On March 15th, 2022, President Joe Biden signed legislation which provided appropriations for all federal agencies and programs for fiscal year 2022, which actually began more than five months ago. The last year that both the House and Senate managed to get their act together and pass individual appropriations bills and not a comprehensive package entitled either “Omnibus” or “Consolidated” was in fiscal year 2011, my last year working for the Senate Agriculture Committee. March 15th is far from the latest that an appropriations bill has been enacted into law during a new fiscal year–the fiscal year 2017 bill, enacted on May 5, 2017, takes that distinction.
The portion of the appropriations which covers funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) received $25.1 billion for its discretionary spending for FY22, an increase of just over $1 billion or 4.4 percent, over the FY21 level. This portion of the budget includes items such as farm lending, rural development programs, food safety inspection, international food aid, agricultural research, the WIC program for mothers and young children, and of course salaries and benefits for all USDA employees. It also funds operations for the Food and Drug Administration and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
For those agencies that operate programs that directly benefit farmers, the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Risk Management Agency (RMA), and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the new budget provides increases of 2.6 percent, 4.3 percent, and 8.6 percent respectively in discretionary funding for these agencies. This funding is separate from the funding available for the major farm bill programs supported by these agencies, such as commodity support, crop insurance, and major working land programs, which are authorized on a mandatory basis and in general its availability to farmers is subject only to eligibility, payment limitations, or other spending constraints put in place by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees in farm bill legislative language. Within FSA, loan levels for both direct and guaranteed ownership loans for farmers increased by six and 12 percent respectively, while loan levels for other major categories remained stable. Within NRCS, the conservation operations account received an increase of 8.6 percent, which covers providing conservation technical assistance by county-based NRCS staff, conducting soil surveys, and a new grazing land conservation initiative.
Funding for USDA’s Forest Service is not actually in the USDA budget, but is addressed in a separate appropriations bill that mainly funds the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Forest Service received $5.7 billion in discretionary funding for FY22, a 5.8 percent increase over last fiscal year. They also received $2.12 billion that was added to the agency’s Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve, which is a part of a separate account in the Interior bill that increased overall by 2.6 percent.
The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) oversees states in operating the nation’s domestic nutrition assistance programs. While the two biggest nutrition programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the school lunch and related programs, are funded outside of the annual appropriations process, one important program, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, better known as the WIC program, is solely funded under this bill. For FY22, this program will receive $6 billion, which is expected to fully fund expected program participation.
The Foreign Agricultural Service, which manages USDA’s trade promotion and food aid programs and provides both DC-based and mission-based assistance to U.S. agricultural exporters, received $228.6 million in discretionary funding for FY22, an increase of 3.1 percent over last year. The Food for Peace program, which provides in-kind humanitarian food assistance to hungry people in developing countries, received $1.74 billion in regular appropriations, unchanged from last year’s level, but also an additional $100 million to help address the global food crisis created by last month’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This program is included under the agricultural appropriations bill but is actually managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). USDA does manage the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program, which supports school feeding programs in developing countries. The McGovern Dole program is receiving $237 million for FY22, a 3.0 percent increase over last year.
The agricultural research agencies at USDA, the Economic Research Service (ERS), the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), all received modest increases for FY22, of 2.7 percent, 3.4 percent, 3.4 percent, and 15 percent respectively. The funding for NIFA includes $445 million for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the department’s largest competitive research grant program, which represents a 2.3 percent increase over last year.
Fiscal year 2022 marked the first time since 2011 that federal appropriations bills included Congressional earmarks, which represent allocations of funding to individual projects or programs at the state level requested by specific members of Congress. There have been changes to the process used to allocate funding in this manner since it was terminated more than ten years ago in response to criminal convictions of several members for corruptly steering funding to individual businesses in exchange for campaign contributions or other largess. Today, only state and local governments and affiliated agencies, as well as non-profit organizations, are eligible to receive earmarked funds, and the details of those Congressional earmarks are published as part of the joint explanatory statements that accompany appropriations bills, to improve the transparency of the process.
There were a number of earmark provisions in the agricultural appropriations bill for this year, allocating funding that will be overseen by four USDA agencies–Rural Development, NRCS, APHIS, and ARS. Democratic members from both the House and the Senate account for the majority of earmarks approved in this bill, though there were some Republican members who engaged in the process as well.
