Feast or famine

May 27--For Frank Wolf, a farmer who lives near Uniontown, the farm bill can sometimes be the difference between making a profit or going in the hole.

"The big benefits are bridging the gap," Wolf said of the national farm program that takes the highs and lows out of farming by providing financial assistance and helps stabilize food prices for consumers.

"If we have a disaster on our crops due to price or yields (the farm bill) is a huge part of our budget," Wolf said. "It's the difference of sustaining a loss or being profitable. The way the farm bill kicks in now, it's extremely important for farmers."

The farm bill -- also known as the Agriculture and Nutrition Act -- got its start in 1933 and is renewed by Congress every five years. The program covers everything from crop insurance for farmers to healthy food access for low-income families. It offers support for beginning farmers and for sustainable farming practices through conservation programs.

The current farm bill is set to expire in September, and Congress has been working on a replacement for three years.

On May 18, the House Agriculture Committee's proposal for the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 went down by a vote of 213 to 198.

The defeat of the 600-page bill with 51 amendments was blamed on the House Freedom Caucus -- of which Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador is a member -- that withheld its votes until Congress decides on the Goodlatte-McCaul immigration bill, which would bolster enforcement of existing immigration law.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, expressed disappointment that the politicizing of the previously bipartisan farm bill led to its failure.

"We may be down, but we are not out," Conaway said in a prepared statement following the May 18 vote. "We will deliver a strong new farm bill on time as the president of the United States has called us to do. Our nation's farmers and ranchers and rural America deserve nothing less."

But a number of farm and commerce organizations called the bill -- which could still be taken up by the full House before the immigration bill is considered again on June 22 -- flawed in many ways.

Brian Depew, executive director for the Center for Rural Affairs, based in Lyons, Neb., said the proposed 2018 farm bill was "a giant step in the wrong direction."

The draft included eliminating the Conservation Stewardship Program and cutting funds for working lands conservation by nearly $5 billion over 10 years, Depew said.

The bill also created loopholes for the largest agriculture operations to access unlimited subsidy payments and slashed funding for rural economic development programs, he added.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, chief executive officer of Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife, said the bill "was full of controversial provisions that will damage our forests, wildlife and their habitat."

Lindsey Lusher Shute, co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition, based in Hudson, N.Y., said Congress must pass a farm bill "that works for, and includes, all of us. One that supports farmers and ranchers struggling through an economic downturn or growing amidst a drought, and one that can sustain farming as a viable livelihood for future generations."

And social services organizations across the country decried the proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the bill.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the proposed farm bill would cut more than $17 billion out of the SNAP program over 10 years by taking away or reducing food assistance to about 2 million people.

Farm bill evolution

The farm bill got its start as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. Its goals were to keep food prices fair for farmers and consumers, ensure an adequate food supply and protect and sustain the country's vital natural resources responded to the economic and environmental crises of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era. Although the farm bill has changed over the past several decades, its primary purposes are the same.

Since the nation's beginning, there have been policies to create incentives for the production of staple crops such as wheat, barley, corn and sugar that are essential to society. Before the 1930s, this policy consisted mainly of granting land to pioneer families, offering credit and supporting them through research land grant colleges.

The mechanical revolution of the early 1900s gave farmers the ability to multiply their output by farming more ground. As prices for goods declined, farmers plowed more ground to try to make up for lost income. This reality, coinciding with the Dust Bowl era and the Great Depression, set the stage for the first farm bill, known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.

The original farm bill provided incentives for farmers not to overproduce in an effort to stabilize the marketplace. At the same time, the Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service was created in nearly every county in the country to catalog the nation's farmland and work with farm families to increase productivity and take care of the land.

Today, the farm bill is designed to provide specific forms of income assistance without interfering with the market and is compatible with free trade goals and obligations under the World Trade Organization. Crops covered include wheat; barley; corn; pulse crops such as dried beans, lentils and peas; rice; sorghum; soybeans; minor oilseeds such as canola; dairy; and sugar.

Under the current 2014 U.S. farm bill, income assistance is provided only in cases of significant yield or market-based losses. Cotton was eliminated as a program crop. Dairy was transitioned to a margin-protection program and livestock producers were given additional protections.

Getting back to bipartisan support

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that net farm income in the United States has fallen by more than 50 percent since 2013. Along with increased international competition in crop production, farmers face rising fuel and fertilizer costs and threats by the current administration to impose tariffs that would put American farmers at a competitive disadvantage with other producer countries.

The collapse in net farm income leads to significant reductions in equipment purchases, changes in food prices for consumers, impacts on creditors and their ability to provide cash flow to producers, cutbacks in voluntary conservation efforts and reductions in the use of cutting-edge technology.

Grain producers in Idaho were disappointed in the recent failure of the House farm bill proposal, said Stacey Katseanes Satterlee, executive director of the Idaho Grain Producers Association in Boise.

"The bill was not considered on its merits," Satterlee said. "The bill was held hostage for another issue."

Although farmers agree that immigration problems must be resolved, she said, "you need to consider those two issues on their own merits. Historically, the farm bill has always been bipartisan. We need both parties to get the bill passed. So this bill did not follow that framework.

"The farm bill is critically important for Idaho farmers. There is money for export promotion, which benefits Idaho growers directly. Money for research and that benefits all agriculture and Idaho growers.

"And for Idaho grain farmers our safety net is contained within the farm bill," along with crop insurance and risk management programs.

"With depressed prices, weather and export problems, farmers can really use the certainty of a farm bill being in place," Satterlee said. "So we're really hopeful that Congress can get a farm bill passed and signed by the president before this one expires." -- Hedberg may be contacted at [email protected] or at (208) 983-2326.

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