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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
The Senate looks to finally name its team of farm bill negotiators this week while also finishing work on a $154 billion spending bill for a bevy of departments and agencies important to agriculture, including USDA and FDA.
A USDA savings account for rural electric and telephone cooperatives that allows them to earn substantially more interest than they could from private bankers has become a major source of potential funding for a new farm bill.
The Senate plans to name its farm bill negotiators this week, clearing the way for the talks to begin before House members scatter for the August recess.
The fate of the farm bill this year could hinge on whether House and Senate negotiators can find a compromise on tightening work requirements for food stamp recipients in ways that could appeal to at least some Senate Democrats.
The House takes a key step this week toward beginning negotiations with the Senate on a final farm bill, but the talks may not formally begin until August.
The passage of the House and Senate farm bills over two weeks and the overwhelming, bipartisan margin of support for the Senate measure is providing new optimism that Congress can agree on a final version that President Donald Trump will sign this fall.
A bipartisan farm bill that would protect crop insurance and commodity programs as well as nutrition assistance from cuts passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin, 86-11, clearing the way for negotiations to begin next month with the House.
Leaders of the Senate Agriculrure Committee are working this week to protect their farm bill from floor amendments that could cut crop insurance or other key programs.
The House and Senate Agriculture committees faced the tough task of squeezing existing programs to find money to pay for other programs that the 2014 farm bill will leave unfunded when it expires Sept. 30.
The White House criticized the Senate farm bill for not tightening work requirements for food stamp recipients and omitting regulatory reform proposals, but the administration notably stopped short of threatening a veto of the legislation.
