The five-year Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act was released Monday from Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow.
The bill contains $39 billion in new resources including:
- $20 billion to strengthen the farm safety net and establish permanent disaster assistance so emergency relief reaches farmers faster.
- $8.5 billion to improve access to nutrition assistance and
- $4.3 billion to improve quality of life in the rural communities.
Farm CPA Paul Neiffer says there are some big differences compared to the House bill especially when it comes to ARC and PLC programs and modernizing reference prices.
“They actually are automatically going to allow farmers to get the highest of the either 2023 or 2024 ARC or PLC so that is helpful. They did bump reference prices across the board at 5% but we know on the House bill they bumped them 10 to 20%. So this is an automatic 5%. They did expand the payment limit for the ARC up to 12.5 percent from the current 10% but then they put a 15% restriction on the PLC. Now when they originally talked about this a few months ago it was even more restrictions so that part was probably okay,” he explains.
Neiffer says farmers can get a partial PLC or ARC payment ahead which is also beneficial.
However, base acre updates are capped and apply to only underserved and disadvantaged farmers.
Neiffer says, “The limit is 160 acres per farm from 2025 to 2029 and if an underserved farmer is not operating those acres then it looks like those acres disappear and it goes back to the old base acres.”
Another positive is the Emergency Relief Program would be made permanent from 2025 to 2029.
“They’re trying to make it so we don’t have to have these adhoc disaster programs. This is a program designed to automatically pay the farmer what they need,” he adds.
However, Adjusted Gross Income Limits drop from $900,000 to $700,000 and it applies to landowners and tenants cash renting ground.
“If you have a landlord that owns the land and they’re AGI is over $700,000 which is the new AGI then nobody gets any payments on those acres including the tenant farmer whose AGI is under $700,000,” he states.
So Neiffer says many of the proposals seem to penalize production ag.
The National Pork Producers Council expressed disappointed the bill fails to address California’s Proposition 12 pork production standards.
The bigger question is can the bill advance in a lame duck Congress?
John Newton, Executive Head with Terrain and former Senate Ag Committee GOP cheif economist, is optimistic the Congressional Budget Office could at least get it scored based on his conversations before leaving that position.
“I said if we deliver you a full farm bill because you have to get it scored right wers need to know how much this thing’s going to cost I if we deliver you a full five-year Farm Bill let’s say a few weeks left in the lame duck can you guys score it? They said that’s our job to get it scored so we will deliver. So, I’m optimistic that we can get it done but the clock is ticking you know.”
Another problem is Senate Ag Committee Ranking Republican John Boozman has already criticized this last ditch effort on X.
“An 11th hour partisan proposal released 415 days after the expiration of the current farm bill is insulting. America’s farmers deserve better.”
So while the chances to advance a bill look like they’re fading, stranger things have happened in Washington.
