Republicans are unwilling to compromise on SNAP and climate funding in the new farm bill, and as a result, “we’re stuck,” said Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. “The only way you get that done is if it’s bipartisan.”
Progress on the farm bill has been stalled for months. House and Senate Republicans want large increases in crop subsidy spending, cuts in SNAP funding, and to be able to use climate funding for soil and water projects that do not capture carbon or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Stabenow has suggested smaller increases in crop supports while opposing SNAP cuts and loosening the guardrails on climate mitigation funding.
“This year, we’re stuck because of an increased sense of partisanship and a desire by Republicans to really, really play politics with food,” said Stabenow during a Zoom call to rural Americans by the Harris-Walz campaign on Tuesday night. “So we’re working really hard on that. But on the other side, just like so much else, it just seems to be politics, and [former president] Donald Trump weighing in to try to stop anything from happening.”
Stabenow said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “was involved in the very successful [farm bills] we did in 2008 and 2014 and 2018,” when he was a congressman and member of the House Agriculture Committee.
Walz was a sponsor of “marker” bills intended to draw attention to land stewardship and beginning farmers when lawmakers wrote the 2018 farm bill. The proposals included a nationwide “sodbuster” rule to deter the conversion of grasslands to crops; support for cover crops and rotational grazing through the Conservation Stewardship Program, the first USDA working lands program; and higher cost-share payments in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program for practices that involved active conservation management. The beginning farmer bill sought a national policy to expand access to land at affordable prices and to equip new farmers and military veterans with the skills they needed to be successful.
The 2018 farm bill included some of Walz’s proposal for veterans entering agriculture, reported Roll Call. “Those provisions expanded access to farm education and training and all USDA agriculture programs to individuals who obtained veteran status within the last decade. They also provided crop insurance benefits for veterans who gained their status in the last five years, including an additional 10 percent premium subsidy for additional coverage policies that have a premium subsidy, and an exemption to the catastrophic risk protection fee of $655 per crop, per county.”
Minnesota offers tax credits to landlords and people who sell or rent farmland, equipment, livestock, or other assets to beginning farmers. The credits vary in size; the maximum is $50,000 for the sale of land. Beginning farmers are required to complete a farm business management class.
The Rural Finance Authority, part of the Minnesota Agriculture Department, also operates a program to reduce the cost of borrowing for beginning farmers. In it, the RFA buys a portion of the farmer’s loan from a local lender at a lower interest rate. “We utilize the local lender’s supporting documentation, so farmers have limited application paperwork with us and only make payments to their bank,” said the RFA. There are also grants, issued through a lottery, of up to $15,000 to help beginning farmers make a down payment on their first farm.
“Minnesota is built on agriculture,” Walz said in mid-July in promoting the assistance for beginning farmers. “We rely on our farmers to feed our families and drive the economy, and it is vital that we support our farmers and create opportunities for new folks to enter the occupation, especially amid difficult times.”