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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello, everyone.
Chapter 2: What is the Farm Bill and why is it significant for all Americans?
I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. Now, I know we talk a lot on here about how little Congress gets done, but there are at least attempts. And today we're going to talk about one piece of legislation that, after being stalled for ages, seems to be starting to move. It's the Farm Bill.
Now, farm bills are massive pieces of legislation that cover a whole range of issues. And ideally, they're supposed to be updated every five years. But the last time Congress actually passed one was in 2018. So we are several years overdue. That said, earlier this month, the House Agriculture Committee finally advanced a proposed farm bill.
But the road ahead for the legislation is pretty uncertain. So here to make us smart about this is Chris Newbert. He's the deputy director of the Sweetie Center for Sustainable Food Systems in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. And he previously held several positions working on agriculture policy in Congress. Chris, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thanks, Kimberly.
I think when a lot of people hear the Farm Bill, they think it's something that only affects farmers. Why does this matter to the rest of the country? So the Farm Bill is separated into 12 titles, and each one tackles a specific piece of all of these programs, basically everything that USDA operates.
Chapter 3: How is the Farm Bill structured and what issues does it cover?
And it covers not only farm subsidies, which I think most people are familiar with, or things like crop insurance, but there are also conservation programs in there. There are programs for rural development. And of course, the biggest one is Title IV, which is nutrition, and that reauthorizes SNAP. It makes any adjustments. It's a very comprehensive piece of legislation.
So I always like to say, you know, if you eat in this country, the farm bill somehow is going to affect you. It really is a large and significant piece of legislation. And as you mentioned, a lot of these programs are expiring again, and they are in need of serious updates. And it would be great if we could see some sort of movement on a farm bill. Yeah, it is such a big piece of legislation.
And I know that we're chatting in an era of omnibus legislation for funding and big pieces all bundled together because it's so hard to get stuff through Congress. But how did the Farm Bill in particular come to have so many things living under that umbrella?
Well, we're actually approaching the century mark of the first farm bill, which would have been the Agricultural Adjustment Act passed during the New Deal. And that was, you know, it started off, it was an emergency piece of legislation responding to the economic conditions that farmers were facing. And even that needed to be updated just a few years later.
And so it became almost tradition every couple of years for Congress to revisit farm legislation, revisit whatever sort of price supports needed to be put in place. But it became more and more difficult to get that piece of legislation passed. So right around the 70s, you started to see this coalition being built between anti-hunger advocates and the big farm groups.
And they said, we need to work together and get legislation that we both care about across the finish line. So this farm and nutrition coalition started to become a really big deal.
And it eventually, you know, came on to expand other things, you know, conservation interests, forestry interests, rural development interests, all sort of working together to say, we really need Congress to act bipartisan and pass this important piece of legislation. And for a long time, that worked.
It was the only way that you could get something significant and bipartisan passed was for these two groups and others to be coming together in coalition. So if they did form that coalition, why have we not been able to have a new farm bill since 2018? I think what it comes down to is money, frankly. The farm bill, at least as recently as 2024, was estimated to cost about $1.4 trillion.
And something like $1.1, $1.2 trillion of that was all SNAP. And as SNAP has grown and grown while the other titles of the farm bill start to see, you know, kind of level funding, I think a lot of the farm groups said we really need to get an increase in the subsidies that we are receiving and the programs that make up what's called the farm safety net.
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Chapter 4: What historical context shaped the coalition behind the Farm Bill?
And I think, you know, for for my boss at the time, Chairwoman Stabenow, that was a red line for her that she wasn't willing to. to cross. But for all the farm groups out there, it was really the only way that they were going to see their priorities really get moved. And so the coalition started to fracture as soon as folks started saying, okay, we need money.
And those are the titles that have it. So we want to take it from there. What are the consequences of not passing new farm bills on a regular basis, of having delays like the one that we've got? I think it means that you have programs that just remain out of date. And we have done some work on the farm bill in reconciliation bills.
The Inflation Reduction Act was a big boon for conservation interests. We put about a $20 billion investment into our marquee conservation programs. And then again, last year in HR1, you know, that was certainly the most significant where the farming interests definitely did get their increase in subsidies, something like a $60 billion increase over 10 years.
But they did it exactly by doing what we always kind of warned would fracture this coalition. They did it by cutting SNAP. And so it's really difficult to see a path forward for a farm bill right now. But absent a farm bill, you know, a reconciliation bill is technically a budget bill. So you can change numbers and you can make some adjustments.
