If you’ve been thinking about changes you’d like to see in a new farm bill, it’s time to make your opinions known, either through your state associations or with your congressional representatives.
With the midterm election dust finally starting to settle, Republicans will now control the House and are chomping at the bit to move a very busy agenda. In the House Agriculture Committee, most of that focus will be on writing a new farm bill and conducting oversight on key agencies.
Programs in the 2023 farm bill start expiring Sept. 30, although commodity programs remain in effect for the commodity marketing year, and the Inflation Reduction Act enacted in August extended authority for conservation programs through fiscal 2031.
Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, who’s set to chair the House Agriculture Committee under GOP control of the chamber, plans to hit the ground running with farm bill hearings next year with a goal of having the legislation out of the House by July.
Thompson told Agri-Pulse that the farm bill hearing process could start informally with an event at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 7, even though the committee won’t be formally organized yet.
The committee has “got to get started on these listening sessions and put the pedal to the metal on the hearings as well,” Thompson said recently.
Thompson also says there are no “pre-drawn conclusions” that Republicans will try to use the measure to cut nutrition assistance programs, an action that would most certainly draw the ire of many Democrats, as well as members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who understand the importance of building coalitions and passing bipartisan legislation.
In the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, is in line to remain the committee chair.
“The best bills, the ones that pass and last and are not repealed, are the ones here that are done in a bipartisan manner. … That’s my goal,” Thompson said.
Farm bills failed on the House floor in 2013 and again in 2018 because of revolts by Democrats over cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, combined with divisions among Republicans in the case of the 2018 measure.
Since passage of the 2018 bill, SNAP has ballooned in cost, both because of pandemic-related increases in benefits and an update to the formula known as the Thrifty Food Plan that is used to determine benefit levels. The update was authorized by that law as a result of Stabenow’s influence.
Thompson has given a few hints about the changes he’d like to see in farm programs. For example, he said the committee needed to look at increasing the reference prices that trigger payments under commodity programs for row crops.
“Reference prices are irrelevant with this record high inflation,” Thompson said, referring to soaring input costs that cut into farm margins this year. “It’s not how much you bring in or what you get paid, it’s what you’re left with at the end of the day. That needs to have some consideration going forward.”
Thompson has already laid the groundwork for providing some oversight of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency, although he was not clear on a timetable.
In September, the Ag Committee Republicans sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack demanding documents behind several administration actions, including the use of the Commodity Credit Corporation to fund climate-smart commodity projects. .
The $3.5 billion earmarked for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities project “unilaterally siphoned away from legitimate uses under the Charter Act such as addressing immediate market disruptions currently facing America’s producers,” the letter said.
“While I’m sure they are worthy projects, the Biden administration is unilaterally spending billions of dollars without congressional input,” Thompson said.
The climate projects are likely to have a broad base of political support since they reach every state and involve a wide array of farm and conservation groups as well as agribusiness, food and apparel companies.
And Vilsack was not the first to use the CCC in some innovative ways. His Republican predecessor, Secretary Sonny Perdue, used the CCC to compensate producers for the impact of retaliatory tariffs that resulted from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Congress, then controlled by Republicans, opened the door to Perdue’s action in 2018 by removing CCC restrictions that GOP lawmakers imposed when Vilsack was ag secretary during the Obama administration.
The Pennsylvania Republican also plans to bring EPA Administrator Michael Regan before the committee for questioning about restrictions on insecticides and weedkillers.
The Pesticide Registration Improvement Act, which allows EPA to collect fees to fund its oversight of the products, is due to be reauthorized before the end of fiscal year 2023, which is September.
Editor’s note: Sara Wyant is publisher of Agri-Pulse Communications, Inc., www.Agri-Pulse.com.
