Credit is eligible to finance community healthcare facilities (Farm Credit priority)
• Increases premium support for Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) of crop insurance and increases the amount of SCO coverage available to purchase
• Increases the crop insurance premium discount for young, beginning, and veteran farmers while extending the number of years of eligibility to 10 years (currently set at 5 years)
• Doubles funding for Market Access Program (MAP) and the Foreign Market Development Program (FMD)
• Affirms the Farm Credit Administration (FCA) is the sole regulator of the Farm Credit System (Farm Credit priority)
• Additional details can be found in this Title-By-Title Summary
Items of Partisan Controversy
• Repurposes unused Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) climate smart funding for other conservation programs
• Restricts the Secretary of Agriculture’s discretionary use of Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) funds:
o House Agriculture Committee calculated approximately a $53 billion budget savings while the CBO calculates an $8 billion savings resulting in an increase in deficit spending
• Modifies nutrition benefits to restrict administrative updates of the Thrifty Food Plan calculation of SNAP benefits, returning control back to Congress
o The CBO calculates a cost savings of $29 billion
o Chairman Thompson argues this is not a cut to anyone’s SNAP benefits
o There is still an inflationary factor used in calculating benefits
o This restricts future administrations from increasing or decreasing benefits without Congressional action
o Democrats argue it is a cut of $29 billion to nutrition benefits
Outlook
Many agricultural policy veterans have commented that despite having some Democrat support in the mark-up, the path forward for his bill is still difficult to see given the partisan controversies that exist. Some believe action may be possible in the lame-duck session after the election. Others speculate that the bill will need to be extended again and won’t be acted on until the next Congressional session in 2025. The current Farm Bill and legislation will continue to provide the support and benefits that we know today regardless of the timeline and final outcome of the new bill.
