Whither the 2023(??) Farm Bill
As of August 10th, there are 51 more days until the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 farm bill) expires on September 30, 2023. The first thing you should know about that date is that if there is no new farm bill in place by that time, the U.S. agricultural sector would not come to a grinding halt. Even if Congress opts not to extend the provisions of the current farm bill, which is a distinct possibility given how bitterly the House of Representatives is divided in the 118th Congress, the provisions of the 2018 farm bill’s commodities title (Title I) will remain operative for any crop that was planted prior to that date, covering the spring-planted crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, and spring wheat, which accounts for 85 percent of the acres planted to annual row crops in the United States. In addition, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), which has provided benefits to more than 40 million Americans annually in recent years, will continue to operate as long as it has funding. However, there are some smaller programs that lack baseline funding, such as those which help the renewable fuel sector like the Bio-refinery Assistance program, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), which was set up in the 2014 farm bill to “advance the research mission of the Department by supporting agricultural research activities focused on addressing key problems of national and international significance,” which could be without new funds if the farm bill is not extended.
Given that Congress has just started its August recess, and will have only a few weeks to conduct legislative business before September 30th once they return, it seems highly unlikely that the new farm bill will be ready to go to the President’s desk by that date.
Aside from some of the policy issues that are expected to complicate the final stages of the farm bill, which will be discussed below, there are other structural and procedural barriers that are slowing the process itself. High on that list are reported delays in obtaining scores from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to get official estimates of the cost of changing program provisions in the farm bill. On July 10, the chairs and ranking members of both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees sent a letter to the CBO Director, complaining about the slow turnaround of score requests and asking the Director to take steps to reduce the lag by bolstering the CBO staff working on the farm bill. The Director subsequently responded that it would make no sense to hire new staff and then have to train them on CBO models and procedures, but some analysts who handled other matters in addition to farm bill responsibilities have now been relieved of those other roles so as to focus full-time on the farm bill scoring requests.
In addition, the approach of the end of fiscal year 2023 means that floor time in both the House and the Senate will likely be devoted to consideration of appropriations bills once both Houses return from the August recess. House Agriculture Committee chairman Thompson has said publicly that he does not intend to mark up his farm bill draft in Committee until he has a firm commitment from his leadership team for floor time on a specific date within a week or so of that mark-up.
Information about the current status of the farm bill process is limited to occasional public comments from Committee leadership, members, or staff. It appears that staff for both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are now hard at work in drafting language, although progress is undoubtedly lagging for the major titles (such as commodities, conservation, and nutrition) for which stakeholder groups are seeking changes which would require access to funding over and above what is available under the latest CBO baseline. High on the lists of all the commodity and farm organizations is an increase in reference prices, as they maintain that the fact that those prices have not been updated since the 2014 farm bill provides inadequate protection against the higher costs of production they are facing.
Some groups and members of Congress are eying the conservation program funding of roughly $20 billion that was provided to USDA under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to encourage farmers and ranchers to adopt more ‘climate-smart’ practices as a place to obtain some funding offsets for the upcoming farm bill. However, House and Senate Democrats are likely to strongly resist any effort to move that funding into non-conservation programs.
As has been the case for the last several farm bills, debate over the future of SNAP is likely to dominate the next stages of the farm bill, especially in the House of Representatives, and could easily extend the process well into 2024. Many Republican members are unhappy with the approach that USDA took in 2021 in ‘updating’ the so-called Thrifty Food Plan, which is a formula on food costs that helps establish monthly benefit levels for households under the program. USDA took the opportunity provided in the 2018 farm bill to raise those benefit levels consistent with recent rates of inflation, while GOP members maintain that USDA violated the understanding that the update was supposed to be achieved in a cost-neutral manner. It is highly likely that the Republican committee members in both the House and Senate will seek provisions in the upcoming farm bill that would rein in USDA’s authority in this area, and perhaps even reverse the 2021 action.
In addition, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are expected to push for additional restrictions on eligibility for SNAP over and above what was agreed to in the debt ceiling legislation enacted earlier this year. With a slim majority of only four seats in the House, the Republicans seem to be setting themselves up to potentially repeat the experience on the first House floor vote for the farm bill for the two previous farm bills, which were both initially defeated due to machinations by some members of the House Republican conference. If that happens, we are almost certainly looking at a 2024 farm bill instead of a 2023 farm bill, if one passes at all during the 118th Congress.
