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Federal Farm Bill Policy/Funding
The passage of the 2024 Farm Bill languishes on. Congress has until September 30 to finish the 2024 Farm Bill but disagreements are standing in the way. The U.S. Senate Agriculture Chair – Debbie Stabenow – said for the first time that she would rather continue punting on the Farm Bill than strike a deal with the Republicans to limit climate funding and social safety net programs. Chair Stabenow would prefer just extending the policies of the 2018 Farm Bill and not go backwards on feeding people and funding climate conservation. House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson plans to advance a Farm Bill through his committee in the coming months.
In terms of annual funding, Congress is struggling to pass a budget for this 2024 federal fiscal year. In the budget for USDA and FDA, advocates are pushing for enough funding to keep the Supplemental Women’s, Infants and Children (WIC) program intact without imposing waiting lists or slashing benefits. In trade the Republicans want to establish a SNAP-choice pilot program in five states where SNAP benefits could only be used for ‘nutrient dense’ foods aligned with dietary guidelines (thus ruling out soda, candy and most processed foods). In addition, there are other Republican policy riders such as preventing USDA from promoting fair market competition for livestock and poultry growers both now and in the future. The funding for USDA has now passed the House (without the onerous policy riders) and should pass the Senate to avoid any shutdown. The increase funding of $1 billion for WIC was included along with a rider to add the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and provide $2 million in funding to ensure the Secretary can notify CFIUS when agricultural land is sold to entities (China, Iran, North Korea and Russia) that ‘may pose a risk to national security’.
The largest farm safety net portions of federal Farm Bill payments to farmers are crop insurance subsidies, commodity payments and ad-hoc disaster assistance. From 2017 to 2022, $46 billion went to crop insurance premium subsidies, $29 billion to commodity programs, and $67 billion ad-hoc disaster assistance. The concentration of benefits across these programs are primarily found in the Midwest and Great Plains and correlate closely to the number of acres planted to covered commodities. Crop insurance subsidies started with the 1980 Farm Bill. Today the public pays on average 60% of a farmer’s premium leaving just 40% paid by the farmer. Premium discounts in 2021 benefitted farm operations growing corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat which took 78% of the subsidies paid. Kansas is one of 10 states receiving 64% of all premium subsidies. The federal crop insurance program is the only farm subsidy program without any means test or payment limit. The largest 10 % of farms with the highest annual crop sales nationally receive 65% of all crop insurance subsidies while the smallest 80% of farms receive just 23% of premium subsidies.
In regard to commodity programs, the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs primarily benefit the country’s largest commodity farms - in the top 10 to 20% of crop sales. Congressional Budget Office estimates the farms growing corn, wheat, seed cotton, peanuts and rice received 95% of PLC payments in 2022. FSA distributed a total of $29 billion in PLC and ARC payments to commodity farmers between 2017 and 2021 with Kansas being one of the 12 states in the Great Plains and American South receiving 65% of these commodity payments.
Farm subsidies enable the biggest operations to get bigger at the expense of smaller producers as benefits are siphoned to a limited number of commodity crops and relatively few farmers. Permanent and ad-hoc farm safety net programs have become programs that many depend on – and expect – to guarantee an ever-increasing profit. The result is a driving factor in the growing consolidation of farmland and the acceleration of rural depopulation by placing new, small to mid-sized, limited resource farmers at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to buying land.
NSAC - UNSUSTAINABLE: STATE OF THE FARM SAFETY NET - February 2024
Kansas is a perfect example. Kansas is 5th of the 50 states in receiving federal farm payments with 89% of the Kansas farm payments going to just 20% of the 56,734 farms in Kansas. 2,374 farms (4.3% of Kansas farms) accounted for 75% of the $23.9 billion in total Kansas farm sales in 2022. The vast majority of these crop subsidies go for four crops in Kansas – corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum. These taxpayer-funded commodity payments subsidize feed grains that give concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) a clear market advantage over natural, grass-based livestock operations. These commodity subsidies drive the American diet of fat, sugar and salt at an incredible cost to the U.S. health system. Not surprising that the number of dairies in Kansas has declined from 2,165 in 1992 to 234 today (with 30 megs-dairies accounting for 75-80% of milk production). The same can be said of hog farms that have declined from 5,684 in 1992 to 907 today (with 108 accounting for 75% of pork sales). These commodity subsidies drive crop irrigation on 5,315 farms (9.5% of farms) irrigating 2.344 million acres (out of 20.3 million acres of harvested cropland) thus using 85%+ of all water in Kansas. There is no discussion under the Dome or by the water experts on the Farm Bill and its direct impact on cropping patterns in Kansas. This comes at a time when less than 10% of Kansas farmers are under the age of 35 and the future of the ‘Kansas Family Farm’ along with land ownership is not discussed.
Kansas Reflector - Flipping U.S. Farm Bill right side up will be better for Kansas, farmers and environment
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