The critically important legislation got another last-minute extension in December, but farmers, advocates, and eaters alike all want to know what the new year will bring for ag policy.
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The critically important legislation got another last-minute extension in December, but farmers, advocates, and eaters alike all want to know what the new year will bring for ag policy.
January 8, 2025
Photo credit: Tom Werner, Getty Images
At the end of December, during a week when most Americans were finishing holiday shopping and getting their out-of-office messages ready, members of Congress were once again racing to reach a spending deal to avert a government shutdown. With hours to spare, they managed to eke out a compromise.
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One of the key components of the final spending package was a second one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, the country’s most important piece of food and farm legislation, which is supposed to be rewritten every five years.
Congress first extended the bill back in September 2023, after divided lawmakers failed to get a new 2023 Farm Bill to the floor. Now, more than two years later, the second extension means that core programs like crop insurance, conservation programs, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for food-insecure families will continue to operate as normal.
For that reason, when it comes to SNAP, “no [new] farm bill is better than a bad farm bill,” says Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), a leading anti-hunger group in D.C. Still, FRAC’s team is hoping for a 2025 bill that incorporates improvements to the program that increase its reach and efficacy.
“We want to eliminate time limits that are existing. We want to see what can be done for college students who are trying to study themselves out of poverty and get better jobs,” he said. “We also want to make moves towards removing the prohibition on hot prepared foods and repealing the lifetime ban for individuals with felony drug convictions.”
None of that can happen without a new bill, but it’s a long-shot list even if the process starts moving. Instead, potential cuts to SNAP benefits and how much funding (and the kind of funding) provided to farmers are two of many big questions about what a farm bill might look like if it does move forward this year.
But farm groups are especially adamant that the process is on a schedule for good reason and repeatedly kicking the can down the road is problematic on several fronts.
“Increasingly, we’ll be operating under outdated policy that doesn’t meet the modern needs of farmers and ranchers in our food system,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), which advocates for federal policies that support small and sustainable farms. Most of the policies currently in place, Lavender noted, were written in 2017. Since then, the accelerating climate crisis and the pandemic drastically changed conditions for farmers, eaters, and the entire food system.
Lavender’s also concerned about what farm-policy wonks refer to as the “orphan programs,” a group of about 20 small programs that don’t have guaranteed funding. These programs include food and agriculture research grants, biofuel programs, and farm-to-food-bank grants. In December, NSAC pushed for Congress to include the approximately $200 million needed to keep them going. Overall farm bill spending totals about $100 billion annually, so the ask was tiny in comparison.
“It’s a no-brainer,” he said. Congress didn’t include that funding in the final legislation, so those programs are now in limbo. They can only continue operating until they’ve run through the money they’ve got on hand. Organic farming was hit particularly hard, with three orphan programs now unfunded, including the popular cost-share initiative that helps defray the cost of certification.
“We are deeply disheartened by this failure to support the organic sector,” said Abby Youngblood, Executive Director of the organic advocacy alliance the National Organic Coalition (NOC), in a press release after the bill passed. “Excluding funding for ‘orphaned’ organic programs . . . is a significant blow to organic farms and businesses, many of which are already operating under severe economic pressures.”
Congress also failed to include language that would have moved climate-specific conservation funding allocated through President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into the farm bill pot. That move would increase the amount of money available to farmers who want to implement environmentally friendly practices over the long-term. It could still happen in a future farm bill, but because the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has already been giving out that money since the IRA passed, the amount available will continue to decrease the longer the process drags on.
Lavender said that represents an opportunity to “make an investment so that it grows for farmers and there’s more opportunity. To us, that’s another reason to pass a farm bill this year.”
The 2024 election significantly changed the power dynamics on both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, which are responsible for the farm bill. Republicans are now in charge in both chambers: Representative G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) kept his position as chair in the House, while Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas) took over as chair in the Senate.
Last year, Thompson introduced a full farm bill draft, while Boozman released a framework outlining his priorities. In an email, the new spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee said that framework still reflects Boozman’s priorities.
The two proposals are generally in alignment, and the most controversial among them is a rollback of the update the USDA made to the Thrifty Food Plan under President Biden. The Thrifty Food Plan determines the value of SNAP benefits, and in 2021, the USDA conducted the first review of the plan since 1975, evaluating factors like current food prices, the typical American diet, and nutrition guidance. Its resulting update led to an increase in benefits of about $1 per day.
“So many people came out to vote this past election with one of the top issues being they can’t afford to put food on the table.”
Republicans are now trying to turn the clock back on that update, arguing that it does not constitute a cut in SNAP benefits but instead is a return to the past protocol of cost-neutral updates. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it would lead to a $30 billion drop in SNAP spending over 10 years.
