Our Take

House Republican Funding Bill Extends Costly 2018 Farm Bill

Ag Committee leadership bows to reality in seeking a (nearly) clean one-year farm bill extension

Nov 14, 2023 | 6 min read | Print Article

At the behest of the Republican and Democratic leaders on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, the Continuing Resolution proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over Veteran’s Day weekend (Nov. 2023) includes a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill. As currently drafted, the extension would rubber-stamp most programs under the same rules and funding levels as they existed in Fiscal Year 2023. And while this means lawmakers won’t have an opportunity to implement common sense reforms to overly generous farm subsidy programs, it also means special interests will lose their biggest leverage for trying to saddle taxpayers with an even costlier, less equitable farm bill in the end of the year legislative whirlwind.

Traditionally Congress adopts an omnibus farm bill every five or six years to establish programs ranging from farm income subsidies and promoting soil conservation, to food purchase assistance and rural broadband. Most farm bill programs are only authorized for five fiscal years as a strategy to enable lawmakers to revisit the programs in the near future. But unlike most other parts of the federal budget where a new program replaces the old, farm bills typically only “suspend” programs created in the 1930s and 40s. Expiration of a farm bill with no replacement would mean reverting back to outdated “permanent law” programs where the government sets crop prices and would either buy crops or implement planting restrictions to achieve those prices. A one-year farm bill extension takes this legislative poltergeist off the table, giving lawmakers breathing room to debate a new farm bill in 2024.

Extending the farm bill does come with a price. Under Congressional budget rules, the cost of most farm bill programs is built into the budget process. While many farm bill programs are only authorized for five years, for the last 80 years or so Congress has followed an “expired” farm bill with a new farm bill reauthorizing the expired programs or creating similar ones. Congressional budget rules thus use the final authorized year’s funding level as the “baseline” level expected for future years. A handful of programs in each farm bill lack this baseline because they are newly created and thus don’t have a track record of renewal, are relatively small in cost, or did not receive funding in the last year of the farm bill. For these “orphaned” programs, 21 of them total in the 2018 bill, extending them requires Congress to offset their cost through increased revenue or cuts in other programs. The proposed Continuing Resolution would fund these programs by rescinding $178 million in unobligated funds from the failed Biorefinery Assistance Program.

Details on the extended programs are below

Division B – Extensions

Farm Bill programs authorized to get discretionary funding (through annual spending bills) continue to be “subject to appropriations”
Dairy Margin Coverage expansion
- Modifies calculation of production history and production amount for dairies with less than 5,000,000 pounds of annual production.
  - Allows production history to become the amount determined from 2018 farm bill (highest amount from 2011, 2012, and 2013) = no change
  - PLUS 75% of the national average increase in dairy production as determined by the USDA Secretary for milk marketing year 2019

Grassroots Source Water Protection program = $1,000,000
Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program = $10,000,000
Extends the Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program = $15,000,000
Extends the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust Fund – a program where “excess” commodities are sent to foreign countries as aid. = Up to $20,000,000
Farm to Food Bank Program – $4,000,000
Rural Economic Development Loan & Grant Program = $5,000,000
Provides $10,000,000 for USDA 1890 National Scholars Program.
Provides $2,000,000 for competitive research and extension grants for urban agriculture
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research = $37,000,000 “to remain until expended.”
Extends for one year a prohibition on declaring as surplus property the lands and buildings known as the Grazing Lands Research Laboratory in El Reno, Oklahoma
Biobased Markets Program = $3,000,000
Bioenergy Program for Advanced Biofuels = $7,000,000
Feedstock Flexibility Program – such sums as necessary to fund the potential purchase of sugar to be sold to ethanol plants at a loss.
USDA’s program to collect and report data on the production and marketing of organic agricultural products – $1,000,000.
Modernization and improvement of international trade technology and data collection in the certified organic program = $1,000,000
Cost-share program for organic certification = $8,000,000 million in mandatory funds
Multiple crop and pesticide use survey = $100,000
Extends the Pima Agriculture Cotton Trust Fund for one year at a cost of $16,000,000
Extends the Agriculture Wool Apparel Manufacturers Trust Fund for one year – up to $30,000,000
Wool Research and Promotion Program – $2,250,000
Emergency Citrus Disease and Research and Development Trust Fund – $25,000,000
Sheep Production and Marketing Grant Program – $2,000,000