Farm Bill tensions ramp up over conservation, fire and food aid

Leaders of both parties are calling on Congress to quickly pass a revised Farm Bill before funds run out this summer — but tensions are re-emerging over the key ideological divide that helped scuttle last year’s farm bill.

Members of both parties expressed the importance of not cutting popular food aid and conservation programs, but there’s a wide array of competing interests that will make passage a challenge.

“In what seemingly is a daily occurrence, taxpayer dollars are being sent to every corner of the country, yet nothing has changed,” House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pa.) said at a Wednesday hearing.

“We are not producing more fertilizer. We are not reducing the cost of production. We are not making food more affordable. However, we are burdening the taxpayer. We are losing ground on the world stage. We are a net agricultural importer,” he added.

“We are less independent, less resilient, and less competitive.”

One major way that Republicans have proposed to lower those food costs is to increase subsidies to farmers — which requires finding new funds from someplace.

Over the past year, Republicans have repeatedly signaled they would like to strip money from climate and food aid programs and use it to increase payments to commodity farmers, particularly in crops like peanuts, rice and cotton.

That’s a proposal that voters in six agricultural states oppose almost three to one.   

The leading Democrat on the House Agriculture committee called on Republicans to “put aside” proposals to cut billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid from the forthcoming Farm Bill package.

In remarks on Wednesday morning, Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) declared those funds to be off limits.

“Let’s put aside the proposal to cut SNAP benefits. Whether you call it a ‘cut’ or a ‘reduction of future benefits,’ Democrats oppose it.”

Scott also called on the GOP to drop its proposal to redirect funds in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) meant for conservation and energy programs. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not going to result in an effective farm bill,” he said.

Scott noted that there isn’t enough money in popular farm bill programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to give money to all of the farmers who apply — even those who the U.S. Department of Agriculture deems have worthy projects.

“Almost three out of every four EQIP applications across the country were denied — and only about half of all those approved applications got funded,” Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) told Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who was addressing the committee.

“I constantly hear from farmers in my district that they want better access to these conservation programs, that their demand is meeting or even exceeding expected outlays of IRA money to bridge this gap,” Budzinski added.

Vilsack said that the agency lacked “adequate staff and adequate technical assistance” and the resources needed to get funds “into the field more quickly.”

But if the agency loses access to $19.5 billion in conservation funds granted by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act, ”obviously that’s going to impact and affect our ability to do more work.”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) in turn lambasted Vilsack for his presence at the U.N. climate conference, and for the administration’s support for cutting emissions from agriculture. “Farmers are not on board with this climate cult agenda,” she said.  

“Front and center as part of this: Do you agree with John Kerry that we have to get farmers to net zero?” she asked.

“I agree that that’s an opportunity for farmers to make more money — for small and midsize producers to actually stay in the fight,” Vilsack said. “These are voluntary programs.”

“We’re not gonna let you jeopardize our nation’s food supply for the current climate change agenda,” Miller said.

In his opening statement, Thompson acknowledged the priority of maintaining SNAP benefits, but called on Democrats to figure out what else they could cut.

“I continue to implore my Democrat colleagues to think, in earnest, about those priorities, priorities that can be funded without cutting a SNAP benefit or eliminating the important conservation programs we have all come to appreciate,” he said.

Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) said Republican claims they were committed to protecting SNAP were “just disingenuous,” because they were “pulling cuts from future benefits and calling them savings.”

Adams pointed to the possibility that Republicans would reverse 2021 reforms in in the Thrifty Food Program, part of SNAP, which she argued would go back to “absurd assumptions about how low income families have to stretch their food budgets.”

“For example, prior to 2021 the Thrifty food plan as soon weekly diet family of four would include 12 pounds of potatoes, 25 pounds of milk, 20 pounds of orange juice, five pounds of fresh oranges. and I don’t think any of us could reasonably eat a diet consisting substantially of potatoes, milk and oranges for long periods of time.”

Republicans, in turn, argued that SNAP money was being wasted through fraud.

In comments to Vilsack, Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-Tenn.) argued that SNAP funds could be going to undocumented immigrants — something he has sparred with the secretary about at past hearings. 

“People who are not here legally are not getting SNAP,” Vilsack said. “I agree with you that we need to make sure that we’re keeping an eye on fraudulent activities. I’m just afraid hungry Americans are not going to receive the benefits they need.”

Questioning from other representatives showcased the staggering array of interests and issues facing Congress as they try to craft a farm bill.

Desjarlais asked about support for the walking horse industry. Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) demanded to know why the USDA had refused to agree to new speed increases on how fast workers at slaughterhouses can work — and why the team appointed to study the proposal had come from the University of California.

Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) asked why the Department of Labor required employers to pay workers differently based on what job they do.

“You’re out there and you’re digging sweet potatoes, or loading up melons — and they need you to drive a pickup truck to the store to pick up a part. And all the sudden you get classified at the rate of a truck driver at $40 an hour instead of $20 hour,” Kelly said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) asked what the USDA was doing to increase cybersecurity for farmers, and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) echoed Republican concerns about promoting American products.

“I’m seeing really troubling reports that on average, the American consumer, about 40 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables they consume are from overseas or from our trade partners here,” she said.

“So this together paints a really troubling picture that our smaller producers are really in trouble and getting squeezed out of the market.”

Rouzer, in an aside, offered his own theory of why America’s small farms were failing. “​​It’s only the larger farms that can survive the onslaught of the government — federal, state and local. So the smaller ones go out of business and the bigger ones get bigger because it’s the only way they can survive.”

But Vilsack suggested that America’s declining global exports came from a failure of investment. 

“One of the reasons why the competition is steeper is because folks in the past in our competition invested more for them to essentially squeezed the difference in the gap that we once had,” he said — something that he argued that the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Law helped fix.

Such support would do more to support American agriculture than new free trade agreements, Vilsack said, while also casting doubt on Congress’s ability to pass sweeping trade reforms.

And Republican representatives from livestock states repeatedly rose to ask what the agency would do to help protect American poultry, pork and beef from potentially ruinous outbreaks of infection disease.

Reps. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) and Gluesenkamp Perez each asked about what the agency was doing to focus on fire in the nation’s forests — whether through prescribed burns or markets to promote logging in overgrown commercial forests.

More broadly, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) noted the cost that more intense and frequent extreme weather has exerted on her state’s agriculture — something that Vilsack argued that conservation spending could help to proactively address.

Hanging over the hearings is the past failure of the farm bill. In his opening statements, Scott recalled the tumultuous year that had led to Congress’ failure to pass the key agricultural support bill last year before it expired — leading to a last-minute year-end scramble to pass a stopgap bill, and to a farm bill negotiations lingering into this year. 

Part of that delay, as Scott noted, came from “changes in Republican leadership [and] potential government shutdowns,” which “injected uncertainty into the process and unfortunately slowed our work.”

Scott praised Thompson for his willingness to cross the aisle — and nodded toward the fight to come.

“I do not envy you, Mr. Chairman,” he concluded.