But if you're talking about real policy change, that's much more difficult to do. And there are also a range of programs whose authorizations are expiring. You know, the entire rural development title, they don't really get
what's called mandatory funding out of a farm bill they're dependent on appropriations so those authorizations of appropriations need to happen now they've been happening in extensions in you know the sort of end of year spending package that congress historically passes but a one-year extension every year doesn't really solve some of these fundamental issues that only a comprehensive farm bill or something like it um would need to address
We are going to take a quick break, but we will be right back and talk more about the future of the Farm Bill. All right. We are back with Professor Chris Newbert. And you recently wrote a piece in The Conversation that the, quote, farm bill era of American agriculture policy may be coming to an end. What do you mean by that?
Well, I think it's really difficult to see some of these fractures being healed any time recently. The coalition, it's kind of difficult to look at what happened with the Big Beautiful Bill last year and not wonder if this potential alliance that was always sort of uneasy is fundamentally broken. And without that,
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Chapter 5: Why has there been a delay in passing a new Farm Bill since 2018?
It does become difficult to see how the math works to get a farm bill passed, especially in the Senate, where you need 60 votes. And I think it's very difficult for the Democratic caucus to want to advance a piece of legislation to provide the votes that would be needed to get around a filibuster if there's not going to be any meaningful vote. adjustments or changes made to the SNAP program.
You know, that was a significant cut that SNAP had to absorb. It was about 20 percent of the funding. And it's unclear even now what those cuts are going to mean. You know, the states have been asked to shoulder a heavy burden. That's essentially how they got those cuts.
And I think it's worth noting here that before, states didn't really have to carry any of the costs for SNAP, except for some admin costs. Yep, that's exactly right. So to be carrying a significant burden of actually paying benefits, it's a new era. It completely changes what SNAP has looked like in the past, and it's unclear if states are going to be able to meet that burden.
So, without any sense that there's going to be either a reversal of SNAP or some kind of expansion of benefits, you know, I just don't see that the math works to get a farm bill done. And without a farm bill, then I think it's important for those of us who
think that these programs are important, that we need to reauthorize and rethink many of our programs that run our food and farm policy in this country. It's going to be important to think of new and creative ways to try to get some legislation passed.
And I have to imagine that's going to be even harder because the federal government has stopped tracking hunger data at the same time that we've got these potential cuts to SNAP coming. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, we just don't have a sense of what the problem is right now. We know that about 40 million people receive SNAP benefits each year.
You know, that is a figure that we can track. But that's going to change because a lot of people are going to be kicked off. And there may be states that can't run or can't even operate their SNAP programs in the coming years. It's just really an unfortunate circumstance. And it's difficult to know what the future looks like right now. I've always been a bit interested in the Farm Bill.
And, you know, I was surprised to hear that the Agriculture Committee advanced something on this earlier this month. What are your takeaways from this version? And were you shocked to see some movement? I will say that I was shocked to see this version of the Farm Bill get as much bipartisan support as it did.
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Chapter 6: What are the financial implications of the Farm Bill and SNAP cuts?
But that doesn't even necessarily mean that it will fly in the House. There are many members of the Republican caucus who have never voted for a Farm Bill, who object to the subsidies and spending elsewhere. So even if it is bipartisan, I still think it has a difficult time on the floor of the House. And that's not even talking about the Senate.
So what are some of the things that are in this particular version that jump out at you? So it doesn't have a lot of things that were just taken care of in reconciliation, and it does not address SNAP. It does reauthorize many of the important programs that need to be reauthorized.
But I think two of the big sticking points are going to be, you know, number one, it includes essentially a provision that would overturn Prop 12 in California. That was the law that... essentially said that certain meat products being bought in the state of California have to be produced under humane conditions.
And then there's a lot of, you know, what some folks are calling a giveaway to pesticide companies, which essentially says that it becomes much more difficult for individual states to regulate pesticides. And that's actually sort of triggered some backlash from the Maha movement. You know, there's a
a number of very prominent Maha influencers who are very anti-pesticide and didn't want to see this provision in there.
So that makes the math even more difficult because you have two, I won't necessarily say they are poison pills, but I think it's very difficult to get the math to work again when you have provisions like that in there that are either extremely partisan or just turn off, you know, a base that Chairman Thompson is going to need if he wants this to pass.
With so much happening globally and domestically, why do you think it's important for people to kind of pay attention to the nuances of how a piece of legislation like this develops as it moves through Congress? Well, I think it is a rare time to see any sort of legislation move, certainly something that they are attempting to make bipartisan.
And when it comes to our current food and farm policy, I think arguably much of what we have been doing for the last several decades has been unsustainable.
So we do need to be thinking about, okay, what does a food and farm policy that we wanna be sustainable, that can set us up well to continue to grow and produce in the next generation while also meaningfully addressing poverty, these are serious questions that we need to be having right now.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of not passing a new Farm Bill?
Chris Newbert is the deputy director of the Sweetie Center for Sustainable Food Systems and a research associate professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Kimberly. All right, that is it for us today.
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