Minnesotans sweating in farm country as the farm bill dies (again)

On Monday, the farm bill — that massive federal law that doles out dollars for everything from apple research to zucchini stands at farmers markets — officially expired, at least on paper.

Judging by the long faces of the Minnesota agriculture officials who’d gathered on a hillside to admire red apple trees at Pine Tree Apple Orchard just on the edge of the Twin Cities last Thursday to mark sustainability efforts, few observers expected a long-stalled Congress to pass the farm industry’s safety net, which dates to the Great Depression.

“Disappointment, not shock,” said Thom Petersen, Minnesota Department of Agriculture commissioner, following a wagon ride around the property. “It just brings a lot of uncertainty to everything.”

Once a bastion of bipartisan bromides and cooperation, the farm bill, with a price tag expected to top out at $1.5 trillion, has succumbed to the politics of Washington, D.C. Earlier this year, the House Agriculture Committee on a mostly party line vote approved a bill from Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, drawing accolades from lobbies for staple, Midwestern commodities, such as corn and soybeans, and dairy and pork producers.

But even in May, there was widespread concern the bill didn’t have enough backing from Democrats in a chamber nearly evenly divided between the parties.

“For the farm bill to be successfully reauthorized this year,” Harold Wolle, a past president of the National Corn Growers Association and a farmer outside Madelia, Minn., said in a prepared statement this spring, “there will ultimately need to be broad support from members of both parties.”

By September, after months of no movement in Congress, Zippy Duvall, the leader of the nation’s largest farmer organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, said Congress was “failing America’s families.”

“It’s been more than 100 days since the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan bill that addresses the needs of farm and ranch families,” said Duvall, in early September. “Since then, there has been no action in either chamber.”

The bill’s expiration date does not mean programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have run out of money. That won’t, technically, start to happen until the new year, say political observers. Still, the failure to reauthorize casts a pall over farm policymakers.

“I think [farmers] feel a sense of urgency,” said Stu Lourey, government relations director for Minnesota Farmers Union, who also toured the White Bear Lake orchard. “But folks understand reauthorization isn’t easy in the current political context.”

Among the top critics of the House version of the bill remain differences on the nutrition title, which comprises some 80% of the bill, and sustainability efforts in an industry that, by various measurements, comprises up to 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gases.

Hunger relief organizations cite Congressional Budget Office estimates to argue Thompson’s proposal would cut roughly $30 billion from food stamps, cutting benefits for 40 million people beginning in 2027.

Many Democratic have also vowed to stick by so-called “climate-smart” dollars greenlit by the Inflation Reduction Action, including $20 billion over five years to programs for landowners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost carbon storage.

Farming and climate change mitigation efforts remain a stubborn fight in farm country, where there is no political consensus on how to incentivize greener techniques.

Still, producers feel the heat, literally. Last Thursday, at the orchard, farmers and state officials in temperatures resembling the State Fair more than late September stood baking under a midday sun while John Jacobson, the orchard’s owner, spoke about missing those average summer temperatures. Instead, the mercury bounces up and down during the prime growing months.

“Minnesotans are feeling the impact of climate change from higher temperatures to more extreme storms with more intense flooding,” said Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.

Regarding the political climate, most say the Farm Bill’s next best chance for passage is the lame-duck session of Congress.

Repeating a refrain he heard from advocates during a recent barnstorming trip to Washington, D.C., Lourey said “next year is not our friend,” suggesting few are willing to wait for a new Congress and president in 2025 to decide the bill’s fate.