Leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees are discussing putting elements of a farm bill in an end-of-the year aid package, including the addition of possible new funding for commodity programs and crop insurance reimbursements.
There also are active conversations about potentially rolling in unspent conservation funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to permanently increase the baseline for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and other programs, according to those familiar with the discussions.
About $14 billion in four IRA-funded programs, including EQIP, hasn’t been obligated by USDA, according to congressional staff.
Lawmakers also will need to provide funding for a handful of smaller farm bill programs that were left without funding when the latest farm bill extension expired.
With hopes for a full farm bill dead for this year, Congress is going to have to pass another extension of the 2018 farm bill next month. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told fellow Republicans Tuesday that the extension would be for one year, said Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio.
The ongoing conversations revolve around which provisions can be included with the extension and a separate package of aid for disaster-related losses.
The White House Monday requested $24 billion for disaster programs, including $21 billion for producers who lost crops and livestock to hurricanes, wildfires and drought in 2023 and 2024.
A top priority, at least for Republicans on ag committees, is relief for market losses to go with the disaster aid. The method for compensating farmers for the downturn in markets is still debated, although one idea under discussion, according to a senior Hill aide, is to increase commodity program reference prices. Another is to provide reimbursement for crop insurance premiums.
The goal, this aide said, is to craft the "extension-plus" package in such a way that it provides immediate assistance to farmers as well as some assurance to lenders and farmers going into the 2025 planting season.
Sen. John Boozman (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) “We need a situation where you provide some economic assistance for this terrible year we've had this year. And then also looking forward, we need to be in a situation where we increase the safety nets so that farmers will be able to go to their banks and borrow the money they’re going to need," the top Republican on the Senate Ag Committee, John Boozman of Arkansas, told Agri-Pulse on Tuesday.
The package also could be written in such a way that it provides a permanent increase in funding for commodity programs.
The negotiations were still in the preliminary stage as of Tuesday but have not included Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
Stabenow, who on Monday released the draft text of her farm bill, which was quickly panned by Republicans as too late and full of poison pills, told reporters that the aid package under discussion appeared to be skewed to a select number of farmers and designed as an “end-around” to avoid passing a comprehensive new farm bill.
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“What I'm hearing about are things that only help certain farmers. And the whole point of the debate on the farm bill is not to just help some farmers, but to make it fair for all farmers,” she said.
She confirmed she had not been actively involved in the discussions about an aid package.
In addition to bolstering commodity programs, lawmakers also have been discussing the possibility of reimbursing crop insurance premiums and providing assistance to crop insurance agents who have seen their commissions slashed in areas with chronic losses.
The senior aide said the decision about rolling IRA funding into the bill will have to be made by congressional leadership. Republicans would likely insist on removing the funding’s climate guardrails, but GOP leaders may also want to leave the issue for next Congress when they will control both House and Senate.
The urgency behind the aid package reflects not only the income losses facing farmers this year but also the concern that passing a full farm bill may even be harder to do in 2025 when lawmakers likely would have to score the legislation's cost off an updated baseline that will take into account the decline in market prices. A new baseline from the Congressional Budget Office could significantly increase the estimated cost of raising reference prices.
The Price Loss Coverage program triggers payments to farmers in years in which the average market price is below the reference price for the commodity. Thus the lower the projected market price, the more expensive it would be for lawmakers to raise the reference price.
Trent Kelly, R-Miss.In October, Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., proposed an option for relief payments called the Farmer Assistance and Revenue Mitigation Act. It would trigger payments to farmers if the expected revenue for the 2024 crop year is below the projected cost of production. Economists at The Ohio State University and the University of Illinois estimated the program would pay out $21.7 billion.
Collin Peterson, a former House Agriculture Committee chairman who now lobbies for Midwest agricultural interests, is pushing lawmakers to consider aid to farmers in the form of insurance premium reductions and an increase in coverage.
Peterson brought a group of farmers and lenders this week to meet with key lawmakers and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s staff. He told Agri-Pulse that premium cuts and coverage increases could provide more immediate relief to farmers than changing commodity programs.
Stabenow's draft bill would authorize partial reimbursement of crop insurance premiums and fees farmers have paid for coverage under the Noninsured Disaster Assistance Program (NAP).
Bill O’Conner, a farm policy lobbyist and longtime GOP aide to the House Ag Committee, told Agri-Pulse that passing an aid package for farmers in the lame duck session could make it harder to pass a farm bill in 2025 with increased funding for commodity programs. That’s because he thinks Republicans are likely to be concerned about the budget deficit in 2025.
On the other hand, it could be easier to pass a farm bill in the first part of 2025, if Congress is unable to pass market loss relief in December. In that case, “there's going to be a lot of very disappointed rural members if they leave here and don't do anything about economic distress of farmers,” he said.
A senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Jerry Moran of Kansas, said in a post on X Tuesday that since Congress can’t pass a farm bill this year the panel will “focus fully” on negotiating “a natural disaster and economic assistance supplemental for farmers and ranchers who have suffered from high input costs and low commodity prices along with drought.”
House Ag Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., stressed to reporters this week that farmers need assistance for both natural disasters and the market downturn. “If we're going to have national security, we're going to have to have food security,” he said. “So, we need a robust disaster package, a disaster package that's robust for agriculture.”
Another ag committee member, Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., said Tuesday he hoped key parts of the commodity title could be included in disaster legislation or another legislative vehicle "so that the lenders will have confidence that our farmers have the safety net they need.”
Lydia Johnson contributed to this report.
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