Leaders of the House and Senate Ag committees expressed optimism Tuesday night that they could agree on a new farm bill that could be passed by Congress before the end of the year.
“We’re a long ways from being done, but it feels like we’ve got some movement,” Stabenow told reporters on the sidelines of the annual Friends of the National Arboretum dinner.
She and House Ag Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., both addressed the dinner and chatted for a few minutes after Thompson arrived.
Stabenow confirmed to reporters that the four majority and minority staff directors of the House and Senate committees have been meeting this month.
There's still a “tremendous amount of work to do, but good conversations going on,” she said.
Thompson, in remarks at the dinner, said committee leaders were "close to commencing ... good-faith negotiations where red lines can be cast aside in exchange for good ideas and policies, things that will make a difference in your lives."
Talking to reporters, Stabenow downplayed comments that Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, made earlier this week in Kansas City, where he said Stabenow had told him she was considering a package of farm assistance to attach to a farm bill extension.
She said the conversation was brief and focused on the farm bill.
Thompson told Agri-Pulse before speaking at the dinner that farmers also need some kind of supplemental assistance to go with a new farm bill. Farmers “need two things at this point: They need a farm bill, but they also need some disaster assistance with everything that's been going on," he said.
Funding remains a key challenge for a new farm bill. The version Thompson’s committee advanced in May is $33 billion short of being fully funded and that is even with taking money from the nutrition title, a move that has been a non-starter for Stabenow.
“We're looking at all kinds of options” for funding the bill, Thompson said.
He didn’t rule out getting the House and Senate to override the Congressional Budget Office funding estimate for the bill.
“We’ll see. Ultimately we just have to pay for this thing,” Thompson said.
The top Republican on Senate Ag, John Boozman of Arkansas, went to the Senate floor earlier Tuesday to call for passage of a new farm bill and also said farmers need supplemental assistance to compensate for the recent downturn in commodity markets.
“Farmers across the country need a bridge to help their family farms survive into next year. We’ve seen previous ad hoc assistance programs established in a period of weeks, as demonstrated by then [Ag] Secretary [Sonny] Perdue when the COVID-19 pandemic created disruptions for producers. That level of timely and urgent response by Congress and the administration is once again warranted,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
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Because of the way the Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage programs operate, payments farmers are eligible for based on the value of this year’s crops won’t be made until fall 2025. Likewise, payments related to 2025 production won’t be made until fall 2026.
Boozman said he was also committed to passing a new farm bill yet this year:
Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman“The next farm bill is the appropriate place to make the necessary long-term corrections to our farm safety net, but farmers need timely support addressing 2024 losses as they enter the winter months when they make planting decisions and secure financing for the upcoming crop year. We must redouble our efforts to pass a farm bill, before the end of the calendar year, that meets this moment – one that provides the support our farmers desperately need to stay in business."
Economists say that farm margins are likely to remain thin well into next year, despite expected cuts in interest expenses, creating the squeeze in farm income that has lawmakers debating the need for supplemental aid.
Prices for corn, soybeans and other commodities have fallen sharply with stocks building and farmers expected to harvest bumper crops this fall.
“We are moving into a narrow margin situation, perhaps faster than I would have anticipated, even in February,” USDA’s chief economist, Seth Meyer, said at this week’s annual Ag Outlook Forum presented by Agri-Pulse and the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City.
He said farmers appear to be heading into a period where income for row crop producers could be down for some time, barring shocks to supplies.
“You have several good years of farm income, and then you have several years for which, oftentimes producers have to live on … those few good years. And at the moment that appears where we're at,” Meyer said.
A new farm income forecast from the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute is in line with Meyer’s thinking.
FAPRI, which provides 10-year projections for the farm economy, estimates net farm income at $137.4 billion this year, down from $150.1 billion in 2023, and declining next year to $126 billion before recovering a bit to $134.7 billion in 2026. The projected amounts are in 2024 dollars.
FAPRI estimates that total farm production expenses, which includes input costs for livestock producers as well as row crop growers, will decline from $456.7 billion this year to $446.8 billion in 2025. In 2023, production expenses totaled $461.9 billion, FAPRI said.
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