Key Conservation, Export, Animal Health Programs Lapse as Farm Bill Extension Expires
The one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill has expired and with it, key conservation, export, and animal health programs, with more lapses to come if Congress fails to act by year’s end.
Congress has had another year to write a new farm bill—it hasn’t. Nor has it passed another extension.
Ending immediately: new sign-ups for CRP, EQIP projects, Grassland Conservation, MAP and FMD trade promotion, Food for Progress, animal health, bioenergy, specialty crop grants, organic certification, and the beginning farmer programs.
Without a new farm bill or another extension by January 1st, American Farm Bureau Chief Economist Roger Cryan says things could get worse when permanent law kicks in.
“As of January 1st, the federal government has authority to buy milk products at the equivalent of 49 dollars per hundredweight, and they’re authorized to buy honey at $4.75 a pound. And then, over the course of the year, the price supports for some of the traditional price support crops go high, like 15 dollars a bushel for wheat and 7.45 a bushel for corn.”
AFB President Zippy Duvall has warned for months that Congress needed to act.
“The farm bill can’t continue like it has. It has to be modernized. It has to come up and reflect the true reality of what’s happening on the farm, and what it costs us to produce it.”
Duvall says farmers now find themselves “in the lurch.” He urges lawmakers to “put politics aside and pass a new, modernized farm bill.” Cryan says farmers and their bankers are depending on it.
“A good farm bill gives a lot of certainty, and one of the things that makes uncertainty even worse for the farmer is when the banker is uncertain about how next year is going to go, and the year after that, and they’re not willing to lend or they lend too little or not at the best terms.”
Adding to farmers’ problems, losses from Hurricane Helene and a longshoreman’s strike at East Coast ports could threaten farm exports and foreign demand.