House Agriculture Committee Prepares to Mark Up Farm Bill Reauthorization Text

Majority staff from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture laid out their plan this week to reauthorize the Farm Bill, a 12-title, multibillion-dollar package of programs to support farmers, provide nutrition assistance to millions of Americans in need, promote on-farm conservation practices and address other farming challenges. Majority staff indicated that the Agriculture Committee intends to mark up the bill either the week of May 13, 2024, or May 20, 2024, with the text being shared publicly five days in advance. If the Agriculture Committee favorably reports the bill to the House Floor, it will meet the chair's self-imposed deadline to get the legislation out of committee by Memorial Day, May 27, 2024.

Farm Bill Highlights

House Republican Committee staff highlighted the following regarding the substance of the Farm Bill text.

Title I – Commodities

• Staff noted that farm income has decreased by $80 billion since 2022.
• Reference prices for commodity crops will increase from 2014 levels, with base acres also added.
• Some of the cost of reference price increases will be offset by restrictions on how Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) funds may be used. Note that U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with his predecessor, Sonny Purdue (who served in the Trump Administration), have used CCC funds to advance pet policy priorities, including climate smart agriculture (under the Biden Administration) and relief from foreign retaliation against tariffs (under the Trump Administration).

Title II – Conservation

• The Farm Bill text sweeps all remaining Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) conservation funds ($14.4 billion) into the conservation title of the Farm Bill. This will result in a permanent 25 percent increase in title funding.
• This title will remain consistent with Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson's (R-Pa.) preference that promotion of climate-related agriculture practices should be left up to state or local control and decision-making versus a top-down federal approach.

Title III – Trade

• Funding for the Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development Program will be increased. Funding for these two programs has essentially remained flat at $236 million since the mid-2000s.
• These two programs were the most member-requested items in the Agriculture Committee's online portal request.

Title IV – Nutrition

• Agriculture Committee staff indicated that they have managed to find cost savings in the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), though they did not elaborate on how those savings would be used.
• Majority staff contend that, even with a reduction to TFP funding, the program will serve more participants and more households, increase average monthly benefits per participant and per household, and be "pro-health" to focus on better ways to deliver nutrition.

Agriculture Committee staff also noted that new resources will be made available under other titles to address priorities of specialty crop growers and provide increased funding for research and research facilities.

What's Next

Over the next several weeks, the Agriculture Committee will release a series of summary documents that provide details on the contours of each title. Agriculture Committee staff stressed that time is of the essence in order to avoid the Farm Bill budget being tied to new baseline figures, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is scheduled to release in June 2024. As long as the markup has begun, the most recent CBO baseline figures, which were issued in February 2024, can likely be used.

Although Farm Bill funds don't flow directly to specific companies, food and agriculture clients should maintain awareness of the Farm Bill reauthorization process because it enacts federal spending priorities for USDA over the next five years – potentially longer if extended due to legislative inaction.

This Farm Bill reauthorization process has been particularly challenging due to several factors:

• The Farm Bill has historically been a bipartisan effort, but razor-thin margins in the House and Senate, along with a split in party control of each chamber and diverging sets of priorities have created huge challenges to develop a legislative package that can garner the support of both Republicans and Democrats.
  • Democrats have long signaled their opposition to moving IRA funds into the Farm Bill, as well as to any cuts to nutrition assistance programs, which grew in size during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Republicans have prioritized updates to the farm safety net – increasing reference prices for commodities and improving access to crop insurance – both of which carry big price tags.
• These positions must be reconciled with tight budget constraints. Republicans are committed to a reauthorized Farm Bill that does not increase spending over the CBO projections for programming under the current Farm Bill.
• The public comments exchanged between committee leadership, particularly in the House, have not signaled a willingness to compromise, which is essential for a successful conclusion to the reauthorization process.

Now that the reauthorization process has dragged into an election year, the legislative window for enacting a new Farm Bill is very short. The prevailing wisdom is that a House markup this May, followed by bill passage on the House floor, will either prompt the Senate to move on the legislation or set the stage for the House and Senate to conference the bill during the lame-duck session of Congress and enact by year's end. Either scenario would still require extension of the current Farm Bill, which was already extended from September 2023 to September 2024. If this Congress does not succeed, responsibility for reauthorizing the Farm Bill will fall to 119th Congress in 2025.

Information contained in this alert is for the general education and knowledge of our readers. It is not designed to be, and should not be used as, the sole source of information when analyzing and resolving a legal problem, and it should not be substituted for legal advice, which relies on a specific factual analysis. Moreover, the laws of each jurisdiction are different and are constantly changing. This information is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. If you have specific questions regarding a particular fact situation, we urge you to consult the authors of this publication, your Holland & Knight representative or other competent legal counsel.