(WASHINGTON D.C.)– As the clock continues to tick on the current one year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, many in farm and ranch country are watching as little progress is being made in our nation’s capital. And now, a new wrinkle in the Farm Bill logjam, as there is talk of a potential two year extension of the 2018 legislation.
According to reports, House Ag Committee Ranking Member David Scott (D-GA) said last week that he sees it as unlikely that a deal is done on a new five-year Farm Bill in the lame duck session after the November elections. And in a memo to House Ag Committee Democrats last week, Scott said if it looks like Congress won’t be able to pass a Farm Bill that they would consider doing a two-year extension of the 2018 legislation.
Speaking last Friday on Agriculture of America (AOA), Jerry Hagstrom of The Hagstrom Report shared this news and that “in his memo Scott said it was farm groups, farmers that are asking for this when they came to see him this week, but he didn’t say which groups they were. So I don’t know who was talking about a two year extension. But that’s now another option on the table.”
In his letter to House Ag Committee Democrats last week, Scott said in part, “We all know that Congress needs pressure to act. That’s why Chairman Thompson, Chairwoman Stabenow, Ranking Member Boozman, and I agree that we are better off without another extension at this point. Farmers need the certainty and support, and we need to step up to this challenge.”
Jonathan Coppess, Director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says that he doesn’t think a two-year extension of the current legislation is necessarily a bad idea……but rather an unpopular one in farm country.
“I may be in a pretty small minority on this, but I actually think there’s some real good aspects of that,” Coppess said on AOA last Friday. “I know it kind of hits at first, like this is something we got to get done.”
Coppess points to the need for deliberative policy discussion as a key reason why it might be wise to extend the 2018 Farm Bill for two years. He says it has become common that we have multiple continuing resolutions before jamming big packages through Congress.
“We fight over these things and just becomes easier to wait to the deadline and then do a continuing resolution and do a continuing resolution and eventually package them all together and try to jam them through,” says Coppess. “And I, that doesn’t make for, you know, any kind of deliberative policy discussion or outcome. And so I’m getting a little concerned if this farm bill extension becomes too easy and too convenient when we can’t reach the agreements we need to reach around the specific policies.”
And Coppess also points to upcoming changes on Capitol Hill as another reason to possibly extend the 2018 Farm Bill for two years. “We’re going to have some pretty significant turnover and change coming in January. Chairwoman Stabenow is retiring. That is a level of institutional knowledge and, frankly, legislative skill and acumen that has really been important in the last two extraordinarily difficult farm bills of 14 and 18. So, you’re going to have new leadership no matter who wins chambers, who wins the White House even.”
Coppess added “You’re going to have a lot of turnover and new leadership across the board. It would benefit the policy development discussion to give it time and give everybody time to get, you know, their legs under them.”
On Monday’s episode of AOA, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) weighed in on the prospect of a two-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. “My thoughts about it would be that it would put off for two years instead of one year the fact that we don’t have support prices for agriculture, which now are almost below the point where farmers will get some payment on these support prices that they haven’t gotten for the last three or four years,” said Grassley.
In regards to making progress on a new five-year Farm Bill before the end of the year, Grassley was not very optimistic. “With two weeks in September, October for campaigning, two weeks in November, and maybe three weeks at most in December; and with the Armed Services Bill, Defense authorization bill to come up and the appropriations we have to do, I don’t see any time for a five year farm bill and that’s a sad commentary.”
Grassley also added that part of the reason we don’t have a new Farm Bill is because of lack of time being put in by Congress. “You can’t run the United States Senate when you only have 100 senators in town at the same time for two and a half days a week,” said Grassley. “When I came to the United States Senate, we started at 10 a.m. on Monday, work till 4 p.m. on Friday, and just, it just gradually deteriorated to the worst place it’s been in the four years that Schumer’s run the United States Senate.”
Grassley added “Now, I hate to tell the farmers of Iowa that, but that’s one reason we don’t have a five year farm bill.”
So the question is, will there be enough time and an urgent push to get a new Farm Bill done before the end of the year? Or will there be a one, possibly two-year extension, of the current 2018 legislation? Only time will tell as farm country waits for an answer.
Listen to comments from Jonathan Coppess and Jerry Hagstrom on Friday’s AOA as well as comments from Senator Chuck Grassley on Monday’s AOA below:
