The new farm bill will not be enacted until next year because of continuing disagreements over issues such SNAP benefits and higher crop subsidies, said Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow on Wednesday. “I am committed to passing a strong, bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible,” she said, but the process is taking longer than hoped.
During a Senate speech, Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said improvements in the federally subsidized crop insurance program would deliver immediate benefits to farmers while higher reference prices would not be felt until fall 2025. Farm groups have given priority to both of those goals, and John Boozman of Arkansas, the senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, has been a bulldog proponent of an increase in reference prices, a key factor in calculating crop subsidies.
“Crop insurance and [export] markets” are the top two concerns of farmers, said Stabenow. She also pointed to analyses showing that a so-called escalator clause in the 2018 farm law would automatically increase reference prices for major crops.
“I know we will need an extension” of the 2018 law into 2024, said Stabenow. Without an extension, the government-guaranteed price for fresh milk would more than double on Jan. 1 under the terms of fallback agricultural statutes. Crop supports would also climb to unworkable levels.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has offered to provide several billion dollars of offsets for farm bill costs, said Stabenow. Negotiations in the Senate and House Agriculture committees were at an impasse, in part because there was no new funding for the farm bill.
Stabenow rejected suggestions that land stewardship funding should be reduced to pay for larger spending on commodity subsidies. And it would be “unconscionable to further cut” SNAP, she said.
She said she and Boozman were committed to producing a bipartisan farm bill. “We can get this done,” she said, “in the coming months.”