Food fight? Debate over farm bill nears

By MAURY THOMPSON
Contributing writer

 

With the threat of a government shutdown now averted until after the start of the new year, congressional leaders have reserved floor time in December to debate a new farm bill in the U.S. House.

But most political observers say the massive bill, which will set spending levels and policies for agriculture and nutrition programs for the next five years, is very unlikely to be ready for action that soon.

As the bill takes shape over the coming weeks and likely months, its progress will be closely watched by area farmers and their advocates — as well as by activists concerned about issues ranging from food aid to climate change.

“The 2023 farm bill is the most important piece of legislation for New York farmers,” said Steve Ammerman, a spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau. “It provides essential crop insurance and risk management programs, conservation and research funding, and nutrition support, all of which are vital to our food system.”

Although farm advocates are pushing for action early in 2024, some members of Congress want to delay serious discussion of the farm bill until summer or early fall, when it can take prominence in the presidential and congressional election campaigns.

The last farm bill, enacted in 2018, expired on Sept. 30. But its current funding levels and provisions were extended for one year as part of legislation to avert a government shutdown that passed the House on Nov. 14 and the Senate on Nov. 15.

Farming advocates say provisions of the 2018 bill need to be updated to reflect major shifts in the agriculture industry in the past few years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In Saratoga County, Northumberland town Supervisor Bill Peck, who owns Welcome Stock Farm in Schuylerville, said the wars have increased costs for farmers in the region.

Peck, who in years past was as an agricultural adviser to former U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., explained that the war in Ukraine has reduced grain exports into the United States. The reduced supply has increased prices for livestock feed, he said, and the war between Israel and Hamas is expected to increase fuel prices.

 

Republican infighting
Political observers around the region say that given the sharp divisions in Congress, it’s difficult to predict what might transpire with the farm bill.

In particular, with Republicans controlling the House by a razor-thin margin, GOP leaders have repeatedly struggled to unite their caucus, and a hard-line faction within the party has worked to thwart proposals — and leaders — it deems insufficiently conservative.

“The wheels are off the bus right now,” said David Catalfamo, a Republican political strategist from Wilton mounted two unsuccessful bids for state Assembly in 2020 and 2022.

Robert Turner, a political science professor at Skidmore College, said the delays in crafting a new farm bill are emblematic of a trend in which definitive action can be blocked by the Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republicans that have withheld their votes on legislation such as the transportation and budget bills, as they demand spending cuts and policy changes.
Turner said these types of large spending bills typically become the focus of controversy and often wind up being temporarily extended while conflicts are worked out. In past sessions, new bills usually could be achieved through negotiation.

“This is the story of so many things where the Freedom Caucus is exerting power over the traditional mainstream Republicans,” he said.

The group, with 52 members, has enough votes to block Republican-backed legislation. That has forced Republican leaders in a couple of cases this year to rely on votes from Democrats to pass legislation to keep the government operating. After one such vote in late September, a group of hard-line Republicans retaliated by ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy, setting off several weeks of paralysis as Republicans tried to find a new leader to unite their caucus.

Then on Nov. 14, new Speaker Mike Johnson again had to rely on Democrats to pass legislation to keep the government open, which included the one-year extension of the farm bill. The legislation passed by a vote 336 to 95, with 127 Republicans and two Democrats voting against it.

All five U.S. representatives from the region — Republicans Marc Molinaro and Elise Stefanik and Democrats Becca Balint, Richard Neal and Paul Tonko — voted in favor of the legislation.

 

Dairy supports, SNAP benefits
Last month’s vote to extend the previous farm bill was considered vital by the region’s dairy farmers because it prevented the nation from falling off the so-called “dairy cliff.”

If the 2018 farm bill had not been extended by early January, the dairy price support payment system would have reverted back to a methodology set up in 1949 — an outcome U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had warned would result in “a double wallop” of lower prices paid to farmers coupled with higher prices for consumers.

AgriPulse, a trade journal, estimated retail milk prices would have soared to $10 a gallon.
The vote marked an early test of Johnson’s leadership and had major significance for upstate New York, Vermont and rural Massachusetts — a region in which the dairy industry remains a major economic force.

Dairy price support programs would have been the first major casualty of inaction on the farm bill. Other agricultural price support payments are made annually at harvest time, but dairy price support payments are made monthly.

The major sticking point in the debate over a new farm bill at this point is funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. Nutrition programs such as SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC, account for about 85 percent of spending in the farm bill.

Republicans want to cut funding for SNAP and conservation programs while increasing crop subsidies for peanuts, cotton and rice, The Hill newspaper reported on Nov. 9.

