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.
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“Increasingly, we’ll be operating under outdated policy that doesn’t meet the modern needs of farmers and ranchers in our food system,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable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 Shape of a 2025 Farm Bill
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.
