About every five years since 1933, Congress has passed a Farm Bill – a large piece of legislation including farm safety net programs, food and nutrition access, conservation, trade and more.
Much, much more.
The current U.S. Senate draft of the Farm Bill is nearly 1,000 pages long. In a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing on the legislation last week, senators had over 200 amendments to propose – though only a “manager’s package” of 34 was approved.
But the future of this year’s Farm Bill is uncertain. Senators were unable to move the bill out of committee last week.
Partisan arguments over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the absence of the Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell for a vote and an ongoing Senate recess have stalled a path to a floor vote.
Congress passed the last major Farm Bill update in 2018. Since then, it has been given three one-year extensions without major changes.
John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said recent history is repeating itself.
“If you look at the structure of current farm policy, it is not adequate or appropriate as a risk management tool to help farmers deal with unprecedented year after year of higher ag input costs and ag commodity prices that are well below the cost of production,” Hansen said.
Amid a sluggish farm economy, Hansen said the time for new policy is long overdue.
“If the farm or ranch business is in financial crisis, the farm or ranch family that owns it and operates it is not far behind,” he said. “It's all kinds of crises – from marital to financial to all of the problems that happen to people who are under enormous stress.”
What makes up a Farm Bill?
The Farm Bill has 12 titles – or sections – focused on different policy areas.
“A commodity title, a crop insurance title, a conservation title, and a nutrition title where the SNAP program sits – those four titles represent about 99% of total spending on the Farm Bill,” said Brad Lubben, an ag policy and economics specialist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Extension program.
Those titles cover “farm safety net” programs – including natural disaster assistance, guaranteed loans, protection against low commodity prices and programs that help repair infrastructure in environmentally conscious ways.
Updates to major farm safety net programs were passed in last year’s federal budget bill, leaving a so-called “Skinny Farm Bill” to address other topics.
“In some sense, we left the less-contentious stuff to the Skinny Farm Bill, but we also sort of left the traditional coalition on the roadside along the way,” Lubben said. “Whether you can in fact get the coalition back together to get a Farm Bill done is an important question.”
Lubben said the programs left over are living on one-year extensions or need general updates.
“Those include things like authorization for rural development, research and education and specialty crops or horticulture programs. It includes authorization for trade promotion. It includes authorization for bioenergy incentive programs,” he said. “They're small by comparison in terms of spending and intention, but they're important.”
Hansen said farmers rely on the Farm Bill for certainty and risk management, and improved policies will stabilize the ag industry to keep Nebraska farms running.
“When we lose farmers, there's always a huge number of painful stories that go with that, and you're losing the economic base as well as the population base of our rural communities,” Hansen said.
Between high diesel and fertilizer prices caused by the war with Iran, shifting tariffs and low commodity selling prices, many American farmers will operate at a loss this year.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that total farm debt will rise to nearly $625 billion this year, outpacing the value of farm equity and assets.
Some assistance has come to farms in the form of large bridge payments from the federal government – the most recent being a $12 billion assistance package for farmers affected by trade disputes. A U.S. House bill proposes another $11 billion.
Hansen said improved policy – not bailouts – is a better answer to farmers’ struggles.
“Here we are in terrible financial shape, so that can be a way to measure how inappropriate our current farm policy is,” he said. “If our farm policy was working the way it should, we shouldn't need ad hoc payments.”
Amid these financial struggles, Hansen said an update is absolutely crucial.
“This has gone [in Congress] on for three years. That's unprecedented. There's nothing like it in my over 50 years of tracking farm policy closely that is comparable,” Hansen said. “It's like calling up the fire department when your house and your barn is on fire, and the fire department leaves you a voicemail.”
A path to passage
The main sticking point to moving the bill forward is disagreement over federal food assistance. Democrats wanted a delay on provisions passed in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) requiring states to pay for part of benefit costs if their SNAP error rates were above 6%. They also wanted a fix to states with very high error rates being exempt from the cost sharing.
Republicans shot down the proposals. Both parties accused the other of abandoning farmers in the face of the divisive issue.
SNAP makes up the greatest share of spending on its own. In the 2018 Farm Bill, the Nutrition title accounted for 76% of the $428 billion bill’s planned expenditures.
Lubben said food assistance programs added to the Farm Bill in the 1970s created a coalition between rural and urban legislators, giving everyone direct stake in passing quality farm policy.
“Often it can be called a farm-and-food bill, and it's the farm and food portions that have been key to having a coalition that supports a Farm Bill for most of the last 50-plus years,” Lubben said.
The Farm Bill’s fate also partially depends on the presence of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who sits on the Senate Ag Committee. McConnell’s extended leave of absence due to medical issues allowed him to vote on amendments by proxy, but he could not give a final vote on moving the bill forward without being physically present.
His vote would grant the Senate Ag Committee a narrow Republican majority, allowing the Farm Bill to advance to the Senate floor. Flipping a Democratic vote in favor of passage would be another avenue for advancement out of committee.
“Most likely the scenario is – if and when Senator McConnell returns – they may be able to vote the bill out of committee and into the Senate, but there's no real consensus about when they can actually take it up in the Senate on the floor,” Lubben said. “They've still got to figure out how to get bipartisan support to get past a filibuster.”