Nathan Ryder raises livestock and grows vegetables on 10 acres of pasture in Golconda, Illinois with his wife and three children. They also live in a food desert; the local grocery store closed a few months ago, and the nearest farmers market is at least 45 miles away, leaving their community struggling to access nutritious food.
Opening another supermarket is not the answer. The US government has invested millions over the past decade to settle them in similar areas, with mixed results. Ryder thinks it would be better to expand federal aid programs to make them more available to those in need, so more people can use those benefits on local farms like his own.
Expanding the reach of the country’s small growers and producers can be a way to address growing food insecurityhe said, a problem compounded by inflation and supply chains strained by climate change. “It’s a great opportunity, not only to help the bottom line of local farmers, instead of some of these giant commodity food corporations… [help people] buy healthy, wholesome food,” Ryder said.
This is just one of the solutions that could be codified in the 2024 farm bill, but it probably won’t happen anytime soon. The deadline to finalize the omnibus bill arrives Monday, and with lawmakers locked along partisan lines, it seems likely they will simply extend the current law for at least another year.
Congress has been here before. Although the farm bill is supposed to be renewed every five years, lawmakers passed a one-year one expansion of the 2018 policy last November after struggling to agree on key nutrition and conservation facets of the $1.5 trillion dollars spending package.
Extensions and delays have serious implications because the farm bill governs many aspects of America’s food and agriculture systems. It covers everything from food assistance programs and crop subsidies to international food aid and even conservation measures. Some of them, like crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning any hiccups in the reauthorization timeline don’t affect them. But others, such as development grants for beginning farmers and ranchers and local food promotion programs, depend entirely on the appropriations within the law. Without a new appropriation or an extension of the existing one, some would closed until the account is re-approved. If Congress doesn’t act before Jan. 1, several programs will even revert to 1940s-era policies with significant impacts on consumer prices for commodities like milk.
After nearly a century of bipartisanship, recent farm bill negotiations have been interrupted by partisan deadlocks. The main difference this time is that a new piece dominates the Hill’s political chessboard: The election. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen before the election, which will cause a lot of gnashing of teeth and hair-twisting,” Ryder said. He is concerned that a new administration and a new Congress could result in a farm bill that further harms small farmers and producers. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel at the moment. Which way is this farm account going to go?”
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The new president will bring their own agricultural policy agenda at work, which may affect aspects of the bill. And, of course, whoever sits in the Oval Office can veto anything that comes out of Congress. (President Obama threatened to veto the bill House Republicans sit forward in 2013 because it suggested to $39 billion in cuts to food benefits.) Of even greater consequence is the potential for a dramatically different Congress. Of the 535 seats in the House and Senate, 468 are up for election. That will likely lead to renewed negotiations among a new set of lawmakers, a process further complicated by the pending retirement of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Although representatives are increased pressure on the Congress leadership to enact a new farm bill before this Congress reaches the end of its term, there is a high chance that all of this will lead to additional delays, if not require writing an entirely new bill.
This has profound implications for consumers who are already struggling with rising prices and farmers who the compound pressure of consolidationnot to mention efforts to remake American food systems to mitigate and adapt to a warming world, said Rebecca Wolf, a senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch. (The nonprofit advocates for policies that ensure access to safe food, clean water and a livable climate.) “The farm bill has a very big impact on changing the kind of food and farm system we’re building,” Wolf said.
Still, Monday’s looming deadline is somewhat arbitrary — lawmakers have until the end of the calendar year to pass a bill because most key programs have already been extended through the appropriations cycle. But DeShawn Blanding, who analyzes food and environmental policy for the science nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks the likelihood of that happening is slim. He expects to see negotiations stretch into next year, and perhaps into 2026. “Congress is much more divided now,” he said.
The House Agriculture Committee approved a draft bill in May, but the proposal did not reach the floor for a vote because of negotiation hang-ups. Meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to submit a bill, although the chamber’s Democrats and Republicans have introduced frameworks that reflect their agendas. Given the upcoming election and higher legislative priorities, such as the government funded before 20 Decemberthe last legislative day on the congressional calendar, “it’s a possibility that this could be one of the longest farm bills we’ve had,” Blanding said.
As is often the case, food aid funding is one of the biggest points of contention. SNAP and the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much a household receives through SNAP, have remained two of the biggest sticking points, with Democrats and Republicans largely divided over how the program is structured and funded. The Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee’s draft bill has the equivalent of nearly $30 billion in cuts to SNAP by limiting the US Department of Agriculture’s ability to adjust the costs of the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to set SNAP benefits. The provision, supported by Republicansmet with fierce opposition of Democrats who has criticized the plan for limiting benefits during a escalating food insecurity crisis.
The farm bill “was supposed to be designed to address food insecurity and the food system in general and should boost and expand programs like SNAP that help do that,” Blanding said, which becomes all the more necessary as climate change continues to reduce food access for many Americans. Without a new farm account, “we’re stuck with what [food insecurity] looked like in 2018, which is not what it looks like today in 2024.”
Nutrition programs governed by current law are designed to reduce pre-pandemic levels of hunger in a world that has not yet crossed key climate thresholds. As the crisis of planetary warming deepens, the crises are fueled tend to deepen existing barriers to food access in affected areasFood programs authorized in the farm bill are “an extraordinarily important part of disaster response,” said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at the nonprofit Feeding America. “The number of disasters that Feeding America food banks are asked to respond to each year is only increasing with extreme weather fueled by climate change.”
These tensions make it more critical than ever that Congress increase funding for programs like the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP. Its farm-to-food bank project grants, established under the 2018 law, underwrite projects that enable the nation’s food banks to have a supply of fresh food produced by local farmers and producers. It must be entered into the new account or at risk of being phased out.
David Toledo, an urban farmer in Chicago, used to work with a local food pantry and community garden that provides fresh produce to neighborhoods that need it. For Toledo, the farm bill is a gateway to solutions for the impact of climate change on food accessibility in the US He wants to see lawmakers put politics aside and pass a bill for the welfare of the people they serve.
“With the farm bill, what is at stake is a healthy nation, healthy communities, commitments of farmers and emerging farmers. And I mean, God forbid, but the potential to see a lot more hunger,” Toledo said. “It must pass. It must pass with bipartisan support. There is so much at the table now.”