“That’s a cut,” Bhatti said. “And it’s really concerning, because so many people came out to vote this past election with one of the top issues being they can’t afford to put food on the table. With the very program that exists to help put food on the table being on the chopping block, it’s not a good look for Republicans to advance this.”
Bhatti said that for FRAC, rolling back the Thrifty Food Plan update would be a red line, and hunger groups and their allies hold a lot of sway in D.C. farm bill negotiations. “We’ve been able to successfully push back against harmful changes to SNAP in the past, and I am very confident we’ll be able to let lawmakers know that any cuts to the program will harm their constituents, because there is no congressional district that is not touched by food insecurity.”
Still, the incoming administration and the party’s lawmakers are coming in with a goal of making cuts across the board. As a result, the tension between cutting spending and making constituents happy is likely to hang over every aspect of the bill.
“Family farmers and ranchers are already facing significant challenges. This is not the time to scale back critical programs without a clear strategy or justification.”
On farm programs, Thompson and Boozman’s 2024 drafts also propose increasing payments to commodity growers of crops including corn, soy, wheat, and cotton. That’s been the Republican approach for ages, but the Project 2025 roadmap and proposals from further-right lawmakers in the party last year called for major cuts to commodity spending and crop insurance subsidies.
“We’ve seen mixed signals. The version passed by Chairman Thompson through the House Agriculture Committee, which proposed injecting billions into the farm safety net, is likely to serve as a starting point,” said Mike Stranz, vice president of advocacy at the National Farmers Union (NFU), one of the two most influential farmer groups in the country. “However, we’ve also seen documents from President-elect Trump’s allies outlining potential deep cuts to farm programs. Family farmers and ranchers are already facing significant challenges. This is not the time to scale back critical programs without a clear strategy or justification.”
Those documents have also called for cuts to conservation programs. And Thompson and Boozman’s proposals support moving the IRA conservation money into the farm bill but also stripping it of its climate focus. That change, they say, would better serve the broader conservation needs of all farmers and ranchers. (Many conservation program grants have environmental benefits but are not necessarily related to climate.) Democrats have fiercely opposed that change, and NSAC and NFU say farmers don’t want it, either.
“Farmers are voting with their applications saying, ‘We like this money. Even if it’s targeted at climate, we like it.’ They’re using it in record numbers,” said Lavender. “So, to us, it does not make sense to strip the climate sideboards, if it’s popular among farmers in red states and blue states alike.”
As the new Congress gets started and the Trump administration gets settled later this month, D.C. is likely to be consumed by the budget reconciliation process, among other priorities. Some insiders think a farm bill won’t get done this year or anytime in the near future, becoming like the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, another big legislative package that is supposed to get reauthorized every five years but hasn’t been taken up since 2010.
But Stranz said NFU’s team will be meeting with the new committees to get the lay of the land and get new members up to speed on the importance of the farm bill. “We anticipate another markup of the farm bill in the House this year, with the Senate likely to follow,” he said. “Our focus remains on ensuring lawmakers understand how this legislation impacts agriculture and why it needs to be a priority early this year.”
While Republicans will be running the show, many in D.C. say that on farm policy especially, Democrats could be key to getting a bill through. That’s because, given the tension in the GOP between farm-state asks and a desire to implement spending cuts, it may be easier for the agriculture chairs to woo moderate Democrats’ votes than it will be to get their far-right colleagues to vote for anything that costs money.
When asked about a timeline, the Senate Agriculture Committee spokesperson said that passing a farm bill is Boozman’s top priority. Just a few days in, they sent out a release announcing his official rise to chairman of the committee and reportedly are already scheduling a confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s Agriculture Secretary nominee, Brooke Rollins, for next week.
Going into 2025, Boozman explained in an emailed statement, “I look forward to working with all of my colleagues on the committee to develop a consensus approach to address the many pressing concerns throughout rural communities nationwide.”
“If SNAP gets cut, people are going to suffer. People are going to struggle, and they will remember that come the next election day.”
On the blue side of the aisle, there are two fresh faces he’ll be working with, with Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) now serving as the top Democrat on the Senate side and Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) on the House side. Both represent rural America (and also happen to be from the same state) and tout their ability to work across the aisle.
Regardless, hunger and farm groups say they’ll do everything they can to push both parties toward their priorities—and simply getting it done.
“While the extension and additional funding provide short-term relief, they are no substitute for the stability and long-term vision a new farm bill offers,” Stranz said. “Family farmers and ranchers face ongoing challenges, from high input costs to unpredictable markets. They need a comprehensive, updated farm bill to ensure programs are responsive to today’s realities and to provide certainty for the next five years.”
On nutrition programs, FRAC’s Bhatti had a simple message for the new leadership. “If SNAP gets cut, people are going to suffer. People are going to struggle, and they will remember that come the next election day.”
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