After months of inactivity on farm bill, there was a flurry of news and activity from both House and Senate Ag panels.
House Ag Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) told Bloomberg he wants to “fast track” a new farm bill, with plans to advance it through his committee after he releases a Chairman’s Mark and his panel has time to mark it up. Floor action would depend on when leadership gives him House floor time. Our sources say House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is pressing Thompson to get something done. The $1.5 trillion, five-year farm bill reauthorization was initially planned for last year but was deferred to 2024. Congress provided some breathing room by agreeing to a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill through Sept 30.
Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) in a letter to colleagues said the new farm bill presents an opportunity to modernize and improve the safety net for American farmers. She stressed crop insurance is a crucial tool that has seen improvements and expansion and called for more options and affordability in crop insurance for all commodities, including specialty crops and livestock. She also noted the Title I farmer safety net needs updates to Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs and will consider increasing the “effective reference price” for covered commodities. Stabenow is working on a plan for crop insurance that would bolster the program but would force farmers to choose either crop insurance or the farmer safety net programs currently available, which would help “justify a very high federal subsidy.” Stabenow indicated this was not a new concept since it was deployed previously for cotton. “In order to get an 80% federal subsidy, you would choose between programs. That’s worked well… And I think it is the path that has the most support.”
Perspective on Stabenow’s crop insurance or safety net choice plan. One farm bill analyst told us: “The cotton choice did not work out well. That is why cotton farmers were put back into the commodity title in 2017. Crop insurance is absolutely vital to producers. But it is not designed to handle every peril a farmer faces. Multiple years of depressed prices are not addressed by crop insurance. High and rising foreign subsidies, tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers are not addressed by crop insurance. That is the job of the commodity title. As we head into lower commodity prices again, lawmakers should not repeat the same mistakes as in the past where some farm bills were written as though crop prices would always be high. At some point, we ought to learn from the past as we chart the future. 2024 would be a good year in which to start.”
When cotton farmers were put back into the commodity title in 2018, they could elect into STAX for the year for certain cotton acreage or into PLC... but not both. That was mainly a budget exercise proposed to ensure that cotton’s re-entrance into Title I was fully paid for. It wasn’t meant as some major policy precedent.