Peck, the Schuylerville farmer, said the effort to cut SNAP funding has elevated the farm bill, which often involves balancing geographic interests within agriculture, into a topic of national debate. The new legislation now has become a local issue for urban and suburban congressional representatives, not just those from rural districts, he explained.

The new bill also may need to address the emerging use of artificial intelligence. Satellite imagery and AI-assisted farming equipment are good ways to address the labor shortage but must be regulated to protect data security, agricultural leaders in Congress have said.
Some farmers in the area are using AI-assisted tractors, but Peck said that to the best of his knowledge, no one locally is yet using fully automated tractors.

The labor shortage is among the most significant issues locally Peck said.
“There’s labor difficulties, like in every sector of the economy,” he said.
Peck said the H2-A immigrant farm worker visa program needs to be streamlined, and the duration workers are allowed to stay in the United States should be lengthened.

“They don’t allow enough time for them to come in, and the process is onerous,” he said.
The new bill also needs to continue grant programs to build farm worker housing, he said.
The increase in severe storms in recent years also makes it imperative to national security to maintain agriculture in each region of the country, countering the long-running trend of centralizing agriculture in the Midwest, Peck said. Without diverse regional agriculture, there is a danger that a severe storm hitting the one region of the country could wipe out most of the nation’s food supply, he explained.

“If we have to go around the world to feed our people, then we’re going to be in trouble,” he said.

 

Wide-ranging priorities
Among the changes the New York Farm Bureau is seeking is an expansion of the dairy “margin coverage” program that provides payments to farmers when the gap between milk prices and feed prices hits a certain threshold.

“We would like the program to continue but expand the amount of milk that can qualify, increasing it from five to 10 million pounds per farm,” Ammerman said.

Molinaro, R-Rhinebeck, introduced bipartisan legislation in June to increase the amount of milk that can qualify from five million to six million pounds per farm, and to reset cost formulas every five years based on three-year averages. Molinaro’s legislation had five co-sponsors from four states, three Republicans and two Democrats, as of Nov.17.

Tonko, D-Amsterdam, said nutrition and environmental programs under the farm bill are important.

“During my farm bill listening sessions earlier this year, I heard constituents from across our district reiterate the need to expand access to healthy food and reduce food insecurity, the necessity of supporting our local producers and fostering rural economic growth, and the urgency to protect our environment and combat climate change through agriculture,” Tonko said in a statement. “To that end, I’ll be pushing hard in the upcoming farm bill negotiations to protect and increase access to food assistance, particularly by preventing further cuts to SNAP funding.”
Another priority, he said, is making sure local farmers receive a share of the $19.5 billion allocated to the National Resources Conservation Service by the Inflation Reduction Act, a major bill passed last year that includes many initiatives to combat climate change.

Molinaro, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said he hopes the new farm bill will incorporate legislation he introduced to increase funding by $3 million for a federal program that assists farm families that have members with disabilities – as well as legislation he introduced to provide low-interest loans to food distribution businesses and prioritize projects in economically distressed areas.

Other priorities, he said, include stopping China and other adversarial nations from buying up farmland in the United States, making it easier for farmers to qualify for funding for soil conservation projects, and increasing funding for programs that help local fruit and dairy farmers access foreign markets.

“The farm bill is a jobs bill and has historically passed with strong, bipartisan support,” Molinaro said in a statement. “In the upcoming Farm Bill, I’ve prioritized bringing farmers, families and businesses to the table.”

Balint, D-Vt., said she hopes the bill could include legislation she introduced in September to streamline the process of qualifying for federal funding to establish vegetative plots, known as buffers, between active farm fields and water bodies. These buffer zones reduce the chance of flooding, erosion and water pollution.

Balint said she introduced the legislation in response to severe flooding in Vermont this summer. U.S. Sens. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced companion legislation in the Senate, but neither the House nor Senate legislation had any co-sponsors as of Nov. 17.
Balint “is working hard to ensure the farm bill works for small farmers and provides protections and resources for the types of family farms we have across Vermont,” said Sophie Pollock, the congresswoman’s spokeswoman, in a statement. “She is also focused on protecting SNAP benefits for families in need. SNAP is a proven anti-poverty and anti-hunger program that keeps working families afloat.”

Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, has advocated for continuing to make chocolate milk and other flavored milk eligible for schools to serve under the federal school lunch program — and for adding whole milk to the types of milk that are eligible.

John Sheehan, a spokesman for The Adirondack Council, said the regional environmental organization’s policy priorities in a new farm bill include continued funding of the Conservation Stewardship Program, which addresses soil health, climate change, water quality and incentivizes carbon-sequestering forests; creating a system for collecting cropland production data about the additional work and value involved in rotating cover crops; and continuing to provide crop insurance discounts to farmers who plant cover crops.