Following a resounding vote in the Senate, the House could vote as early as today to pass the compromise farm bill that modestly strengthens the farm safety net and ends an attempt by House Republicans to impose stricter work requirements on food stamp recipients. House Agriculture chairman Micheal Conaway said rather than risk a stalemate over the bill, “I chose the route of getting this farm bill done.”
Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson said he expected a huge majority in the House for the $87 billion-a-year legislation, possibly matching the scale of the Senate’s 87-13 roll call. “If Congress passes this legislation, I will encourage the President to sign it,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
House and Senate negotiators settled on a package of minor provisions for increased efficiency in food stamp operations, rather than the GOP bid to make millions of “work capable” adults work at least 20 hours a week or spend equal amounts of time in job training or workfare to qualify for SNAP.
The compromise farm bill offers the first chance in five years for growers to switch between the traditionally designed Price Loss Coverage and insurance-like Agriculture Risk Coverage programs.
Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts said the mostly status quo farm bill will deliver “certainty and predictability” to growers and their lenders as a counter-balance to the ongoing slump in farm income and trade war with China. “There’s a lot of farmers right up on the edge,” said Roberts.
The bill would increase marketing loan rates and includes an escalator for PLC reference prices if commodity prices rise in the coming years. In 2019, growers would have the option to switch between PLC and ARC. That choice would be binding on 2019 and 2020 crops. After that, there would be an annual opportunity to change between PLC and ARC. Growers also will have the chance to update program yields in 2019.
The Conservation Reserve would expand to 27 million acres, an increase of 3 million acres, under the farm bill, with the cost offset by a lower rental payment to landowners. Funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program would expand while spending on the green-payment Conservation Stewardship Program would drop.
The 87 votes for the farm bill was the largest total ever in the Senate for a farm bill, said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the Democratic leader on the Agriculture Committee. Roberts said the landslide vote in the Senate would smooth the path to enactment of the farm bill.
All of the senators voting against the farm bill were Republicans. Some wanted food stamp reform. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley voted against the bill because negotiators scraped his provision to limit crop subsidies to farmers, their spouses and one “manager” per farm. Instead, the bill loosened payment rules to make nieces, nephews and first cousins of farmers eligible for up to $125,000 a year in payments.
Grassley said House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway, from the No. 1 cotton and cattle state of Texas, was responsible for the change in payment rules. “He doesn’t mind having people that are wealthy, that are not directly involved in farming operations, from profiting,” said Grassley.