Iowa’s Chuck Grassley: Don’t expect a new Farm Bill to pass this year

TOLEDO, Iowa — Iowa’s U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is pessimistic when it comes to the prospects of passing a new Farm Bill yet this year.

Grassley, speaking Monday to The Gazette, said Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee can’t seem to reach an agreement on spending priorities. The sprawling package that’s reauthorized every five years supports several key farm and safety net programs, like crop insurance, as well as agriculture research, rural development, conservation, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — once called food stamps — and more.

The 2018 Farm Bill lapsed on Sept. 30, 2023. Currently, programs implemented by the Farm Bill are operating under a one-year extension, including commodity supports, ag conservation, nutrition, trade, research, bioenergy and rural development.

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Just as inflation has squeezed families at the grocery store, farmers have been hard by higher input costs from fertilizer, fuel, pesticides and seeds that undercut profitability, the Republican senator said.

Facing high interest rates and stagnant commodity prices, Republicans have pushed for the farm safety net to be updated to reflect these challenges.

“We feel on the Republican side that the next five-year Farm Bill ought to reflect the inflation since 2018” that farmers have experienced, Grassley said, by raising reference prices that factor in increased production costs that have eaten into farmers’ bottom lines for the last several years.

Reference prices are used to calculate payments to farmers in the Price Loss Coverage or Agriculture Risk Coverage programs if the national average market value of a commodity falls below that federal benchmark.

“We’ve got to have more money in the Farm Bill to support those efforts, and we ought to take money from other parts of the Farm Bill to do it,” Grassley said.

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About 85 percent of Farm Bill funding goes toward nutrition programs, leaving 15 percent for farm programs.

The chairs of the House and Senate agriculture committees earlier this month released competing frameworks for a new Farm Bill.

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, has been adamant about protecting and strengthening nutrition programs supported by the federal legislation, including expanding access to SNAP benefits for groups that historically have been excluded from the program.

A section-by-section summary of Stabenow’s proposed Farm Bill framework includes raising reference prices for commodities. The House version includes a similar proposal. Critics argue raising reference prices benefits corporate agricultural input suppliers at the expense of farmers and taxpayers.

The House proposal seeks to increase farm safety net programs, enhance crop insurance and expand conservation programs. Nutrition funding would not be cut, but would change how benefits are calculated.

Stabenow has vowed to reject the House GOP’s proposed changes to nutrition and climate program funding. Similar to the House version, the Senate Democrats’ proposal similarly aims to expand crop insurance and conservation programs, but also makes confronting climate change a major focus and protects the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent changes to the Thrifty Food Plan — or TFP — to raise SNAP benefits.

The TFP determines how SNAP benefits are calculated. The 2021 update to the TFP amounted to a 25 percent increase in SNAP benefits, the largest expansion in the program’s 45-year history. Republicans have said the update ignored long-standing precedent to be cost-neutral, and was done without the input of Congress.

House Agriculture Committee Chair U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, has insisted the next Farm Bill restore precedent by placing guardrails on the way SNAP payments are determined to ensure budget neutrality. Such a proposal would reduce future outlays by $30 billion over the next decade. Democrats have called it a cut and made clear that any reductions in SNAP spending would cross a red line for them.

An analysis by the Urban Institute found the increase in SNAP benefits from the reevaluated TFP kept nearly 2.3 million people out of poverty in the fourth quarter of 2021, reducing poverty by 4.7 percent. The higher benefits reduced child poverty by 8.6 percent.

Grassley, who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee alongside fellow Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, said he expects Congress will pass another one-year extension.

“Which makes it a seven-year Farm Bill, which is too long,” he said. “And, hopefully, next year we get a Farm Bill passed. Now, I hope as I’m talking to you (that) I’m wrong and we can get a five-year Farm Bill before the end of this year. But, quite frankly, I think it’s going to be very, very difficult.”

Iowa farmers have grown increasingly concerned about the delay in passing an update that reflects the changes the agriculture industry has undergone over the last several years.

“It means that whatever protection they had over the last six years will be continued, but it won’t be updated to reflect the inflation on seed, fertilizer, chemicals, interest and diesel,” Grassley said.

The 90-year-old fielded questions during a town hall Monday at the Tama County Courthouse in Toledo on inflation, the border, Social Security, support for Israel and more.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com