The House is gone, the Senate leaves for August recess after this week, and neither has produced a farm bill or annual USDA spending bill. House leaders wanted to complete spending bills before taking up a committee-passed farm bill.
Then they left town after finishing neither. A Senate farm bill never got out of the starting gate. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says Congress has always been slow to act, even when farmers faced a crisis. He says, “Too often we get a farm crisis before it finally percolates up to the Congress of the United States to take response.”
More than 500 stakeholder groups wrote Hill leaders last week demanding farm bill action, as AFB economists and Ag hearing witnesses painted a dire farm income picture, with some calling it a “perfect storm.”
Grassley drew a comparison to Congress’ slowness to act during the 1980s farm crisis. He says, “Things started turning bad in ’82 or ’83, but it was probably ’85 or ’86 before it became a real issue in the Congress of the United States. I’m sorry for that lag, but that seems to be the way it is with agriculture because only two percent of the people in this country produce the food for the other 98.”
And now producers face another lag. The 2018 farm bill expired last September, and a one-year extension runs out in two months.
Congress returns the second week of September and faces another government shutdown threat without enacted spending bills or temporary stop-gap funding, again leaving a farm bill and full-year USDA appropriations on the back burner.
Story by Matt Kaye/Berns Bureau; courtesy of NAFB News Service
