Officially, the 2018 farm bill expired on October 1, 2023. Due to their inability to muster a bipartisan coalition to make needed changes in a new farm bill, Congress instead opted to extend the 2018 farm bill twice, the last time in December 2024 through September 30, 2025.
In an effort to try to squeeze through the most contested pieces of the legislation that was marked up in the House Agriculture Committee on a mostly party line vote in May 2024 but never was voted on by either the full House or Senate, the House Republican leadership decided to insert them in the fiscal year 2026 budget reconciliation package they were crafting in order to meet the President’s demand for his ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ (OBBB). This bill was to serve as a legislative vehicle for a myriad of tax cuts, funding increases for priority areas such as the military and immigration enforcement, as well as reams of poorly disclosed pet provisions that were inserted throughout the process. The passage of this bill was facilitated by the fact that the rules for the budget reconciliation process in the Senate allow passage with only a simple majority vote, not the 60-vote threshold required when a filibuster is available. It passed both the Senate and the House on party-line votes,and was signed into law by President Trump on July 4. This blog will only cover major changes that occurred in programs normally found in a farm bill.
Most of the funding increases in the Agriculture portion of the OBBB legislation went to provisions strengthening the farm safety net that would normally be included in the Commodities and Crop Insurance titles of a farm bill. These provisions were intended to bolster the financial status of U.S. farmers who have been suffering from a combination of high input prices and relatively low commodity prices for several years.
Out of $66 billion in new spending provided in the reconciliation bill for what would normally be farm bill programs, nearly $62 billion was directed to bolstering the farm safety net. Highlights in the commodities title include:
- Raises reference prices under the PLC and ARC programs by between 11 and 20 percent,
- Allows PLC reference prices to grow by 0.5 percent annually and raises the revenue guarantee under ARC from 86 percent to 90 percent.
- For the 2025 crop year only, farmers will automatically receive the higher of ARC-CO or PLC payments for each covered commodity — without farmers needing to file additional paperwork to make a choice between the two programs.
- Extends the Dairy Margin Coverage program through 2031 and increases milk supply eligible for support.
- Increases the storage payment rate for sugar producers.
- Increases the annual farm program payment limitation for individual farmers from $125,000 to $155,000 and allows for farmers to update their base acres for the first time since the 2014 farm bill.
With respect to the crop insurance provisions, the bill extends increased premium support to beginning farmers as well as defining farmers with less than 10 years of experience in farming to be eligible for such support (had previously been five years). The bill also raises the premium subsidy for purchasers of crop insurance policies across the board, including for area-based coverage plans.
The disaster assistance provisions of the bill improves payment levels and relaxes eligibility criteria for standing disaster programs such as the Livestock Indemnity Program. This portion of the bill cost $2.8 billion over five years.
The voluntary conservation programs were augmented by converting remaining conservation funds from the Inflation Reduction Act into strengthening the baseline availability of funds for programs like EQIP, CSP, and ACEP through 2031.In essence, this action made these resources available for farmers seeking to adopt any of the conservation practices in the NRCS Handbook, rather than just those deemed to be climate-smart by NRCS.
Agricultural trade programs also benefited from provisions in the OBBB. Rather than increase funding for the existing Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development Program (FMDP), as had originally been intended, legislative constraints forced Congress to instead establish a new program called the Agricultural Trade Promotion and Facilitation Program with similar objectives to MAP and FMDP, and provided $285 million for the new program per year, starting in fiscal year 2027.
Modest new funds went into a handful of agricultural research programs, with the biggest tranche of $1.25 billion going to fund updating and renovating agricultural research facilities on land grant university campuses ($125 million annually for ten years). It also provided $175 million for the Specialty Crop Research Initiative for fiscal year 2026, and smaller amounts for scholarships at 1890 land grants, urban agriculture, and a one-time payment of $37 million for the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR).
All of these funding increases were paid for by two provisions that cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), one which set up more paperwork requirements for people to qualify for the program and a second one which shifted a portion of the cost of operating SNAP to the states. CBO estimated that these provisions would save $186 billion over ten years, about a third of which went to pay for the provisions described above and the remainder to pay for other tax and spending provisions included in the bill. CBO estimates that 5.3 million people could lose some or all of their SNAP benefits under these provisions.
One key provision for farm bill purposes that had to be dropped from the bill due to the Senate Parliamentarian’s ruling of non-germaneness was language extending the suspension of permanent price support authority (from the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938) through 2031. The provisions extending the 2018 farm bill last December included such language, but it expires on September 30, 2025. Congress will need to enact such language by that date or complete the rest of the farm bill, called by some the ‘skinny farm bill’, or parity pricing, first for dairy and then basic commodities would kick in under that so-called permanent law. A second blog describing what a skinny farm bill process might look like will be coming out in the next few weeks.
